The 3D Printed Ukulele

December 11, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 18 Comments

uke

The creator of everyone’s favorite slic3r – [Alessandro Ranellucci] – has been hard at work putting his 3D modeling skills to the test. He’s created a ukulele that’s nearly entirely 3D printed (Google translation). Everything on the uke, short of the strings and tuning pegs came from a MendelMax 3D printer, all without any support material at all.

In the video, [Alessandro] and uke virtuoso [Jontom] show off how this instrument was put together and how good it can sound. The body of the uke is made of two parts, and the neck – three parts including the headstock and fretboard – all fit together with surprisingly traditional methods. A dovetail joint connects the neck to the body and a tongue and groove-like joint holds the headstock to the neck.

[Allessandro] puts the print time of all the uke parts at ~~about 120~~ under 20 hours and about 20 Euros worth of plastic. As far as ukuleles go, this sounds just as good as the average instrument, but [Jontom] says the action is a little bit high. That’s why files were invented, we guess.

Thanks [iant] for sending this one in.

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3D Printering: Making A Thing With OpenSCAD

December 11, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 47 Comments

This week, we’re starting off with OpenSCAD, a 3D modelling program that’s more like programming than drawing. A lot of useful 3D printable objects – including the parts for a lot of RepRaps – are designed in OpenSCAD, so hopefully by the end of this you’ll be able to design your own parts.

This isn’t meant to be a complete tutorial for OpenSCAD; I’m just demoing SCAD enough to build a simple part. Next week I’ll most likely be designing a part with AutoCAD, but if you have an idea of what software tools I should use as a tutorial to make a part, leave a note in the comments. Check out the 3D Printering guide to making a part with OpenSCAD below.

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A Really Big Extruder For Exotic Filaments

December 11, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 15 Comments

extruder

Even with ABS, PLA, Nylon, HIPS, and a bunch of Taulman filaments, the world of 3D printers is missing out on a great supply of spools of plastic filament. Plastic welding rod is available from just about every plastics supplier, and in more variety than even the most well-stocked filament web shop.

This Kickstarter hopes to put all those exotic plastic welding rods to good use. Instead of being designed to only use 1.75 and 3mm filaments, this guy will extrude welding rods up to 4.76mm in diameter. This opens the door for 3D printed objects made out of PDPF, PVC, Polypropylene, Polyethylene and other high molecular weight plastics.

Because these welding rods are much bigger than the usual plastic filament, this extruder also has the option for a very beefy NEMA 23 motor. It’s the perfect solution if you’re planning on building a homebrew ludicrous-sized printer, or you just to show off just how awesome you are.

A Rostock Welding 3D Printer?

December 7, 2013 by James Hobson 65 Comments

Tired of printing in boring old plastic? Why not try metal? Researchers at Michigan Tech have come up with an open source reprap style design of a 3D printer that can print metal for only $1200.

The paper was published in IEEE Access a few weeks ago that it outlines the design and testing of this printer, which is basically an upside down Rostock with a MIG welder used as the extruder. As you can imagine, the quality and resolution of the parts isn’t that amazing (hang around after the break to see an example), but this is an exciting step forward for 3D printing. Equipped with this and a mill and the possibilities are quite endless!

Did we mention how cheap welding wire is? A cost that could add up is the shielding gas though, but as a user on Reddit points out, an upgrade for this machine could be an enclosed build chamber which could then just be flooded with the gas. Alternatively, would flux-core welding wire work?

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3D Printer Exhaust

December 6, 2013 by James Hobson 23 Comments

[Malcolm] finally got fed up with the fumes produced by his 3D printer, so he decided to setup this rather extensive fume exhausting system.

He already has a pretty awesome setup with his Type A 3D printer inside of a filing cabinet, with a plastic tote above it to keep his filament from absorbing too much water. But as you know, the fumes released while printing ABS are actually pretty bad for you. With this in mind he 3D printed adapter rings and fitted a fan salvaged from a space heater to the outside of his filing cabinet. A dimmer switch provides variable fan speeds and some dryer vent tubing reroutes the fumes to central vac piping which then goes directly outside. When the system is not in use the piping can be plugged to prevent cold air from entering the house. It’s a fairly clean build but [Malcolm] wants to make a nicer enclosure for the fan and speed control circuit.

The major problem we see with doing something like this is removing too much heat from the build chamber which can always affect print quality. Do you vent your 3D printer?

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The Sub-$500 Deltaprintr

December 6, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 33 Comments

delta

We’ve seen them before, but only now has the Deltaprinter, a very simple and affordable delta printer finally hit Kickstarter.

We saw the Deltaprintr at the World Maker Faire last September where the team showed off their fancy new printer and the very nice prints it can produce. The printer itself is unique in that it eschews printed parts and is instead made of lasercut parts. Instead of belts, each arm of the delta bot is lifted with spectra line, and the entire mechanism is billed as not requiring calibration probably due to the accurate laser cut parts.

On a completely different note, we did notice the rewards for the Deltaprintr Kickstarter are limited. Unlike the gobs of 3D printers on Kickstarter, the Deltaprintr team actually wants to stay on schedule for their shipping dates. That’s an admirable dedication to getting their printer out to backers in a reasonable amount of time.

3D Printing Lithium Ion Cells

December 1, 2013 by James Hobson 17 Comments

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[Jennifer Lewis] is a Harvard Materials Scientist, and she’s recently come up with a type of Lithium Ion “Ink” that allows her to 3D print battery cells.

You might remember our recent 3D Printering article on Pastestruders, but this research certainly takes it up a few notches. The ink is made up of nano-particles of Lithium Titanium in a solution of de-ionized water and ethylene glycol. When producing the ink, small ceramic balls are added to the mixture to help break up microscopic clumps of said particles. The mixture is then spun for 24 hours, after which the larger particles and ceramic balls are removed using a series of filters. The resulting ink is a solid when unperturbed, but flows under extreme pressures!

This means a conventional 3D printer can be used, with only the addition of a high pressure dispenser unit. We guess we can’t call it a hot-end any more… The ink is forced out of a syringe tip as small as 1 micrometer across, allowing for extremely precise patterning. In her applications she uses a set up with many nozzles, allowing for the mass printing of the anodes and cathodes in a huge array. While still in the research phase, her micro-scale battery architectures can be as small as a square millimeter, but apparently compete with industry batteries that are much larger.

And here’s the exciting part: