I've been thinking about what I'm going to do for my final project for school, and it happens I
stumbled upon the
Reprap project late one night when
I was pondering about what to build.
The
reprap "Mendel" is basically a homemade 3d printer that costs under $500 to build (
Commercial 3d printers cost 20-30K to buy).
A few things worth noting:
It can replicate around 50% of its own parts, if you want you can replace the extruder head with a pen and
plot/etch the circuit boards used to control the machine.
It can even print upside down.
The most common plastics people use to extrude are
PLA and
ABS, although a heated bed is usually required for ABS so it doesn't warp.
An interesting project within the reprap and
makerbot community is a method of recycling common everyday
HDPE plastic objects (Most plastic containers are made from HDPE) into the
3mm diameter filament used to feed the reprap/makerbot. This project can be found
HERE.
Extruder can also be replaced with anything. People are experimenting with tool changing, ceramic paste extruders,
frosting extruders, support material, even
chocolate(2)(3). There are also experiments with
depositing low-melting point metal alloys.
I'm going to start printing the plastic pieces, starting with
Wade's Geared Extruder tomorrow on my
schools 3d printer, and should be ordering the
hardware/
electronics sometime in the next month.
I'll be updating tomorrow with some pictures of the parts I'm making.
Hopefully I added enough links to keep you folks interested. And yeah, that's me in the picture
Comments
It builds 3d objects out of extruded molten plastic, building it up slowly in layers.
Todays printed parts:
X-Axis parts and 3 gears for the timing belts.
Cool, it's going to be a while before it's together though. After all the plastic parts are printed, I need to buy the hardware/electronics for it (Hardware is solid/threaded rod, bolt/nuts, and bearings. The electronics are based off arduino if I remember correctly).
Probably going to have a lot of pictures tomorrow, now that I've updated my laptop to ubuntu 10.10 and got everything working I've discovered how useful the webcam is
Schools 3d printer
Techno-isel milling machine...it is the most aggravating machine ever created. The interface was originally DOS, but the winxp updated interface is complete shit. Kept getting "ERROR: =====" whenever I attempted to use it...
Back room of the engineering/robotics classroom.
Friend of mine in main room of robotics/engineering class...he requested that strange Internet people masturbate to his picture.
New parts made today...:D
I've always wanted to build a reprap, but I never got around to it. You can even make them print sugar. 3D candy!
Exactly what I want to do as soon as I get it working reliably with plastics. Got plans/ideas on how to make a chocolate extruder and cake frosting.
>ABS<
Indeed, the recyclebot project is very interesting, and has a lot of potential for independence from corporations.
Thanks, I wasn't quite sure what to look for other than >ABS<...thinking I'm going to start saving up HDPE containers too.
Now that's useful! Thanks!
Although, now I find myself on wikipedia wondering what 'V' is....Hmm...I wonder just what the limits are on the kinds of plastics you could recycle with this machine...
My tech teacher was tossing out stepper motors and controllers the other day, a few years ago my school changed from a 4 period day to a 7 period day, not enough time to teach newer students stepper basics/impatient kids of the new age...
So, he gave them to me. A lot of them. I got probably around 15 bipolar chopper stepper drivers, they take direction/pulse input from anything (Going to hook it up to a parallel port/EMC2) and are opto-isolated...each one of these controllers was about $120 new, took awhile to find them because they're upwards of 10 years old.
All of the stuff was donated to the school years ago from an outfit in town that microchips baby salmon, there's a bunch of cool stuff. Old computer-controlled image recognition camera from the 90s, large motherboard looking things that the steppers were plugged into, new boxed stepper bi-polar chopper drivers...and a shitton of stepper motors.
Also happened to get the perfect motors for my mendel, too. Nema 17, brand new, still shiny, out of the box status. Except the ones I got are about 5 times the minimum holding torque requirement
Also got some HUGE nema-40 something motors, rated at 1.8 VDC, 4.8 Amps...seems like an odd rating to me.
So, I've downloaded EMC2 and as I'm printing the parts and ordering stuff for mendel, I'm going to start plasmacutting a frame for a milling machine controlled by EMC2/Parallel port.
They are sensitive little fuckers, you need to press them in one of these, then heatsink them good. They need a current regulated psu; 4.8-5v @ 1A.
If all goes correct you'll have 1 watt of blue laser. Focused it'll burn/cut any plastic (except clear & white)
Oh and it can blind you in a snap. Use orange or red acrylic to block the light.
I saw that the other day, this is so cool...it wasn't all that long ago that we were forced to use vacuum tubes. And now we have the option of printing our own transistors at home. What an age we live in...this is amazing technology. I wonder what will be printed next.
Sticky? hell, if you think so
I don't know what you mean by high clearance on CMS, but go ahead.
The lack of updates is because I'm waiting for the hardware parts to arrive, already 2 days late of the estimated time. That, and I'm out of school so I can't print the remaining parts at the moment.
So far, so good though.
My graphics card gets here in two days so I can use my computer, but until then, some developments....
The parts came, everything is okay quality. It took rather long as the guy we ordered from went on break for christmas and left some person incharge who didn't do shit.
I've been putting it together for the last two or three nights, and I almost have all of the mechanical build done.
Part of the X-axis carrage, the extruder mounts on this.
The Mendel frame itself, lacking the X Y and Z axies.
Everything is coming together smoothly, I should have the X and Z axis made and installed by tomorrow. More pictures soon.
Everything else is going well, trying to decide what generation of electronics to order.
Decided on generation 7 electronics. It's basically the RAMPS, only cheaper due to less components and is a single board solution.
Problem is I'm going to have to etch my own board for it, I've never done it before though it doesn't seem to be very hard. Just drilling the 360-something holes for the component leads will be a bitch.
Also printing out alternate X-motor mount and X-axis extruder carriage.
Ordered 4 pololu stepper drivers for the elctronics.
Lookie!
Amazing what such an old machine can do with a little tinkering. It even drilled all 369 holes for me (Took an hour or so).
All the electronics parts are here, I need to finish something on the mill tomorrow then I start soldering it all together.
The only parts I need are the hotend (Where the plastic melts and is extruded), the smooth rods (The ones I got off ebay are as straight as a rainbow), 3 opto-endstops and the processor (ATmega).
Though, I'm considering just saying "Screw this shit!" with the DIY electronics and just buying the $200 set, and selling the one I made on Ebay.
At the moment I'm going with 3mm diameter filament with a .5mm nozzle.