3D Printing Flies High now. Articles on three-dimensional printers are popping up everywhere these days. And nowadays there are many 3D printer products. Some are small enough to fit in a briefcase and others are large enough to print houses.
Everything you ever wanted to know about 3D printing article tells that 3D printing is having its “Macintosh moment,” declares Wired editor -in-chief Chris Anderson in cover story on the subject. 3D printers are now where the PC was 30 years ago. They are just becoming affordable and accessible to non-geeks, will be maybe able to democratize manufacturing the same way that PCs democratized publishing.
Gartner’s 2012 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Identifies “Tipping Point” Technologies That Will Unlock Long-Awaited Technology Scenarios lists 3D Print It at Home as important topic. In this scenario, 3D printing allows consumers to print physical objects, such as toys or housewares, at home, just as they print digital photos today. Combined with 3D scanning, it may be possible to scan certain objects with a smartphone and print a near-duplicate. Analysts predict that 3D printing will take more than five years to mature beyond the niche market. Eventually, 3D printing will enable individuals to print just about anything from the comfort of their own homes.Slideshow: 3D Printers Make Prototypes Pop article tells that advances in performance, and the durability and range of materials used in additive manufacturing and stereolithography offerings, are enabling companies to produce highly durable prototypes and parts, while also cost-effectively churning out manufactured products in limited production runs.
3D printing can have implications to manufacturers of some expensive products. The Pirate Bay declares 3D printed “physibles” as the next frontier of piracy. Pirate Bay Launches 3D-Printed ‘Physibles’ Downloads. The idea is to have freely available designs for different products that you can print at home with your 3D printer. Here a video demonstrating 3D home printing in operation.
Shapeways is a marketplace and community that encourages the making and sharing of 3D-printed designs. 3D Printing Shapes Factory of the Future article tells that recently New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg cut the Shapeways‘ Factory (filled with industrial-sized 3D printers) ribbon using a pair of 3D-printed scissors.
The Next Battle for Internet Freedom Could Be Over 3D Printing article tells up to date, 3D printing has primarily been used for rapid commercial prototyping largely because of its associated high costs. Now, companies such as MakerBot are selling 3D printers for under $2,000. Slideshow: 3D Printers Make Prototypes Pop article gives view a wide range of 3D printers, from half-million-dollar rapid prototyping systems to $1,000 home units. Cheapest 3D printers (with quite limited performance) now start from 500-1000 US dollars. It is rather expensive or inexpensive is how you view that.
RepRap Project is a cheap 3D printer that started huge 3D printing buzz. RepRap Project is an initiative to develop an open design 3D printer that can print most of its own components. RepRap (short for replicating rapid prototyper) uses a variant of fused deposition modeling, an additive manufacturing technique (The project calls it Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) to avoid trademark issues around the “fused deposition modeling” term). It is almost like a small hot glue gun that melts special plastic is moved around to make the printout. I saw RepRap (Mendel) and Cupcake CNC 3D printers in operation at at Assembly Summer 2010.
There has been some time been trials to make 3D-Printed Circuit Boards. 3D Printers Will Build Circuit Boards ‘In Two Years’ article tells that printing actual electronics circuit boards is very close. Most of the assembly tools are already completely automated anyway.
3D printing can be used to prototype things like entire cars or planes. The makers of James Bond’s latest outing, Skyfall, cut a couple corners in production and used modern 3D printing techniques to fake the decimation of a classic 1960s Aston Martin DB5 (made1:3 scale replicas of the car for use in explosive scenes). The world’s first 3D printed racing car can pace at 140 km/h article tells that a group of 16 engineers named “Group T” has unveiled a racing car “Areion” that is competing in Formula Student 2012 challenge. It is described as the world’s first 3D printed race car. The Areion is not fully 3D printed but most of it is.
Student Engineers Design, Build, Fly ‘Printed’ Airplane article tells that when University of Virginia engineering students posted a YouTube video last spring of a plastic turbofan engine they had designed and built using 3-D printing technology, they didn’t expect it to lead to anything except some page views. But it lead to something bigger. 3-D Printing Enables UVA Student-Built Unmanned Plane article tells that in an effort that took four months and $2000, instead of the quarter million dollars and two years they estimate it would have using conventional design methods, a group of University of Virginia engineering students has built and flown an airplane of parts created on a 3-D printer. The plane is 6.5 feet in wingspan, and cruises at 45 mph.
3D printers can also print guns and synthetic chemical compounds (aka drugs). The potential policy implications are obvious. US Army Deploys 3D Printing Labs to Battlefield to print different things army needs. ‘Wiki Weapon Project’ Aims To Create A Gun Anyone Can 3D-Print At Home. If high-quality weapons can be printed by anyone with a 3D printer, and 3D printers are widely available, then law enforcement agencies will be forced to monitor what you’re printing in order to maintain current gun control laws.
Software Advances Do Their Part to Spur 3D Print Revolution article tells that much of the recent hype around 3D printing has been focused on the bevy of new, lower-cost printer models. Yet, significant improvements to content creation software on both the low and high end of the spectrum are also helping to advance the cause, making the technology more accessible and appealing to a broader audience. Slideshow: Content Creation Tools Push 3D Printing Mainstream article tells that there is still a sizeable bottleneck standing in the way of mainstream adoption of 3D printing: the easy to use software used to create the 3D content. Enter a new genre of low-cost (many even free like Tikercad) and easy-to-use 3D content creation tools. By putting the tools in reach, anyone with a compelling idea will be able to easily translate that concept into a physical working prototype without the baggage of full-blown CAD and without having to make the huge capital investments required for traditional manufacturing.
Finally when you have reached the end of the article there is time for some fun. Check out this 3D printing on Dilbert strip so see a creative use of 3D printing.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Changes are Needed to Ensure Product Innovation and Support Long-term Goals
https://www.makerbot.com/media-center/2017/02/15/makerbot-long-term-goals
This transformation is not trivial.
The desktop 3D printing business is growing in several segments at once, and we consciously chose to focus on the professional and education segments where we provide the best value proposition. We worked hard to further define our current strategy of developing 3D printing solutions that address the needs of professionals and educators.
We must deepen our focus on core products.
The leadership team and I have further focused our roadmap on the essential products that are most relevant to our core customers in order to achieve our strategic goals. We have to reorganize in small groups around these offerings, then execute in the most efficient and agile ways.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hands On With Variable Layer Height
http://hackaday.com/2017/02/16/hands-on-with-variable-layer-height/
3D printers are an exercise in compromise. Generally, you don’t want a lot of mass on your tool head, as that can lead to ringing and other mechanical artifacts on your print. However, direct drive extruders are better for many filaments, and the decision on what printer to build ultimately comes down to a choice between speed, build area, and the ability to print in exotic filaments.
Even in slicing a 3D model, a 3D printing enthusiast must balance the quality of a print versus how long the print will take to squirt out of a nozzle. Now, just about any printer can produce fantastic models at a very high layer height, but no one wants to wait several days for the print to finish.
This balance between print time and print quality has, for the last few years, been completely ignored. One of the best solutions to this we’ve seen is variable layer height slicing. Basically, if you’re printing something without much detail, you don’t need small layers in your 3D print. Think of it as printing the neck of a bust at 0.3mm layer height, and the face at 0.1mm.
Yes, there were a few papers from a decade ago laying the conceptual foundations of variable layer height slicing. 3D printers weren’t exactly common back then, though.
Recently, Autodesk’s Integrated Additive Manufacturing Team released Varislice for automatic generation of variable layer heights on a 3D printed object.
http://hackaday.com/2016/11/03/variable-thickness-slicing-for-3d-printers/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Decorate Your 3D Prints with Detailed Hydrographic Printing
http://hackaday.com/2017/02/25/decorate-your-3d-prints-with-detailed-hydrographic-printing/
It’s like the old quip from [Henry Ford]: You can have your 3D prints in any color you want, as long as it’s one. Some strides have been made to bringing more color to your extruded goodies, but for anything beyond a few colors, you’re going to need to look at post-print processing of some sort. For photorealistic 3D prints, you might want to look into a simple hydrographic printing method that can be performed right on a printer.
If some of the prints in the video below look familiar, it’s because we covered the original method when it was presented at SIGGRAPH 2015. [Amos Dudley] was intrigued enough by the method, which uses computational modeling of complex surfaces to compose a distorted image that will be stretched back into shape when the object is dipped, to contact the original authors for permission to use the software.
Add Full Color Patterns to 3D Prints with Computational Hydrographics
https://formlabs.com/blog/full-color-pattern-3d-prints-computational-hydrographics/
Building an immersion printing transfer tank into an existing 3D printer is a convenient way to precisely dip the model.
We used a Form 2 printer and repurposed an old resin tank, which was cleaned with the silicone layer removed. We laser cut a small water tank out of acrylic, assembled with solvent, and glued into the empty resin tank. This design ensures that if water spills, it will spill into the tank instead of the printer.
This technique also works with the Form 1+, because you can use OpenFL to drive the Z axis motion. Our water tank includes a printed barrier that helps prevent the film from sticking to the side walls of the tank.
In the immersion printing process, hydrographic film floats on the surface of a water bath through surface tension.
By baking the diffuse texture of your model to the final frame of the simulated film, you can pre-distort the texture map so that it will un-distort as the object is dipped.
Limitations
Rather than modeling the hydrographic film as a viscous sheet, we are treating it as a very flexible, buoyant cloth. The simulated cloth will never break apart, while the real film will. Depending on the cohesivity of the film, the graphic can be applied up to and past the midpoint of the model, but it will fail to fill areas with large breaks in elevation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Tiko Printer: What Happens When You Innovate Too Much
http://hackaday.com/2017/02/27/the-tiko-printer-what-happens-when-you-innovate-too-much/
Even in this domain of nothingness, there will still be one unassailable truth: you should not buy a 3D printer on Kickstarter.
We’re no strangers to failed 3D printer crowdfunding campaigns. Around this time last year, backers for the Peachy Printer, an inordinately innovative resin printer, found out they were getting a timeshare in Canada instead of a printer. This was unusual not because a crowdfunding campaign failed, but because we know what actually happened. It’s rare to get the inside story, and the Peachy Printer did not disappoint.
The Tiko 3D printer is another 3D printer that looks innovative, and at the time of the crowdfunding campaign, the price couldn’t be beat.
Now, after almost two years of development, Tiko is closing up shop.
It’s a sad but almost predictable end to a project that could have been cool. Unlike so many other failed crowdfunding campaigns, Tiko has given us a post-mortum on their campaign. This is how the Tiko became a standout success on Kickstarter, how it failed, and is an excellent example of the difference between building one of something and building ten thousand.
Why the Tiko Was a Hit
The Tiko printer was an easy sell.
The astonishing economy of the Tiko leads to an obvious question. How did the Tiko team plan to build a 3D printer and send it out the door for less than $200?
The answer comes from something that sounds like it’s glomming onto Apple ad copy: unibody construction. The body of the Tiko is a single part with an integrated c-channel used as the linear rails of this delta bot. This unibody construction is, quite simply, ingenious. If you’ve ever assembled a RepRap Mendel, or any of the other threaded rod printer monstrosities from back in the day, you know the frame of a 3D printer is what makes or breaks the build.
This is a 3D printer that was built around standardized manufacturing processes. Yes, building a ‘unibody’ 3D printer will require a significant capital investment to get the first printer off the assembly line. Once that’s done, though, the creators of the Tiko printer would have a viable product that could be manufactured for far less than their competitors.
Tiko put a lot of innovation into their unibody frame. Unfortunately, they decided to extend that innovation to the rest of the printer.
The usual method for linear motion in a 3D printer is a stepper motor. NEMA 17 stepper motors are par for the course. The historical pricing of NEMA 17 motors is itself interesting: back in 2008, before the RepRap project came to fruition, it wasn’t unrealistic to spend $40 on a single NEMA 17 motor with a driver. Now, you can pick up the same parts for less than half that cost.
Tiko chose to go their own way. They used cheaper but much lower torque stepper motors on their printer.
there were far too many reports of layer shifting and missed steps than you would expect.
Right now, the state of electronics for 3D printers is heavily derived from the original RepRap projects. Derivatives of the Arduino Mega, using the ATmega2560 and ATmega32u2 microcontrollers, are the norm. The new LulzBot Brain Box uses a RAMBo board with this microcontroller. The electronics for the vast majority of 3D printers is derived from those initial 3D printer experiments, and that means a decade of technical debt.
Tiko advertised WiFi printing during their Kickstarter campaign. Right now, the easy way to do a WiFi printer would be a standard ATmega-based controller board with an ESP8266 WiFi module. This would be easy, but it wouldn’t be cheap. Instead of the easy solution, Tiko turned to a neat WiFi-enabled microcontroller released by Texas Instruments. The CC3200 gave the Tiko a powerful ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller and WiFi. Given the smooth acceleration found in even the cheapest ARM controller boards, this is a win.
But there’s a reason everyone keeps using older Arduino-based controller boards. Nearly all the firmware for 3D printers is built around the Arduino Mega. Building a printer controller board around a relatively new part means building everything from scratch. This is development time Tiko didn’t have, and engineering time Tiko couldn’t afford.
Despite this, Tiko actually managed to build and ship over four thousand printers.
They had ordered their complete BOM before a prototype was finalized. The decision to use cheap stepper motors led directly to the very poor performance of the finalized design. The efforts to fix hardware problems in software were not effective. Eventually, Tiko had too much technical debt to pay off.
By the end of 2016, Tiko was effectively dead. Last week, they gave up, shutting down production, and refusing to refund backers.
Far too often we look at Kickstarters from an engineering perspective. What’s missing in these discussions is a look at Kickstarters from a business perspective. What Tiko has done is out-innovated themselves. They came up with a rather remarkable system for the frame of a 3D printer, but one that isn’t quite right for a hardware startup. They developed brand new hardware for the 3D printer community but backed themselves into a corner when their engineering team couldn’t keep up. They spent all their money buying components before their design was finalized. These aren’t poor engineering decisions, they’re poor business decisions.
Twelve thousand people have spent $200 (plus about $60 in shipping) on a printer they won’t receive.
Tomi Engdahl says:
DIY 3D Slicer is a Dynamo
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/01/diy-3d-slicer-is-a-dynamo/
We all know that hacker that won’t use a regular compiler. If he’s not using assembly language, he uses a compiler he wrote. If you don’t know him, maybe it is you! If you really don’t know one, then meet these two. [Nathan Fuller] and [Andy Baldwin] want to encourage you to write your own 3D slicer.
Their post is very detailed and uses Autodesk Dynamo as a graphical programming language. However, the details aren’t really specific to Dynamo. It is like a compiler. You sort of know what it must be doing, but until you’ve seen one taken apart, there are a lot of subtleties you probably wouldn’t think of right away if you were building one from scratch.
How to Build Your Own 3D Printing Slicer From Scratch
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Build-Your-Own-3D-Printing-Slicer-From-Scra/
Tomi Engdahl says:
That Time I Spent $20 For 25 .STL Files
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/01/that-time-i-spent-20-for-25-stl-files/
Last weekend I ran out of filament for my 3D printer midway through a print. Yes, it’s evidence of poor planning
I can always run over to Lowe’s or Home Depot or Staples and grab an overpriced spool of crappy filament to tide me over until the good, cheap filament arrives via UPS.
The filament cost about three times what I would usually pay
Everything For The Kitchen Sink
kitchenThe focus of this article is Robo 3D’s series of USB thumb drives loaded up with ready to print 3D files. For $19.99, I picked up a 2GB USB thumb drive that is literally the same USB thumb drive I could pick up for free at any trade show or convention.
This is the ‘kitchen pack’, and includes models like a coaster, dipping bowl, an egg cup, tea candle holder, and a citrus reamer. There were a few other versions of this product; the ‘office pack’ included a business card holder and iPhone stand. The ‘bath pack’ included a soap dish and a shower head. All of these 3D model USB sticks were selling for $19.99.
There are twenty 3D printable objects on this USB drive, split up into 25 separate .STL files. There are pictures of only five of these items on the packaging.
If you buy one of these, you have no idea what you’re going to get.
While the utility of these objects are questionable, I must add they are at least unique.
These are fine 3D printable models, but given 3D model repositories exist, they’re not really worth eighty cents apiece.
I can’t comprehend who this product is designed for. Putting 3D models on a USB stick would be great if we lived in a world where the Internet didn’t exist. If 3D printers were a thing in the mid 90s, I could easily see something like this existing. Business plans would be written on the basis that people would pay money for tiny little EEPROMs containing STL files stuffed into cartridges. This isn’t the 90s, though, and I find the idea that someone could own a 3D printer but still not have access to the Internet extremely odd.
This isn’t to say paying for 3D models isn’t worth it. Creating 3D models is an art form, and artists deserve to be paid.
The idea of a USB drive filled up with printable parts is a valid one, but here it just falls flat on its face.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Unique Planetary Gearbox can be Custom Printed for Steppers
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/02/unique-planetary-gearbox-can-be-custom-printed-for-steppers/
Stepper motors are a staple in all sorts of projects, but it’s often the case that a gearbox is needed, especially for applications like the linear drives in CNC machines and 3D printers. In those mechanisms, a high-torque, low backlash gearbox might be just the thing, and a 3D printable split planetary harmonic drive for the popular NEMA 17 motors would be even better.
Each revolution of the planets around the fixed ring rotates the output ring by one tooth, leading to almost 100:1 reduction.
‘Harmonic’ Planetary drive for NEMA17
96.6667:1 ‘Harmonic’ Planetary reducer for NEMA17
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2122538
This reducer is designed to be mounted on top of a NEMA 17 standard stepper motor. It has a high reduction ratio of 96.6667:1 in a very small package (only 20mm tall, and 80mm in diameter). In the tests i concluded, reducer didn’t show even the slightest signs of backlash, but i can’t guarantee it won’t be an issue after prolonged use. This design also eliminates the wobble of the output which can be observed in 3D printed harmonic drives, and it’s required to remove that wobble if the device is to be used in an actual mechanism which needs to perform accurately/precisely.
If you encounter any problems, please contact me so i can improve the design based on your input
Tomi Engdahl says:
Decorate Your 3D Prints with Detailed Hydrographic Printing
http://hackaday.com/2017/02/25/decorate-your-3d-prints-with-detailed-hydrographic-printing/
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D-Printed Vise Is a Mechanical Marvel
http://hackaday.com/2017/02/26/3d-printed-vise-is-a-mechanical-marvel/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Teen Invents Liquid-Metal 3D Printer With Potential to Transform Manufacturing
https://www.designnews.com/3d-printing/teen-invents-liquid-metal-3d-printer-potential-transform-manufacturing/182690909856400?cid=nl.x.dn14.edt.aud.dn.20170302.tst004t
The idea of a teenage inventor who wanted to create a prototype for a project he was working on has developed into 3D printing machine that can print objects out of molten metal and has the potential to transform manufacturing.
The idea of a teenage inventor who wanted to create a prototype for a project he was working on has developed into 3D printing machine that can print objects out of molten metal and has the potential to transform manufacturing.
Five years ago, then 19-year-old Zachary Vader aimed to 3D-print in metal a proof of concept for a gas turbine generator that he was working on. Vader was a student at the University at Buffalo (UB) at the time.
When he realized that 3D metal printing wasn’t a viable option for the project, he decided to do something about it, inventing his own metal printer with the help of his father Scott, a mechanical engineer.
“We surveyed different approaches, looking for processes that would use the lowest-cost input material and also allow a fast deposition rate,” Scott Vader told Design News. “The direct-jetting process [we settled on] is attractive for both of those reasons.”
The breakthrough in Zachary’s invention came when he thought to expose molten metal in a confined chamber with an orifice to a pulsed magnetic field, the Vaders said. The transient field induces a pressure with the metal that ejects a droplet, which was the key to making droplets of liquid metal eject from a nozzle.
The machine represents a major leap forward in the ability to print 3D objects in metal,
In the Vader Systems machine, called the Mk1, an electrically pulsed magnetic field permeates liquid metal in an ejection chamber and creates circulating electrical currents that interact with the magnetic field to produce a pressure that squeezes a droplet out of the ejector nozzle.
