3D Printer

[Soñadora]

Finally got my 3D printer up and running.

This is about as cheap as you can go for the quality I'm after (50 micron). I'm pretty amazed at how much support there is for this stuff. I will be using this to build prototypes of my inventions.

Or maybe it will be good enough to create half hulls

The body is made from laser cut pressboard with a melamine coating. Most of it is press fit, but critical components are held together with zip-ties. Yeah. I know. Zip ties.

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I was finally able to print a test cube

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all my previous attempts leading up to this one

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[Bull City]

Half models, or whole models from line drawings would be pretty neat, especially if they had a cove stripe. They could be custom painted. Where is the order form?

[SemiSalt]

There are posts about, and reviews of, these things on tested.com. To me, it sounds like even something simple like your test cube requires learning some magic tricks and incantations.

[Soñadora]

the very interesting thing about this is how much the community behind it has really changed the manufacturing industry as a whole. I remember years ago I had a friend who started a company doing nothing but creating g-code for CNC. Today, all you need are some solid models, a couple of FREE software packages and you can convert a solid into g-code (the voodoo you speak of) that the machine needs to make parts.

It's all very fascinating.

[Tigger]

Of course, if you are a little OCD you can always use the printer to create a model of the city in which you live ...

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That's my sons's grad project from his Masters of Architecture, currently taking up the entire dining room table ...

[Soñadora]

that's fantastic. Considering it takes hours to print each print, I see a LOT of time on that table

[JoeP]

We have used RP occasionally in the past, mostly to get a quick idea of what something will look like (like the hawse ring shown here, RP'd in 4 parts). We looked into getting our own machine so I had 3 model hulls done up by different vendors as a test. Each has different materials and resolution. The small dark grey hull shows some of the problems you can encounter. The resolution is so rough you can see the stepping of the layers (see foredeck) and the leftover material (white fuzz)was a royal pain to remove from small openings as I think it re-fused to the model. Technology has advanced since these were made with better materials and technology available.

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[LarryHoward]

that's fantastic. Considering it takes hours to print each print, I see a LOT of time on that table

Some of the "better" printers are faster. I have a Navy customer that bought a new "Maker Bot" Z18 (around 10K with suppliers and stand) to do prototyping. It's pretty good, reasonably fast and will print 12 X 12 X 18 build volume. Just think of teh brackets, mounts and other cool boat parts that would make.

I keep trying to come up with a legitimate reason to buy one for the office as DoD is really throwing money at "additive manufacturing" as a way to make spare parts on ships or at bases without sticking hundreds of millions of dollars in spares. Haven't quite convinced myself that we really have to have one and would need one that does sintered metal rather than just thermoplastic resins. Our structural guys look at 3D metal parts as "a pile of weld melt" from a material characteristics standpoint but the tech is way cool.

When I ran a small UAV company, we had a shop 3D print fuel tanks because I could use every square MM of volume and incorporate mounting bosses for other equipment at the same time. When fuel carried equals flight duration, every ounce counts (we did 12 hour flights up to 18K feet and 40 miles away looking for IEDs and bad guys planting them).

[JoeP]

I think being able to manufacture your spare parts on board is pretty slick if the parts can be made fast enough to replace others in an emergency. I have no doubt that in time speed will improve to the point that this is possible. I imagine ships of the future will have dedicated material stores areas for keeping all the different materials required.

[LarryHoward]

I think being able to manufacture your spare parts on board is pretty slick if the parts can be made fast enough to replace others in an emergency. I have no doubt that in time speed will improve to the point that this is possible. I imagine ships of the future will have dedicated material stores areas for keeping all the different materials required.

Joe,

I don't think we are very far away from making non structural parts, spacers, brackets, foundations and the like as needed. Making forms is pretty easy now if you are using room temp cure composites for the actual parts. I'd think you would find a larger bed printer handy for a lot of things that you probably currently buy from vendors with associated lead time and cost.

[Soñadora]

I think being able to manufacture your spare parts on board is pretty slick if the parts can be made fast enough to replace others in an emergency. I have no doubt that in time speed will improve to the point that this is possible. I imagine ships of the future will have dedicated material stores areas for keeping all the different materials required.

Maybe that's it Joe! There's the Pizza boat.

