GT2 Belt Drive Conversion Of Printrbot Simple

March 21, 2015 by Anool Mahidharia 5 Comments

The early versions of the Printrbot Simple at about $300 were cheap enough for even the most cash-strapped hackers to put on their desks. Obviously, for that cost, a lot of design compromises were needed to keep it cheap. Sometimes, changes carry forward to the next iteration at no cost increase. One such improvement in the current version of the Printrbot is the belt drive. Unfortunately, if you have one of the late 2013 – early 2014 wood models, it is most likely being driven by a fishing line that loops over a rubber hose attached to the stepper motor. [jason] describes the process of upgrading the Printrbot Simple to a GT2 belt drive , using the designs posted by Thingiverse contributor [iamjonlawrence].

The trouble with the fishing line drive was that it would tend to get loose over time and needed to be pulled taut. Also, it affected precision when the line tended to wander over the drive shaft. The good thing with having rapid prototyping tools is you can make bootstrap improvements using them. Once the parts for the upgrade were printed, [jason] only needed some bearings, GT2 belts and pulleys to complete the upgrade. For those wanting to upgrade their old Printrbot Simple machines, [jason] guides you through the whole process via some detailed photographs and listing out the gotcha’s that you need to be careful about.

The Midwest RepRap Festival – Awesome Stuff In The Middle Of Nowhere

March 20, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 11 Comments

It’s time once again to venture out to Goshen, Indiana for the Midwest RepRap Festival. It is the largest 3D printing con in the entire world where no one is trying to sell you anything. With a qualifier like that, it doesn’t have to be very big, but last year over 1,500 people showed up to the Elkhart county farm show complex and this year many more people are expected.

On the list of attendees is Taulman 3D, makers of fine, odd filament, Lulzbot, [Johnny] of Ultimachine, creator of the RAMBo board, MakerJuice, the FirePick Delta – the most skulled project on hackaday.io, and dozens of other people who make a living with 3D printing.

Of the expected attendees that are not specifically involved with 3D printing, I’m told [Ben Heck] will be there, along with someone from Adafruit and Make. The EFF might have a booth. A local radio station is doing a remote, and the servers at Wings, Etc. — one of the few area pubs — are going to clean up this weekend.

The event officially starts at 4:00pm today, Friday, March 20th. If you won’t be going the entire weekend, I’d suggest showing up on Saturday or Sunday. There will be far too many people there, and I’m slightly agoraphobic. We’ll be posting updates from the MRRF later on.

Clever Chemistry Leads To Much Faster 3D Printing

March 19, 2015 by Mike Szczys 48 Comments

Resin printing, it can be messy but you get really great resolution thanks to the optical nature of curing the sticky goo with light from a projector. Soon it will have a few more notches in its belt to lord over its deposition cousins: speed and lack of layers. A breakthrough in resin printing makes it much faster than ever before and pretty much eliminates layering from the printed structure.

The concept uses an oxygen-permeable layer at the bottom of the resin pool. This inhibits curing, and apparently is the source of the breakthrough. The resin is cured right on the border of this layer and allows for what is described as a continuous growth process rather than a layer-based approach. One of the benefits described is no need for resin to flow in as the part is extracted but we’re skeptical on that claim (the resin still needs to flow from somewhere). Still, for us the need to work with resin which is expensive, possibly messy, and has an expiry (at least when compared to plastic filament) has kept deposition as a contender. The speed increase and claims of strength benefits over layer-based techniques just might be that killer feature.

The technology is coming from a company called Carbon3D. They are branding it CLIP, or Continuous Liquid Interface Production. After the break you can see a video illustration of the concept (which is a bit too simple for our tastes) as well as a TED talk which the company’s CEO, [Joseph Desimone] gave this month. Of course there is also the obligatory time-lapse print demo.

So what do you think: game changer or not, and why do you feel that way? Let us know in the comments.

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Adding Recycling Codes To 3D Prints

March 18, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 21 Comments

Every little plastic bauble you interact with has some sort of recycling code on it somewhere. Now that we’re producing plastic 3D printed parts at home, it would be a good idea to agree on how to recycle all those parts, and [Joshua Pearce]’s lab at Michigan Tech has the answer; since we’re printing these objects, we can just print the recycling code right in the object.

The US system of plastic recycling codes is particularly ill-suited for identifying what kind of plastic the object in question is made of; there are only seven codes, while China’s system of plastic identification uses 140 identification codes. This system for labeling 3D printed parts borrows heavily from the Chinese system, assigning ABS as ‘9’, PLA as ’92’, and HIPS as ‘108’.