Vader Systems may have created a quantum leap in manufacturing
http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2017/01/020.html
Liquid metal 3-D printing could revolutionize how things are made
A father and son team in the START-UP NY program have invented a liquid metal printing machine that could represent a significant transformation in manufacturing. A breakthrough idea five years ago by former University at Buffalo student Zack Vader, then 19, has created a machine that prints three-dimensional objects using liquid metal.
Vader Systems is innovating and building the machines in a factory in the CrossPoint Business Park in Getzville. Zack’s father Scott, a mechanical engineer, is the CEO. Zack is the chief technology officer. His mother, Pat Roche, is controller.
The machine is so novel it represents a quantum leap in the ability to print three-dimensional objects in metal. Other metal printers exist, but most use a process of laying down powdered metal and melting it with a laser or electron beam. In that process, some particles of the powder do not get melted, creating weakened spots.
The Vaders were working on their invention in the basement of their home in Amherst when Scott decided to reach out to UB for help. “We were working alone in our basement and tackling some pretty deep technical problems,” he said.
“We knocked at the door of the university and they welcomed us in,”
‘What are you trying to do? What are your problems and how can we help?’”
Zack Vader, now 24, started focusing on metal printing when his plans to hire a company to 3-D print parts for a microturbine generator were stymied. No company could print the parts he needed, so he decided to make his own metal printer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Making Laser Cutter Designs Work in a 3D Printer
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/03/making-laser-cutter-designs-work-in-a-3d-printer/
The main mechanical tools in a hacker’s shop used to be a drill press and a lathe. Maybe a CNC mill, if you were lucky. Laser cutters are still a rare tool to find in a personal shop, but today’s hackers increasingly have access to 3D printers. What happens when you have a design for a laser cutter (2D parts) but only have access to a 3D printer? You punt.
[DIY3DTECH] has a two-part video on taking a 2D design (in an SVG file) and bringing it into TinkerCad. At that point, he assembles the part in software and creates a printable object.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Innovating A Better Printing Platform
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/07/innovating-a-better-printing-platform/
Just because you have a fancy new 3D printer doesn’t mean that innovation should stop there. Almost everyone has had a print go foul if the first layer doesn’t properly adhere to the printing platform — to say nothing of difficulty in dislodging the piece once it’s finished. Facing mixed results with some established tricks meant to combat these issues, [D. Scott Williamson] — a regular at Chicago’s Workshop 88 makerspace — has documented his trials to find a better printer platform.
For what he had (a printer without a heated plate), painter’s tape and hairspray wasn’t cutting it, especially when it came time to remove the print as the tape wouldn’t completely come off the part. How then, to kill two birds with one stone? Eureka! A flexible metal covering for the printing plate.
3D Printing PLA on a flexible metal build plate
http://blog.workshop88.com/2017/02/05/3d-printing-pla-on-a-flexible-metal-build-plate/
Tomi Engdahl says:
We Can Now 3D Print Slinkys
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/09/we-can-now-3d-print-slinkys/
A mark of a good 3D print — and a good 3D printer — is interlayer adhesion. If the layers of a 3D print are too far apart, you get a weak print that doesn’t look good. This print has no interlayer adhesion. It’s a 3D printed Slinky, the kind that rolls down stairs, alone or in pairs, and makes a slinkity sound. Conventional wisdom says you can’t print a Slinky, but that didn’t stop [mpclauser] from trying and succeeding.
3D printed “Magic Spring”
I made a “Magic Spring”(slinky) on a 3d printer.
https://hackaday.io/project/20198-3d-printed-magic-spring
I wrote a java program to produce the g-code.
printed on “printrbot simple metal”
current print is “sainsmart dark wood fill”(210c)
has been printed with “hatchbox glow in the dark”(180c)
output file is named “auto0.g” because printer will automatically print a file with that name on the micro SD card.
Basically, the printer “zigzags” between an inner radius, and an outer radius while constantly increasing the height.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printing Gets Cheesy
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/09/3d-printing-gets-cheesy/
It is natural for us to think about improving 3D printers but most of us print plastic. We might wish we could print metal. But researchers in a few places are printing cheese. We didn’t say hackers with the muchies, we said researchers. There’s a colorful slide show from the University College Cork in Ireland, for example. They printed cheese at two different speeds and used a laser scanning microscope and a rheometer to analyze the results. We’ve seen rheometers in plastic factories, but never in the kitchen. Meanwhile on the hacker front, apparently spray cheese cans work as an easy cold extruder
http://www.manufacturingfoodfutures.com/documents/mff-2016-application-of-additive-manufacturing-for-processed-cheese-j-osullivan.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printed Engine Chugs Away on Balloon Power
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/10/3d-printed-engine-chugs-away-on-balloon-power/
Single Cylinder Air Engine
http://www.instructables.com/id/Single-Cylinder-Air-Engine/
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Print Your Next Dwelling In A Day
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/11/3d-print-your-next-dwelling-in-a-day/
What’s the shortest amount of time in which a 400 square foot home can be built? A few weeks? Try a fully printed structure in 24 hours for a little over $10,000.
This radial residence was materialized out of concrete in Stupino, Russia by [Apis Cor], and six collaborating companies, as a prototype.
This house was 3D-printed in just 24 hours
http://mashable.com/2017/03/03/3d-house-24-hours.amp
As we start to 3D-print everything — including houses, of all things — it’s pretty impressive that a company built one in just 24 hours.
Located in Russia, this 400-square-foot home (37 square meters) was built in just a day, at a cost of just over $10,000.
3D-printing company Apis Cor built the house using a mobile printer on-site.
The main components of the house, including the walls, partitions and building envelope were printed solely with a concrete mixture.
Fixtures like windows and furnishings were later added on, and a shiny coat of paint added to the exterior of the house.
The total construction cost of the house? $10,134.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Soluble Molds For Composite Parts
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/13/soluble-molds-for-composite-parts/
People have been experimenting with 3D printed molds for fiberglass and carbon fiber for a while now, but these molds really aren’t much different from what you could produce with a normal CNC mill. 3D printing opens up a few more options for what you can build including parts that could never be made on any type of mill. The guys at E3D are experimenting with their new dissolvable filament to create incredible parts in carbon fiber.
For the last year, E3D has been playing around with their new soluble filament, Scaffold. This is the water-soluble support material we’ve all been waiting for: just throw it in a bucket of warm water and it disappears.
As you would expect, there are limitations to this process. Since E3D are using a dissolvable mold, this is a one-time deal; you’re not going to be pulling multiple composite parts off a 3D printed mold like you would with a machined mold. Curing the parts in a very hot oven doesn’t work — Scaffold filament starts to sag around 60°C.