I could be the made parts boat!

hmmmmm.....

[Soñadora]

I keep trying to come up with a legitimate reason to buy one for the office...

For me, I could no longer come up with a legitimate reason not to. It goes so well with my particular idiom

This little machine has taught me so much about the process. At $280, it's cheaper than taking a night class at a tech school. I've screwed up so many times and made so many mistakes, I'm bound to be a novice at some point.

This is NOT a turnkey system. Which is why I find it so useful as a teaching tool.

In a former life I used to sell engineering software. The guys who ran our CAM division split off to be resellers for MasterCAM. Their bread and butter was creating tool paths for CNC machines. They would charge thousands and thousands for creating g-code from 3-D models.

Today, you can download FREE software to do this: Reptier Host which contains a g-code generator called Slic3r. These are just two and there are many others. I was fairly blown away to come across these knowing what it was like 20 years ago. Crazy.

[Soñadora]

I'd forgotten about this thread

Sure has come a long way in a little over a month.

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All the orange parts and some of the black ones are upgrades I've printed with this printer.

[kimbottles]

I'd forgotten about this thread

Sure has come a long way in a little over a month.

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All the orange parts and some of the black ones are upgrades I've printed with this printer.

Did you have to "print" the "chain" individually and then snap them together?

[Soñadora]

I'd forgotten about this thread

Sure has come a long way in a little over a month.

WP_20150411_007[1].jpg

All the orange parts and some of the black ones are upgrades I've printed with this printer.

Did you have to "print" the "chain" individually and then snap them together?

yep

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[Soñadora]

I probably should go see a therapist.

Since getting into this over 2 months ago I have:

• Set up a class for building a 3D printer at Minneapolis Community and Technical College
• Volunteered to help troubleshoot Chicago Avenue Fire Arts new plasma bed
• Started work on a NEW 3D printer
• Met with a guy who has 8000 sq. ft. of space that he would like to make into a 'Maker Space'
• Same guy has property across the street where he wants to offer turn-key home power via solar/wind/battery/etc - this is something I proposed to a friend of mine last year as a package we could offer via Home Depot or possibly other retailers

The image below is the Smoothieboard controller that will be going in my new printer. It came unassembled so I had to solder all the headers on. To make it easier, I printed out a PCB jig for holding the board and the components.

I also found out that my company has a killer discount with Fastenal. In some cases it's 90% off of retail. I now have bags and bags of metric socket head cap screws at my disposal

[kimbottles]

so cool!!

[Soñadora]

Tuesday I was asked to visit some commercial space to see if I'd be interested in opening a retail location dedicated to 3D printing. The 3500 sq. ft. space hadn't been occupied since the late 80s. It would be the perfect location for retail sales, inventory, and a production 'studio'. This would be the premier 3D printing resource in the metro area.

But there's no way I'd be able to get SWMBO interested in this venture. We tried our hand at running a business once before and it went down in flames (not literally).

Still, I feel very strongly that something like this would be successful here.

[Tim OConnell]

You're on a roll Rick. Well done

[Soñadora]

I've gone over the edge. I am firmly entrenched in 'obsessed' territory. I have completely redesigned the original printer I started with. Think about this: the original printer was just enough for me to build all the parts I needed to make it a much better printer. A spool of filament cost about $20. I've gone through 3 spools. 50% - 60% of the material was sacrificed to the learning curve. So for about $30, I've made this machine into a much better product.

And I won't be stopping there. I'm improving this machine so it can be used to print a much better machine (an 'H-bot' machine - google it if you're curious).

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This is what the complete re-design will look like when I'm finished.

I've completed building the base. There are some minor tweaks I need to complete, but this is it for the most part.

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A little hard to see since all the parts are black. This is showing the printing bed frame that is also my design.

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[JoeP]

I love it. That is awesome Rick. Probably time to stop when it turns itself on and starts to replicate improved versions of itself, or when it calls you Dad.

[JoeP]

A cool 3D printed bridge in the Netherlands http://3dprintingindustry.com/2015/06/14/mx3d-wants-buy-3d-printed-bridge-amsterdam/:

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[BeauV]

Joe,

That is really really cool!! Especially for me, being of Dutch ancestry. My grandfather's house was on a canal like that, not very far from that spot.

