3d printer

558 Articles

Get Subpixel Printing With A DLP 3D Printer

July 26, 2016 by 14 Comments

A DLP 3D printer works by shining light into a vat of photosensitive polymer using a Digital Light Processing projector, curing a thin layer of the goo until a solid part has been built up. Generally, the resolution of the print is determined by the resolution of the projector, and by the composition of the polymer itself. But, a technique posted by Autodesk for their Ember DLP 3D Printer could allow you to essentially anti-alias your print, further increasing the effective resolution.

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3D Printering: G-Code Post Processing With Perl

July 20, 2016 by 31 Comments

Most of our beloved tools, such as Slic3r, Cura or KISSlicer, offer scripting interfaces that help a great deal if your existing 3D printing toolchain has yet to learn how to produce decent results with a five headed thermoplastic spitting hydra. Using scripts, it’s possible to tweak the little bits it takes to get great results, inserting wipe or prime towers and purge moves on the fly, and if your setup requires it, also control additional servos and solenoids for the flamethrowers.

This article gives you a short introduction in how to post-process G-code using Perl and Slic3r. Perl Ninja skills are not required. Slic3r plays well with pretty much any scripting language that produces executables, so if you’re reluctant to use Perl, you’ll probably be able to replicate most of the steps in your favorite language.

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New Part Day: ST’s 32-Bit 3D Printer Controller

July 19, 2016 by 57 Comments

There are a few 32-bit ARM-based 3D printer controller boards out there such as the Smoothieboard, the Azteeg X5 mini, [Traumflug]’s Gen5 electronics, whatever board is in the Monoprice MP Mini Select, and several others I will be criticized for not mentioning. All of these ARM boards provide smoother acceleration, better control, and ultimately better prints from whatever 3D printer they’re controlling. Now, out of the blue, there’s a new board. It’s an evaluation board from ST — much like those famous Discovery boards — that sells itself as a plug and play solution for 3D printers.

The heart of this board is an STM32F401 — not the king of the STM32 line or the fastest ARM microcontroller, but anything faster or more capable will add considerably more to the BOM for this board. This controller board features six of ST’s L6474 motor drivers with enough current for some beefy NEMA 23 stepper motors , a multi-zone heated bed, and connections for a WiFi module and external LCD and keypad. You can buy this board right now for $118. This board isn’t a game changer, but it is evidence the game has been changed.

As with all 3D printer controller boards, there are a few aspects that will leave users wanting more. This is a board meant for 12V heaters (except for the bed, which has a 24V, 20A output), and the stepper drivers can only go up to 16 microsteps. That said, there’s not much else to complain about. This offering comes with a 32-bit firmware called Marlin4ST. From a quick perusal, it looks like the familiar configuration.h is still there, and still does what it’s supposed to do.

This ST Discovery board is extremely capable, available now, and relatively cheap, but that’s not really the big story here. What this board represents is a reference design and working firmware for a 32-bit ARM-based printer controller. That’s the future, and with this board the future might come a little sooner.

Thanks [jagerboots] for sending this one in.

Sonic 3D Printer Auto Bed Leveling Makes A Swoosh

July 18, 2016 by 49 Comments

3D Printering: the final frontier. These are the voyages of another 3D printer hack. Its mission: to explore strange new ways of leveling a print bed.

So far, we’ve had servo probes, Allen key probes, Z-sled probes, inductive and capacitive contactless switches, just to name a few. All of them allow a 3D printer to probe its print bed, calculate a correction plane or mesh, and compensate for its own inherent, time variant, inaccuracies.

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Build A 3D Printer Workhorse, Not An Amazing Disappointment Machine

July 6, 2016 by 68 Comments

3D printers have become incredibly cheap, you can get a fully workable unit for $200 – even without throwing your money down a crowdfunded abyss. Looking at the folks who still buy kits or even build their own 3D printer from scratch, investing far more than those $200 and so many hours of work into a machine you can buy for cheap, the question “Why the heck would you do that?” may justifiably arise.

The answer is simple: DIY 3D printers done right are rugged workhorses. They work every single time, they never break, and even if: they are an inexhaustible source of spare parts for themselves. They have exactly the quality and functionality you build them to have. No clutter and nothing’s missing. However, the term DIY 3D printer, in its current commonly accepted use, actually means: the first and the last 3D printer someone ever built, which often ends in the amazing disappointment machine.

This post is dedicated to unlocking the full potential in all of these builds, and to turning almost any combination of threaded rods and plywood into a workshop-grade piece of equipment.

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A Hydra Of A 3D Printer

June 30, 2016 by 22 Comments

3D printers are great for producing one thing, but if you need multiple copies, the workflow quickly starts to go downhill. The solution? Build a 3D printer with multiple print heads, capable of printing four objects in the same amount of time it takes to print one.

This build is an experiment for [allted]’ Mostly Printed CNC / MultiTool. It’s a CNC machine that uses printed parts and 3/4″ electrical conduit for the frame and rails.  That last bit is the interesting part: electrical conduit is cheap, easy to acquire, available everywhere, and can be cut with a hacksaw. As far as desktop CNC machines go, it doesn’t get simpler or cheaper than this, and a few of these builds are milling wood with the same quality of a machine based on linear rails. It won the grand prize in the recent Boca Bearings contest, and is a great basis for a cheap and serviceable 2.5 or 3D CNC.

[allted] already has this cheap CNC mill cutting aluminum and engraving wood with a laser, showing off the capabilities of a remarkably cheap but highly expandable CNC machine. It’s a fantastic build, and we can’t wait to see more of these machines pop up in garages and workspaces.

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Automating 3D Printers With Robots

June 27, 2016 by 20 Comments

3D printers were never meant to be used for production. They’re not manufacturing machines, they’re prototyping machines. That doesn’t mean 3D printers can’t be used in a manufacturing context, it’s just very hard – you’d need someone manning a fleet of machines, or some sort of ‘automated build platform’ that won’t be invented for exactly fourteen years.

In the absence of someone paid to watch printers print, [Mark], [Robert], and [James] at tend.ai have created a way to manage a fleet of printers with a robot arm. It’s a robotic arm that automatically monitors the LCD on a rack full of 3D printers, plucks the finished prints off the bed, drops the parts in a box, and starts another print.

Tend.ai is in the business of cloud robotics, and have designed a system that takes any robotic arm, any webcam, and provides the backend for this robotic arm to – wait for it – tend to other machines. As a demo, it works well. Parts are picked up off of the machines, dropped into boxes, and another print run started.

As a tech demo for a cloud robotics platform, you can’t do much better than this. As a way to automate a fleet of 3D printers, I can only wonder how this robot arm system would work with large, flat printed parts. A robotic gripper could always be replaced with a spatula, I guess.

You can check out the demo and the ‘how they did it’ video below.

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