Scaffold: More than just support? Experimenting with soluble moulds for composite parts
http://e3d-online.com/Scaffold-Composite
What we did
We tried several different methods for making carbon fibre parts from printed scaffold molds. For those wanting to give this a go, there is some advice and links to helpful stuff at the end. But it’s important to note that this is very much a work in progress proof of concept, and we are far from composite experts. The following is our exploratory research and should by no means be considered the last word in this technique – in fact we hope that we inspire others to take this further!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Teen Invents Liquid-Metal 3D Printer With Potential to Transform Manufacturing
https://www.designnews.com/3d-printing/teen-invents-liquid-metal-3d-printer-potential-transform-manufacturing/182690909856400?cid=nl.x.dn14.edt.aud.dn.20170314.tst004t
The idea of a teenage inventor who wanted to create a prototype for a project he was working on has developed into 3D printing machine that can print objects out of molten metal and has the potential to transform manufacturing.
Five years ago, then 19-year-old Zachary Vader aimed to 3D-print in metal a proof of concept for a gas turbine generator that he was working on. Vader was a student at the University at Buffalo (UB) at the time.
When he realized that 3D metal printing wasn’t a viable option for the project, he decided to do something about it, inventing his own metal printer with the help of his father Scott, a mechanical engineer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Laser Cutting a 3D Printer
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/14/laser-cutting-a-3d-printer/
The concept of self-replicating 3D printers is a really powerful one. But in practice, there are issues with the availability and quality of the 3D-printed parts. [Noyan] is taking a different approach by boostrapping a 3D printer with laser-cut parts. There are zero 3D-printed parts in this project. [Noyan] is using acrylic for the frame and the connecting mechanisms that go into the machine.
The printer design chosen for the project is the Prusa i3. We have certainly seen custom builds of this popular design before using laser-cut plywood for the frame.
All Lasercut 3D Printer (Prusa I3) Under 200$ Outstanding Performance No Printed Parts!
http://www.instructables.com/id/All-Lasercut-3D-Printer-Prusa-I3-Under-200-Outstan/
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D-printed houses and cars on the horizon as manufacturing goes large
https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/3d-printed-houses-and-cars-horizon-manufacturing-goes-large_en.html?utm_source=HORIZON&utm_campaign=18e2a40043-News_Alert_20170217&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bdcf6f64ca-18e2a40043-105603973
Housebuilders and makers of car parts in a few decades time may need nothing more than a large robotic arm, some raw ingredients and a programmable design, thanks to the next-generation of 3D printing machines which are opening up the technique to large-scale industry.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Toy Car Pumps the Wheels with Balloon Power
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/16/toy-car-pumps-the-wheels-with-balloon-power/
We’ve had our eye on [Greg Zumwalt]. He’s been working on some very clever 3D-printed mechanisms and his latest prototype is an air engine for a toy car. You can supply the air for the single cylinder with a compressor, or by blowing into it, but attaching an inflated balloon makes the system self-contained.
3D Printed Single Cylinder Air Engine Car
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5_pUayB6Cs
Tomi Engdahl says:
Hanging 3D Printer Uses Entire Room As Print Bed
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/20/hanging-3d-printer-uses-entire-room-as-print-bed/
There are many things people do with spare rooms. Some make guest rooms, others make baby rooms, while a few even make craft rooms. What do hackers do with spare rooms? Turn them into giant 3D printers of course. [Torbjørn Ludvigsen] is a physics major out of Umea University in Sweden, and built the Hangprinter for only $250 in parts. It follows the RepRap tradition of being completely open source and made mostly from parts that it can print.
Open-Source Prototype Turns Any Room Into a 3D Printer
The $250 Hangprinter system aims to bring power to the people in the high-stakes realm of 3D printing.
http://www.seeker.com/open-source-prototype-turns-any-room-into-a-3d-printer-2313142390.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printing Has an Urgent Need for Cybersecurity
https://www.designnews.com/3d-printing/3d-printing-has-urgent-need-cybersecurity/42281071756489?cid=nl.x.dn14.edt.aud.dn.20170321
It’s not just about hackers stealing designs. New research shows that 3D-printed products can be tampered with to create counterfeits and undetectable, devastating flaws.
In the race to adopt new 3D printing and additive manufacturing (AM) technologies, engineers and manufacturers are overlooking a key element – cybersecurity.
According to a new paper, “ Manufacturing and Security Challenges in 3D Printing ”, written by researchers at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering and published in the May 2016 issue of the journal JOM, The Journal of The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) , 3D printing carries cybersecurity vulnerabilities that can lead to potentially dangerous, undetectable defects as well as opening the door for counterfeit products.
“Our emphasis in this paper was to show there could be certain small defects in materials, so small that common detection techniques would miss them, but they compromise the properties of these components,” he said. “Many people have shown [3D printers] can be hacked. As a materials scientist my emphasis was to show these tiny defects can be included that would comprise the integrity of the materials used.”
Securing 3D Printing
So what then are the solutions? Gupta said there is the possibility of using and creating new a better materials. However he said, “There are printing techniques that only work with certain materials. At this point AM is limited to using a certain variety of materials, so you have to look at a combination of materials and printing to tackle the problem.”
What about new detection methods? It’s possible, but it might not be the most cost-effective solution. “ There are these methods that are already in line,” Gupta said. “Testing every product for every possibility of defect is very expensive. You can use something like a CT scan that will give more defects, but it’s more expensive because of time and cost constraints.
For Gupta everyone along the complex supply chain, from the 3D printer manufacturers themselves to the design engineers that use them, all the way to the manufacturers, are going to have to take some role in addressing these cyber threats.
The idea is that new security features could be embedded into CAD files or the printed products themselves in order to deter counterfeiting and prevent knock-offs or components that have been maliciously tampered with from being used. “We have designed a set of features you can put into a CAD file that will print the part only under a very specific set of conditions,” Gupta said. “If somebody steals that file then the part they create will be defective. So there will be a very clear point of distinguishing a counterfeit from a genuine product.” He also suggested expanding the same technology into creating ID codes (barcodes or QR codes) that can be printed in the parts. “Those codes can be scanned in very specific conditions and you can find out whether the part is genuine.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Novel 3-D manufacturing builds complex, bio-like materials
https://news.wsu.edu/2017/03/03/novel-3-d-manufacturing/
Washington State University researchers have developed a unique, 3-D manufacturing method that for the first time rapidly creates and precisely controls a material’s architecture from the nanoscale to centimeters – with results that closely mimic the intricate architecture of natural materials like wood and bone.
The WSU research team used a 3-D printing method to create foglike microdroplets that contain nanoparticles of silver and to deposit them at specific locations. As the liquid in the fog evaporated, the nanoparticles remained, creating delicate structures
Silver was used because it is easy to work with. However, Panat said, the method can be extended to any other material that can be crushed into nanoparticles – and almost all materials can be.
The manufacturing method itself is similar to a rare, natural process in which tiny fog droplets that contain sulfur evaporate over the hot western Africa deserts and give rise to crystalline flower-like structures called “desert roses.”
They report on their work in the journal Science Advances (http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/3/e1601986) and have filed for a patent
Tomi Engdahl says:
AMUG2017: The printer manufacturer to invest in a 3D printing
Hewlett Packard wants to speed up industrial digitalization of Open Platform development program and new 3D printing materials. The company develops new materials for 3D printing with BASF and Evonik.