With agreed upon recycling codes, the only thing left to do is to label every print with the correct recycling code. That’s an easy task with a few OpenSCAD scripts – the paper shows off a wrench made out of HIPS labeled with the correct code, and an ABS drill bit handle sporting a number nine. 3D printing opens up a few interesting manufacturing techniques, and the research team shows this off with a PLA vase with a recycle code lithophane embedded in the first few layers.

DIY Hololens Uses Pepper’s Ghost In A Box!

March 17, 2015 by James Hobson 20 Comments

Entirely too excited about Microsoft’s Hololens, the DIY community has leaped on the challenge to make some hardware before the real deal comes out. [Sean Hall] has an excellent 3D printed prototype that makes use of the Pepper’s Ghost illusion to create a “hologram” for this pair of unique VR goggles.

Similar to other DIY virtual reality goggles we’ve seen, [Sean] has 3D printed the enclosure — but instead of slapping the smart phone right in front of your eyes, it’s mounted above the goggles, reflecting off of a mirror and then a piece of transparent plexi-glass, which produces a hologram like effect thanks to the concept of Pepper’s Ghost illusion.

The problem with any of these reflection-based-holograms is they aren’t always that easy to see, so [Sean] is planning to try out some 1-way reflective car tint to get a more visible reflection while still being able to see through the image. He also plans to add gaze tracking with some open-source software called Project Haytham. It’s a depth sensor using a Kinect, head tracking using a Playstation Move and maybe even a leap motion controller for virtual object manipulation.

Check out the current state of this hack in the clip after the break.

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3D Printering: Induction Heating

March 15, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 13 Comments

Every filament-based 3D printer you’ll find today heats plastic with resistive heaters – either heater cartridges or big ‘ol power resistors. It’s efficient, but that will only get you so far. Given these heaters can suck down only so many Watts, they can only heat up so fast. That’s a problem, and if you’re trying to make a fast printer, it’s also a limitation.

Instead of dumping 12 or 24 VDC into a resistive heater, induction heaters passes high-frequency AC through a wire that’s inductively coupled to a core. It’s also very efficient, but it’s also very fast. No high-temperature insulation is required, and if it’s designed right, there’s less thermal mass. All great properties for fast heating of plastic.

A few years ago, [SB] over on the RepRap blog designed an induction heater for a Master’s project. The hot end was a normal brass nozzle attached to a mild steel sleeve. A laminated core was attached to the hot end, and an induction coil wrapped around the core. It worked, but there wasn’t any real progress for turning this into a proper nozzle and hot end. It was, after all, just a project.

Finally, after several years, people are squirting plastic out of an induction heated nozzle. [Z], or [Bulent Unalmis], posted a project to the RepRap forums where he is extruding plastic that has been heated with an induction heater. It’s a direct drive system, and mechanically, it’s a simpler system than the fancy hot ends we’re using now.

Electronically, it’s much more complex. While the electronics for a resistive heater are just a beefy power supply and a MOSFET, [Z] is using 160 kHz AC at 30 V. That’s a much more difficult circuit to stuff on a printer controller board.

This could be viewed as just a way of getting around the common 24V limitation of common controller boards; shove more power into a resistor, and it’s going to heat faster. This may not be the answer to hot ends that heat up quicker, but at the very least it’s a very neat project, and something we’d like to see more of.

You can see [Z]’s video demo of his inductive hot end below. Thanks [Matt] for the tip.

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LEGO Based 3Doodler Uses Regular Filament

March 13, 2015 by James Hobson 9 Comments

As part of a university research project, [Vimal Patel] was asked to make something out of biodegradable 3D printer filament. The theme of the project is called Monomateriality — making products out of a single material to aid the manufacturing process, and after the product is used, ease of recycling.

He started by experimenting with the 3D printer filament in the UP 3D printers the university had on hand. But he wasn’t content with the layer-by-layer deposition method that all FDM printers use. He was more curious about free form deposition modeling — extruding material along multiple axes at once.

Unfortunately the project budget didn’t afford him a 6-axis robotic arm 3D printing setup like this to complete the project. But he was able to build his own custom extruder using a hot glue gun, and some LEGO. It’s kind of like a 3Doodler, but much more bulky.

Using standard LEGO parts he was able to build an attachment for the hot glue gun to feed the 3mm diameter biodegradable filament through the nozzle. He’s uploaded the design files over at rebrickable.com to share with the world.

While the end product he designed (a bicycle helmet) isn’t too realistic, [Vimal’s] more excited at the accessibility of the making process — after all, you just need a hot glue gun and some LEGO.

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