Without a doubt 3D printing has populated the press as a technology innovation to watch for its impact on just about every industry from baking,biology, to manufacturing. Have a look at this post given in
IEEE Spectrum regarding 3D Printing at CES 2014. It would seem inevitable that the world would progress from being able to print flat two dimensional images to actual three dimensional objects.
If you have seen any of my other posts you will see that a 'project' is always underway in the shop. Some of these have been for pure education on how to use shop tools, others have been to make something really cool. This project has been to build a really cool tool that is foremost in the technology watch these days. Pictured here is the 3D printer 'built in the shop' over the fall of 2013 and finished this month.
Here is a very basic intro to 3D printers. This tool is part of machine class that is called additive manufacturing. It 'prints' objects by adding material in layers as opposed to my milling machine that shaves material away. In particular this project uses
Fused filament fabrication to build up layers of an object. It uses a plastic material called
PLA (Polylactic_acid) and an extruder heated to 200 degrees C to produce a 0.4 mm filament that is traced around the outline of each layer of the object being printed. The printer is capable of producing an object that fits in an XYZ space of 150mm x150mm x 200mm.
The design comes from much open source inspiration. The Cartesian XY motion is motivated from open source project
COREXY with some changes. NEMA17 stepper motors drive the belt for the XY motion in what is known as an HBOT method. The metal working of the slides is the same as the COREXY project but the belt is run like the H Bot style. This avoided the extra pulleys and belt cross over that COREXY uses. What I like about this design is that neither the X or Y motors are in motion. Think of this like an etch-a-sketch system where the 'knobs' control where the center plate goes.
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| Building the Z supports |
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| Platen Support added |
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| Fabricating Platen Support |
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| XYZ Motors and belts in place |
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| Extruder being added |
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| The electronic that is in the box |
After much tweeking and fussing the first object that I printed is a bunny....ok so my wife liked it....The object is known as the
Stanford Bunny and has significance as a test pattern for 3D rendering. The object is a traditional 'test pattern' generated by Stanford University which for 3D printing can be found on a very cool website call
thingiverse. Once you have a 3D printer operating you can download or upload 3D object files for sharing with the community at large.
Keep a look out for more posts on the printer and the workout it took to build it. This may hold the record for the most complicated project to come out of the shop. The goal now is to refine its operation and use it to produce pieces for projects yet to come.
If you have seen any of my other posts you will see that a 'project' is always underway in the shop. Some of these have been for pure education on how to use shop tools, others have been to make something really cool. This project has been to build a really cool tool that is foremost in the technology watch these days. Pictured here is the 3D printer 'built in the shop' over the fall of 2013 and finished this month. 
The design comes from much open source inspiration. The Cartesian XY motion is motivated from open source project COREXY with some changes. NEMA17 stepper motors drive the belt for the XY motion in what is known as an HBOT method. The metal working of the slides is the same as the COREXY project but the belt is run like the H Bot style. This avoided the extra pulleys and belt cross over that COREXY uses. What I like about this design is that neither the X or Y motors are in motion. Think of this like an etch-a-sketch system where the 'knobs' control where the center plate goes. 