Hewlett-Packard introduces the Chicago ongoing Additive Manufacturing Users Group (AMUG) conference in the new 3D printing materials and the Open Platform development program.
New Open Platform model to help HP, to improve the availability of new materials and to expand their use. Open Platform model should be reduced also in materials and product development costs.
” The open ecosystem is an important factor that contributes to innovation, economic breakthroughs as well as faster development of 3D printing materials and applications, says HP’s global 3D Materials and Advanced Applications, Vice President Tim Weber.
Together with Sigma Design’s HP offers the industry’s first development kit Material testing tool 3D-print materials.
Source: http://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2017/03/22/amug2017-kirjoitinvalmistaja-panostaa-3d-tulostukseen/
Tomi Engdahl says:
New Elastomers Stretch 1100% for 3D Printing
https://www.designnews.com/materials-assembly/new-elastomers-stretch-1100-3d-printing/166426738056499?cid=nl.x.dn14.edt.aud.dn.20170322
Researchers have designed a family of elastomers that can be stretched by up to 1100 percent and are well-suited for flexible electronics and soft robots.
Researchers have developed a family of elastomers that they believe are the most elastic to date and can be fabricated using 3D-printing technologies, making these useful materials more accessible for a range of applications from soft robots to flexible electronics.
A team of engineers from Singapore University of Technology and Design’s (SUTD) Digital Manufacturing and Design (DManD) Centre developed the materials, which are believed to be the most stretchable elastomers invented so far, with the ability to stretch by up to 1100 percent, they said.
“We have developed the most stretchable 3D printable elastomer in the world,” said Qi Ge, an assistant professor at the SUTD’s DManD Centre, and a co-leader of the project. “Our new elastomers can be stretched by up to 1100 percent, which is more than five times the elongation at break of any commercially available elastomer that is suitable for UV-curing-based 3D-printing techniques.”
Elastomers can be used in a number of applications because of their elasticity, resilience, and electrical and thermal insulation. Soft robots, flexible electronics, and next-generation biomedical devices that require soft, flexible material for appropriate and safe patient interaction are among some of the uses for these materials.
Ge and his team were able to circumvent traditional difficulties in the fabrication of highly stretchable elastomers by using high-resolution 3D printing with their elastomer compositions. This enabled the direct creation of complex 3D lattices or hollow structures that exhibited extremely large deformation, he said.
Indeed, the ability to use UV-curing-based 3D printing with the new elastomers—as opposed to the “complicated and time-consuming fabrication steps such as mold-building, molding/demolding”—can reduce the fabrication time of elastomer parts from “many hours or even days” to a few minutes or hours in a single 3D-printing step, he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
MRRF 17: E3D Introduces Combination Extruder And Hotend
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/25/mrrf-17-e3d-introduces-combination-extruder-and-hotend/
Since the beginning of time, or 2006, the ‘hot glue gun’ part of our CNC hot glue guns have had well-defined parts. The extruder is the bit that pushes plastic through a tube, and the hot end is where all the melty bits are. These are separate devices, even though a shorter path from the extruder to hotend is always better.
This week at the Midwest RepRap Festival, E3D unveiled the Titan Aero. It’s an extruder and hotend rolled into one that provides better control over the filament, gives every printer more build height, and reduces the mass of a 3D printer toolhead.
The Titan Aero, revealed on the E3D blog yesterday, is the next iteration of E3D’s entry into the extruder market. It’s a strange mashup of their very popular V6 hotend, with the heat break coupled tightly to the extruder body. A large fan provides the cooling, and E3D’s thermal simulations show this setup will work well.
http://e3d-online.com/Titan-Aero-Hot-End-Extruder
Tomi Engdahl says:
MRRF 17: Laser Resin Printers
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/26/mrrf-17-laser-resin-printers/
The Midwest RepRap Festival is the best 3D printer con on the planet. In the middle of Indiana, you’ll find the latest advances for CNC hot glue guns and the processes that make squirting filament machines better, more accurate, and more efficient. There’s more to 3D printing than just filament-based machines, though, and for the last few MRRFs we’ve been taking a look at resin-based machines.
While most of the current crop of resin printers use either DLP projectors or LCDs and a big, bright backlight [Mark Peng]’s Moai printer uses a 150 mW laser diode and galvos. This is somewhat rare in the world of desktop 3D printers, thanks in no small part to the ugliness between Formlabs and 3D Systems.
With the side panels off, the Moai printer looks very simple.
The simple construction of the Moai stands in stark contrast to the prints coming out of this thing. These prints are the best you could ever expect from a 3D printer; they’re difficult to photograph even with a macro lens (note to other resin printer builders: don’t use transparent green resin if you want the media to take pictures of your prints).
[Mark] launched a Kickstarter for this printer last week, with the standard reward of a printer kit going for $1,000. According to [Mark], the kit only takes four hours to assemble
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1554809440/moai-affordable-high-resolution-laser-sla-3d-print
Tomi Engdahl says:
MRRF 17: True Color 3D Printing
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/26/mrrf-17-true-color-3d-printing/
3D printing has evolved to a point where dual extrusion isn’t really that special anymore. A few years ago, a two-color frog print would have been impressive, but this isn’t the case anymore. The Midwest RepRap Festival is all about the bleeding edge of what 3D printers are capable of, and this year is no exception. This year, we were graced with a few true multicolor filament-based 3D printers. The biggest and best comes from [Daren Schwenke]. His Arcus 3D printer is a full color, CMYKW mixing printer that’s able to print in any color imaginable.
The electronics for this printer are, to say the least, very weird. The controller board is a CRAMPS with a few extra bits to control six stepper motors. The hotend is bizarre, feeding six PTFE tubes into a weird water-cooled assembly
http://reprap.org/wiki/CRAMPS
Tomi Engdahl says:
MRRF 17: Lulzbot and IC3D Release Line Of Open Source Filament
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/25/mrrf-17-lulzbot-and-ic3d-release-line-of-open-source-filament/
Today at the Midwest RepRap Festival, Lulzbot and IC3D announced the creation of an Open Source filament.
While the RepRap project is the best example we have for what can be done with Open Source hardware, the stuff that makes 3D printers work – filament, motors, and to some extent the electronics – are tied up in trade secrets and proprietary processes. As you would expect from most industrial processes, there is an art and a science to making filament and now these secrets will be revealed.
IC3D Printers is a manufacturer of filament based in Ohio. This weekend at MRRF, [Michael Cao], founder and CEO of IC3D Printers announced they would be releasing all the information, data, suppliers, and techniques that go into producing their rolls of filament.
https://www.lulzbot.com/filament-freedom
Tomi Engdahl says:
MRRF 17: The Infinite Build Volume Printer
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/25/mrrf-17-the-infinite-build-volume-printer/
This year’s Midwest RepRap Festival saw a device that’s an even better idea than MakerBot’s Automated Build platform. Yes, it’s a continuous factory of 3D printed parts, but there’s an even better reason for you to build one of these things: this printer has an infinite build volume.