B

[Soñadora]

saw this a couple days ago. Really stretching the idea of '3D printing'. This is a wire-feed welding machine, essentially. I'm fascinated by the automation aspect of it.

The closest we can get to actual '3D printing' with metal today is sintering. DMLS (Direct Metal Laser Sintering) is a lot like SLA in concept. Rather than forming in resin, parts are formed in aluminum powder. A laser 'welds' (sinters) the part in layers.

The machines are super expensive but super cool (ffwd to about 2:30 to see it in action)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRE-PzI6uZA[/youtube]

[BeauV]

OK.... I went to an interesting technology weekend camp out a few weeks ago. It's called "FOO Camp". It's put on by O'Reilly Publishing (FOO stands for "Friends Of O'Reilly). Tim O'Reilly has been a friend for years and I've gone to this a number of time before... but this time I found something that is Scantlings Appropriate. (Normally, this camp has nothing to do with us on Scantlings.)

As I walked around the campus on the second day of the camp I heard the distinctive sound of a highly souped up 4 cyl engine and given I had nothing to do, I headed out to the entry walkway to see what had arrived. What I found was this:



Now people are always showing up with stuff they built, after all Tim started the Maker Camp in San Mateo and I once got to drive a home made steam powered tractor at that event. But this was REALLY different. This is a home made, one of of a kind, carbon fibre body and chassis two seater (one behind the other) with the engine mounted just ahead of the rear wheels. It was beautifully executed, unlike some "projects" Friends of O'Reilly show up with. The doors are the required lifting gear found on lots of exotic cars, but these are only 5 lbs each. I was to learn that the entire chassis weighted 48 lbs and is stiffer than the Porsche Turbo.



But that's not the best bit. The entire chassis interconnect, along with the motor mounts and a lot of the interior, is 3D printed!!! In the picture below you can see one of the front suspension bits in a bag for show-n-tell (the real point of FOO Camp). In the picture below that you can see the stock carbon tubes (which are now amazingly cheap) interconnected with joints that are all 3D printed.





Even the mount that holds the steering wheel, and bits of the wheel, were 3D printed to good effect and extremely light weight.



I was blown away!! To say the least. This car comes in at 712 lbs and is being driven by a full race turbo motor based on a 2 liter Toyota engine, making about 600 HP. It is crazy fast and drives like a go-cart. But that's not why he built it. He is trying to sell folks on the idea of 3D printing these parts which are then glued together with the carbon tubes and flat panels that are off-the-shelf. The build cost of this car, without the engine, is estimated to $2,300 in volume. That's nuts!! Sure, it doesn't have a lot of "must have" features for that price, like AC, heat, seat-heaters, all that stuff we now "need" in a car. But I know hundreds (if not thousands) of motor heads who'd buy one of these just for the hell of it, sort of like my Morgan or Tucky's SuperSeven redo.

I had a blast talking to the guy and we eventually got to dash around a little in the car. We couldn't leave the parking lot, it's not registered and VERY loud. But I did get it to 90 in about 3 sec on the back straight

Good times!

[kimbottles]

DAMN!!

[JoeP]

That's quite the car Beau. Are those carbon tube off the shelf items?

[Olaf Hart]

What are the tube joiners made from?

[Tucky]

Fascinating. I've bought the tube and cored panelss before from a variety of vendors, and at retail they aren't exactly cheap, but the idea of stock tubes and custom joints offers huge advantages for only slightly more weight than a one off build.

Tubes

http://www.rockwestcomposites.com/brows ... Hwod7qEOvA


https://www.acpsales.com/OnlineStore.php?cat=4663

[BeauV]

What are the tube joiners made from?

It's what they call "sintered aluminum". Rick will know a lot more - PAGING Rick to the 3D printing thread !

My understanding is that it's AL powder that is "printed" with a carrier that holds it steady, then a laser heats the mess up and causes the carrier to evaporate and the AL to melt together; thereby building up a sold AL part.

It's fun to see that these guys have designed the epoxy glue channels etc.... into the pieces so that one could easily build an automated process to assemble the chassis with a set of robots that placed and glued the parts. The use of off-the-shelf commodity carbon fiber tubes and panels is wonderful to see.