Dual-Wavelength SLA 3D Printing: Fast Continuous Printing With ROMP And FRP Resins

April 22, 2024 by Maya Posch 10 Comments

As widespread as 3D printing with stereolithography (SLA) is in the consumer market, these additive manufacturing (AM) machines are limited to a single UV light source and the polymerization of free-radical polymerization (FRP) resins. The effect is that the object is printed in layers, with each layer adhering not only to the previous layer, but also the transparent (FEP or similar) film at the bottom of the resin vat. The resulting peeling of the layer from the film both necessitates a pause in the printing process, but also puts significant stress on the part being printed. Over the years a few solutions have been developed, with Sandia National Laboratories’ SWOMP technology (PR version) being among the latest.

Unlike the more common FRP-based SLA resins, SWOMP (Selective Dual-Wavelength Olefin Metathesis 3D-Printing) uses ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP), which itself has been commercialized since the 1970s, but was not previously used with photopolymerization in this fashion. For the monomer dicyclopentadiene (DCPD) was chosen, with HeatMet (HM) as the photo-active olefin metathesis catalyst. This enables the UV-sensitivity, with an added photobase generator (PBG) which can be used to selectively deactivate polymerization.

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Manual Supports For 3D Printing

April 21, 2024 by Al Williams 12 Comments

[MakerSpace] wanted to 3D print an RFID card holder. On one side is a slot for a card and on the other side has recesses for the RFID antenna. They used these to control access to machines and were milling them out using a CNC machine. Since there were no flat surfaces, he had to turn on supports in the slicer, right? No. He does use supports, but not in the way you might imagine.

Inspired by creating cast iron using sand casting, he decided to first 3D print a reusable “core” using PETG. This core will support future prints that use PLA. When printing the actual item, the printer lays down the first few layers and pauses. This allows you to stick the core in and resume the print. After the print completes, you can remove the core, and the results look great, as you can see in the video below.

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3D Printer Streaming Solution Unlocks Webcam Features

April 20, 2024 by Bryan Cockfield 7 Comments

While 3D printer hardware has come along way in the past decade and a half, the real development has been in the software. Open source slicers are constantly improving, and OctoPrint can turn even the most basic of printers into a network-connected powerhouse. But despite all these improvements, there’s still certain combinations of hardware that require a bit of manual work.

[Reticulated] wanted an easy way to monitor his prints over streaming video, but didn’t have any of the cameras that are supported by OctoPrint. Of course he could just point a cheap network-connected camera at the printer and be done with it, but he was looking for a bit better integration than that. In the process, he demonstrates how to unlock some features hidden in inexpensive webcams.

He set about building something that wouldn’t require buying more equipment or overloading the limited hardware responsible for the actual printing. A few of his existing cameras have RTMP support, which allows a fairly straightforward setup with YouTube Live once Monaserver is set up to handle the RTMP feeds from the cameras and OBS Studio is configured to stream it out to YouTube. Using the OctoPrint API, he was able to pull data such as the current extruder temperature and overlay it on the video.

One of the other interesting parts of this build is that not all of [Reticulated]’s cameras have built-in RTMP support but following this guide he was able to get more of them working with this setup than otherwise would have had this capability by default. Even beyond 3D printing, this is an excellent guide (and tip) for getting a quick live stream going for whatever reason. For anything more mobile than a working 3D printer, though, you might want to look at taking your streaming setup mobile instead.

Still Up And Coming: Non-Planar FDM 3D Printing With 3 Or 6 Axes

April 16, 2024 by Maya Posch 9 Comments

Most of the time FDM 3D printing involves laying down layers of thermoplastics, but the layer lines also form the biggest weakness with parts produced this way. Being able to lay out the lines to follow the part’s contours can theoretically strengthen the part and save material in the process. Recently, [Michael Wüthrich] demonstrated an approach that uses a modified Prusa Mini FDM printer to first lay out a part in PETG using non-planar printing, after which this PETG part was used to print on top of in PLA, effectively using the PETG as a ‘printbed’ from which the PLA can be easily removed and leaving the PLA part as fully non-planar on both sides.

The modification to the Prusa Mini printer is covered on Printables along with the required parts. The main change is to give the nozzle as much clearance as possible, for which [Michael] uses the E3D Revo belt nozzle. This nozzle requires a custom holder for the Prusa Mini. After this the printer is ready for non-planar printing, but as [Michael] notes in the Twitter thread, he did not use a slicer for this, as none exists. Instead he used Matlab, a custom script and a lot of manual labor.

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Alternate Threaded Inserts For 3D Prints

April 15, 2024 by Donald Papp 21 Comments

The usual way to put a durable threaded interface into a 3D print is to use a heat-set insert, but what about other options? [Thomas Sanladerer] evaluates a variety of different threaded inserts, none of which are actually made with 3D printing in mind but are useful nevertheless.

There are a number of other easily-available threaded inserts, including the rivnut (or rivet nut), chunky hex socket threaded inserts intended for wood and furniture, heli-coils or helical inserts (which resemble springs), self-tapping threaded inserts (also sold as thread adapters), and T-nuts or prong nuts. They all are a bit different, but he measures each one and gives a thorough rundown on how they perform, as well as offering his thoughts on what works best.

[Thomas] only tests M5 fasteners in this video, so keep that in mind if you get ideas and go shopping for new hardware. Some of the tested inserts aren’t commonly available in smaller sizes. Self-tapping threaded inserts, for example, are available all the way down to M2, but the hex socket threaded inserts don’t seem to come any smaller than M4.

These threaded inserts might be just what your next project calls for, so keep them in mind. Heat-set inserts are of course still a great option, and our own Sonya Vasquez can tell you everything you need to know about installing heat-set inserts into 3D printed parts in a way that leaves them looking super professional.

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3D Printing A Cassette Is Good Retro Fun

April 15, 2024 by Lewin Day 9 Comments

The cassette is one of the coolest music formats ever, in that you could chuck them about with abandon and they’d usually still work. [Chris Borge] recently decided to see if he could recreate these plastic audio packages himself, with great success.

He kicked off his project by printing some examples of an open source cassette model he found online. The model was nicely accurate to the original Compact Cassette design, but wasn’t exactly optimized for 3D printing. It required a great deal of support material and wasn’t easy to customize.

[Chris] ended up splitting the model into multiple components, which could then be assembled with glue later. He then set about customizing the cassette shells with Minecraft artwork. Details of the artwork are baked into the model at varying heights just 1/10th of the total layer height. This makes it easy to designate which sections should be printed with which filament during his multi-colored print. And yet, because the height difference is below a full layer height, the details all end up on the same layer to avoid any ugly gaps between the sections. From there, it’s a simple matter of transferring over the mechanical parts from an existing cassette tape to make the final thing work.

It’s a neat trick, and the final results are impressive. [Chris] was able to create multicolored cassettes that look great. It’s one of the better uses we’ve seen for a multi-colored printer. This would be an epic way to customize a mixtape for a friend!

We’ve seen some great 3D printed cassettes before, too, like these retro reel-to-reel lookalikes.

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3D Printer Hot Off The Griddle

April 5, 2024 by Al Williams 9 Comments

If you look at [Proper Printing’s] latest video — see below — you’ll immediately get the idea behind his latest printer. There are two heads on two separate gantries, which, of course, opens up many possibilities. But when you think you’ve seen enough, you find out the heated bed is a kitchen griddle, and… well, for us, we had to keep watching.

The heated bed idea was interesting, although the flatness left something to be desired. While it is a simple idea, getting the two gantries to move reliably across the hotbed griddle took a lot of parts and a careful design. We wonder how evenly the griddle heats — ours definitely has hot spots when we cook with it.

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