This printer – it doesn’t have a name; this is just a one-off project – is the work of [Bill Steele] of Polar3D. The core of the build is just a hacked up MakerBot Replicator, but with one important difference. This printer has an Automated Build Platform tilted away from the nozzle at a 45-degree angle. What’s the benefit of this setup? Continuous printing and an infinite build volume.
Despite being downright bizarre, the mechanics for this printer are actually pretty simple.
To produce a print, this printer starts at the very back and the very top of this conveyor belt. The first layer is added, the conveyor belt rolls forward a bit, and the second layer is added on top. The effect for each print is that the layer lines are 45 degrees from what you would expect.
When the print is finished, the belt just rolls forward until the part falls into a bin. Of course, since there’s nothing stopping this printer from producing a meter-long part on this build platform.
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4056
Tomi Engdahl says:
Half-Baked Idea: Put Your PLA in the Oven
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/24/half-baked-idea-put-your-pla-in-the-oven/
[Thomas] wanted to try baking some carbon fiber 3D printing filament because the vendor had promised higher strength and rigidity after the parts were annealed in the oven. Being of a scientific mindset, he did some controls and found that annealing parts printed with the carbon fiber-bearing filament didn’t benefit much from the treatment. However, parts printed with standard PLA became quite a bit stronger and more rigid.
The downside? The parts (regardless of material) tend to shrink a bit in the X and Y axis. They also tend to expand in the Z direction.
The resulting PLA parts were 40% stronger and 25% more rigid than the same part before treatment. In addition, the parts had better resistance to heat, which is a common issue with PLA parts. The heating process is as simple as putting the parts in a 110° C oven for an hour, so it shouldn’t require any special equipment to replicate the test.
Bake your PLA and have it outperform everything else! #Filaween
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZX8eHC7fws
Tomi Engdahl says:
Does Acetone also work for welding and smoothing PLA 3D printed parts?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZUfq0yrtv4
Supposedly you can use Acetone not just for welding and smoothing ABS, but also for PLA…. or can you? Only one way to find out!
How To Finish A 3D Printed Part To Look Like A Production Part
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGKCUrDlybA
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bad Thermal Design And Burning Down The House
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/25/bad-thermal-design-and-burning-down-the-house/
Control boards for 3D printers are a dime a dozen on the usual online marketplaces, and you usually get what you pay for. These boards can burn down your house thanks to a few terrible design choices. [Scott Rider] aka [Crow] took a look at the popular Melzi board, and what he found was horrifying. These boards overheat right at the connector for the heated bed, but the good news is these problems are easily fixed.
The Melzi Problem, or, Why Did My Wanhao i3 Duplicator Catch on Fire?
https://blog.adafruit.com/2017/03/23/the-melzi-problem-or-why-did-my-wanhao-i3-duplicator-catch-on-fire/
#1) Never use thermals on high-current connectors. Thermals are handy for isolating heat dissipation during soldering for low-current applications, but for high-current applications they become a liability as you want the best heat dissipation as possible on such connectors.
Thermals are the small traces leading from the green pad to the red (and hidden blue) copper layers that provide heat isolation. The reason these are a bad idea for power is that the overall copper width becomes an issue.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Simple way to make ultra-smooth 3D prints at home
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xFUNFG-UKE
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Does Acetone also work for welding and smoothing PLA 3D printed parts?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZUfq0yrtv4
Tomi Engdahl says:
How To Finish A 3D Printed Part To Look Like A Production Part
http://blog.capinc.com/2015/07/how-to-finish-a-3d-printed-part-to-look-like-a-production-part/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGKCUrDlybA
Tomi Engdahl says:
MRRF 17: A Working MakerBot Cupcake
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/27/mrrf-17-a-working-makerbot-cupcake/
The Midwest RepRap Festival is the best place to go if you want to see the latest in desktop 3D printing. This weekend, we saw full-color 3D printers, a printer with an infinite build volume, new extruders, a fantastic development in the pursuit of Open Source filament, and a whole bunch of D-bots. If you want the bleeding edge in 3D printing, you’re going to Goshen, Indiana.
Of course, it wasn’t always like this. In 2009, MakerBot released the Cupcake
The MakerBot Cupcake has not aged well. This should be expected for a technology that is advancing as quickly as 3D printing, but today it’s rare to see a working first generation MakerBot. Not only was the Cupcake limited by the technology available to hackers in 2009, there are some pretty poor design choices in these printers. There’s a reason that old plywood MakerBot in your hackerspace isn’t used anymore – it’s probably broken.
If you’re at all familiar with the Cupcake, yes, this is a hack. It’s a miracle these things ever worked in the first place.
This is where the revolution in consumer 3D printing started. This is a Gordian knot of belts and pullies, RS485 going through RJ45 connectors, huge stepper drivers, and an acrylic extruder that hasn’t yet cracked. This is a rare machine, but not because MakerBot made less than three thousand of them.
Over the course of the weekend, [Ryan] was able to get his Cupcake working for one print – a small test cube. How did this test cube turn out? You be the judge:
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arcus-3D-M1 – Full Color Filament Printer
Active mixing, fused filament fabrication 3D printer.
https://hackaday.io/project/3729-arcus-3d-m1-full-color-filament-printer
This is our ongoing effort to perfect a reliable active mixing filament printer.
Up to five filaments, controlled by gcode weights, can be combined into fully mixed result.
We can currently get a complete color change in approximately 20mm of 0.4mm extrusion.
Please note this build log was for the M1 version of the prototype. It has since been mostly cannibalized and the end of this log is the start of the Arcus 3D M2.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Series 1 3D printed 3D Freeform carving machine
Carve 3D objects using a gamer joystick
https://hackaday.io/project/19624-series-1-3d-printed-3d-freeform-carving-machine
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Midwest RepRap Festival Spectacular
http://hackaday.com/2017/03/28/the-midwest-reprap-festival-spectacular/
Tomi Engdahl says:
VCF: 3D Printing In The 80s
http://hackaday.com/2017/04/02/vcf-3d-printing-in-the-80s/
The Vintage Computer Festival East is going down right now, and I’m surrounded by the height of technology from the 1970s and 80s. Oddly enough, Hackaday frequently covers another technology from the 80s, although you wouldn’t think of it as such. 3D printing was invented in the late 1980s, and since patents are only around for 20 years, this means 3D printing first became popular back in the 2000’s.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Arcus-3D-M2 – Mixed material filament printer
Active mixing, fused filament fabrication 3D printer.
https://hackaday.io/project/20763-arcus-3d-m2-mixed-material-filament-printer
This is our ongoing effort to perfect a reliable active mixing filament printer.
Up to six filaments, controlled by gcode weights, can be combined into fully mixed result.
We can currently get a complete color change in approximately 20mm of 0.4mm extrusion.
This project starts where the Arcus-3D-M1 leaves off with a more narrowly defined set of build parameters.
The current design is based on a Beaglebone Black running a Machinekit velocity extrusion branch, and some custom code. The interface is published as a network service and can be accessed locally or remotely with an Android, Windows, or Linux client.
Six stepper motors located on a floating carriage push 1.75mm filaments down short, PTFE bowden tubes to a compact, liquid cooled cold-end.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printer Power Control Board
https://hackaday.io/project/20639-3d-printer-power-control-board
A super simple little control board that allows for connecting/disconnecting power from a 3D printer via a relay.
Octoprint has a plugin to toggle a GPIO pin in order to power the 3D Printer on/off. The Alunar printer that I have is powered by a 12V power supply and will be powered on/off by interrupting that 12V power.
Tomi Engdahl says:
DIY Polishing Station for 3d-printed Parts
https://hackaday.io/project/20967-diy-polishing-station-for-3d-printed-parts
A DIY polishing station to smoothen 3d-printed parts built using Arduino and portable humidifier.
Polymaker’s Polysher in combination with Polysmooth is a revolutionary product. I wanted one.
However, since I missed the Kickstarter campaign, I didn’t want to pay higher ticket price plus I can’t wait for May for the pre-orders to get shipped so I decided to make one instead.
Having an Arduino kit lying around, I only needed to find a suitable humidifier/mister and container to build the polishing machine.
After, weeks of waiting for components, finalizing the Arduino sketch, and printing the parts, here’s the result!
As I have several parts left over from previous projects and been sourcing out most of the parts from China, my total cost for this build was a little over $50. Here’s the link to the bill of materials.
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printed Key-Code is Plastic Digital Logic
http://hackaday.com/2017/04/06/3d-printed-key-code-is-plastic-digital-logic/
3D printers are great for creating static objects, but if you’re clever, it’s possible to print a functional devices. If you’re absolutely brilliant you can go far beyond that, which is the case here. This door handle with a key-code lock does it all with 3D printing using mechanism designs that look like alien technology.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Boeing Expects To Save Millions In Dreamliner Costs Using 3D-Printed Titanium Parts
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/17/04/11/0112203/boeing-expects-to-save-millions-in-dreamliner-costs-using-3d-printed-titanium-parts
According to Reuters, Boeing has hired Norsk Titanium AS to print titanium parts for its 787 Dreamliner, paving the way to cost savings of $2 million to $3 million for each plane. The 3D-printed metal parts will replace pieces made with more expensive traditional manufacturing, thus making the 787 more profitable.
Strong, lightweight titanium alloy is seven times more costly than aluminum, and accounts for about $17 million of the cost of a $265 million Dreamliner, industry sources say. Boeing has been trying to reduce titanium costs on the 787
Norsk expects the U.S. regulatory agency will approve the material properties and production process for the parts later this year, which would “open up the floodgates” and allow Norsk to print thousands of different parts for each Dreamliner, without each part requiring separate FAA approval, Yates said.
Printed titanium parts expected to save millions in Boeing Dreamliner costs
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-norsk-boeing-idUSKBN17C264?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews
Tomi Engdahl says:
Customize Your Ratios with a 3D-Printed Gearbox
http://hackaday.com/2017/04/12/customize-your-ratios-with-a-3d-printed-gearbox/
Small DC motors are easy to find — you can harvest dozens from old printers and copiers. You might even get a few with decent gearboxes too. But will you get exactly the motor with exactly the gearing your project needs? Unlikely, but you can always just print a gearbox to get exactly what you need.
There’s nothing fancy about [fortzero]’s gearboxes. The motors are junk bin specials, and the gears are all simple spur gears 3D-printed from PLA. There are four gears in the train, each with a 2:1 reduction, giving a 16:1 overall ratio.
3d Printed Gearbox for Small Dc Motors
http://www.instructables.com/id/3d-Printed-Gearbox-for-Small-Dc-Motors/
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printing Glass Using Stereolithography
http://hackaday.com/2017/04/21/3d-printing-glass-using-stereolithography/
3D printing is one of the best things that has happened to the maker community in recent years, however the resulting output has always been prone to damage when used in high temperature applications or places where the part may be exposed to corrosive chemicals. In a recent paper titled “Three-dimensional printing of transparent fused silica glass“, [Kolz, F et. al.] have proposed a method which uses stereolithography printers to create glass objects that can be used in research applications where plastic just won’t cut it.
When we say stereolithography you probably think of resin printing, but it refers to the general use of light beams to chain molecules together to form a solid polymer. The researchers here use amorphous silica nanoparticles as a starting point that is later cured by UV light creating a polymerized composite. This structure is then exposed to high temperatures of 1300 °C resulting in models consisting of pure fused silica glass.
Three-dimensional printing of transparent fused silica glass
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v544/n7650/full/nature22061.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
3D Printing Keeps Nuclear Power Plant Running
https://www.designnews.com/materials-assembly/3d-printing-keeps-nuclear-power-plant-running/145201400156651?cid=nl.x.dn14.edt.aud.dn.20170425.tst004t
A Siemens project to create a replacement part via additive manufacturing helps extend the life of a Slovenian nuclear power plant.
While additive manufacturing is often lauded for its ability to create rapid prototypes to speed up the design process, or produce small batches of end user products, it has another compelling application: the manufacture of obsolete parts that would be too difficult or costly to create using traditional fabrication methods. Still, it’s one thing to print a replica of a knob or other non-critical part, it’s another to create parts that meet the most stringent industrial safety regulations.
The Krško nuclear power plant in Slovenia became operational in 1981 and began producing commercial power in January of 1983. The plant, a two-loop pressurized light water reactor developed in cooperation with Westinghouse, has a capacity of 696 MW and provides electricity for 25 percent of Slovenia and 15 percent of Croatia (the countries share responsibility for waste disposal). The reactor, which is the only nuclear power plant in Slovenia, was due to be decommissioned in 2023, but an application was approved in 2015 by the Slovenian regulatory body to extend this date by 20 years to 2043. As could be expected at the operations level, however, parts of the plant were beginning to wear out.
Recently, the plant found it necessary to find a replacement for a metallic, 108-mm diameter impeller for a fire protection pump. The original part was created in 1981 out of cast metal, and its original manufacturer had long since gone out of business.
“It would have been necessary to obtain original drawings from the 1970s and repeat the casting and machining process, which is typically not suitable for small-series production,” he said.
Instead, a team of experts from Siemens Slovenia reverse-engineered the part using x-ray tomography to obtain a three-dimensional model of the impeller. Once it was rendered into digital files, workers at the company’s additive manufacturing facility in Finspång, Sweden created a perfect copy of the original using an EOS M290 3D printer.
“Without 3D printing the whole pump would have needed to be exchanged,”