3D Printering: Wherein ABS Is Dangerous

November 20, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 84 Comments

A lot of the ‘prosumer’ – for as much as I hate that word – 3D printers out there like the Makerbot Replicator and countless other Kickstarter projects only officially support PLA filament. This has a few advantages from a product development standpoint, namely not necessitating the use of a heated build plate. There are other reasons for not supporting ABS and other filaments, as one of the Kickstarter updates for the Buccaneer printer elucidates (update available to backers only, here’s a mirror from somebody on reddit).

The main crux of the Buccaneer team’s decision not to support ABS is as follows:

We spoke to our legal counsel about it and they told us that if we officially support a certain “material” type then our printer has to go through massive certification to prove that it is totally safe to use or we will/can get sued badly.

Despite the Buccaneer team’s best efforts, we’re sure, their lawyers were actually able to find some studies that showed ABS could affect a person’s health. The issue isn’t with the ABS itself – LEGO are made of ABS and kids chew on blocks all the time. The issue comes from the decomposition of ABS when it is heated.

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3D Printering: A Makerbot In Every School Follows The Oregon Trail

November 13, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 53 Comments

Gather ’round, children and I’ll tell you a tale of how everyone from the ages of 16 to 40 has played Oregon Trail.

Back when Apple was just starting out, [The Steves] thought it would be a good idea to get the Apple II into the hands of schoolchildren across the United States. They did this with educational pricing, getting Apple IIs into newly created ‘computer labs’ in schools across the country. These new computers – from my experience, anyway – were used as a replacement for the old Selectric typewriters, and on rare occasions a machine that played the MECC classics like Oregon Trail.

Fortunately, a few students were bright enough and had teachers who were brave enough to allow BASIC programming, PEEKs and POKEs. This was the start of a computer revolution, a time when grade schoolers would learn a computer wasn’t just a glorified word processor or dysentery machine, but something that would do what you told it to do. For those kids, and I’m sure a few of them are reading this, it was a life changing experience.

Now it appears we’re in the midst of a new revolution. If this horribly named column isn’t enough of a clue, I’m talking about 3D printing. Yesterday, Makerbot announced they were going to fill in for Apple in this physical revolution by trying to get a Makerbot into every school in the country.

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3D Printering: A Call For An Open Source Automated Build Platform

October 23, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 79 Comments

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: if you’re using a 3D printer to make a few hundred identical plastic parts, you’re doing it wrong. That’s the place for traditional manufacturing methods such as injection molding or resin casting. If, however, you’re looking at printing a few dozen identical plastic parts, or even running a script to optimize your machine time, the current open source 3D printer world leaves one thing to be desired.

An Automated Build Platform

An Automated Build Platform is a fairly simple idea: put a conveyor belt on your heated bed, and when the print is done, send a command to drive a motor, dumping the newly printed part into a bin, The printer then begins the next part with a clean bed, and the days of doting over a 3D printer soon fade into the past.

For such a simple and useful idea, it’s surprising there hasn’t been much done with this idea in open source circles. There are, of course, problems both technical and legal, but hopefully nothing that should indefinitely derail anyone who would want to create the first open source automated build platform.

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3D Printering: Pastestruders

October 16, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 41 Comments

While bits of plastic are the usual material for 3D printers, there are hundreds of other materials that are equally well suited for 3D printing. One of the most famous is chocolate, a material so popular and easy to manipulate inside an extruder there are even Kickstarters for 3D printed chocolate bars.

There are many more materials deserving of being 3D printed, though: wax for lost wax castings, other foodstuffs for improbably shaped edibles, and ceramics so I can finally print a life-sized, functional version of the Utah Teapot.

Unfortunately, for all the progress of plastic extrusion, little has been done about extruding pastes, foods, and clay with a 3D printer. The RepRap paste extrusion working group is fairly close to being dead, so let this volume of 3D Printering explore what has been done in the world of paste printing.

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3D Printering: You Want UV Resin?

October 9, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 56 Comments

Just a few short months ago, 3D printing with stereolithography was an uncommon and very expensive proposition. Consumer-oriented SLA machines such as the Form1 and the B9Creator are as expensive as the upper echelons of squirting plastic printers and the community behind these machines isn’t even as diverse as the forums for the fly-by-night printers featured on Kickstarter every week.

This may be about to change with last month’s reveal of the Peachy Printer, a remarkably clever stereolithography printer that requires no special equipment, hardly any electronics, and costs $100. Even if the folks behind Peachy never ship a single unit, their clever engineering ensures that stereolithography will be a staple in the makers toolbox in the near future.

There is, of course, the problem of material. While plastic filament can be bought just about everywhere, UV curing resin is a little harder to come by and much more expensive per kilogram or liter. Where then does the stereolithography experimenter get their hands on some of this magical material from the future?

Before we get to the article…

I’ve been writing a 3D Printing column once a week for a few months now, and I’m running out of ideas. If you have something in the 3D printer world you’d like to see covered in a little more depth than the standard Hackaday post, send in a tip. I’ll send you a few Hackaday stickers if it’s a good idea.

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3D Printering: The Problem Of Thingiverse

October 2, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 75 Comments

Most makers, I’m sure, enter into the 3D printing world with a goal in mind. Whether that’s printing enclosures for projects, Warhammer figurines, robot chassis, or even a mechanical computer, there is usually some obvious utility in having a 3D printer at home. 3D printers are a machine tool, though, and any time it’s not being used means it’s an investment with a lower return, or at the very least a really cool toy gathering dust.

Where then do you find new stuff to print that you don’t design yourself?

For the longest time now, Thingiverse has been the largest repository to share, browse, and download object other people have made. Even I have some very stupid stuff up on Thingiverse and have made use of a few random objects I found on there. This does not mean the 3D printer community particularly likes Thingiverse, however: Last year, Makerbot, the people behind Thingiverse, changed the terms of use so (allegedly) Thingiverse owns everything uploaded to their service. Couple this with completely unsubstantiated rumors of things being removed from Thingiverse that compete with Makerbot products, and you have a perfect storm of people unsatisfied with an online repository of 3D objects.

There is a huge market for an online repository of user-submitted 3D objects that isn’t controlled by Makerbot, and many have attempted to enter the fray. Defense Distributed, the guys behind the 3D printed AR lowers and all-plastic handguns launched DEFCAD, a Thingiverse clone, made an attempt by mirroring thousands of Thingiverse objects, removing the attribution in violation of these object’s licenses. Shady, yes, but at least it’s an option. There are other repos such as Cubehero and the newly launched YouMagine, a repo developed by Ultimaker. the Luke Skywalker to Makerbot’s Darth Vader.

But here is the problem with Thingiverse: even if you would like to get away from using this Makerbot service, it’s still the largest collection of 3D printed objects on the Internet. It has the most users, and is growing more each day than any of its competitors. Putting your objects anywhere else only means fewer people will see them, and fewer still will incorporate your designs into their new designs.

There are a few tools for you to ‘roll your own’ object repository. Github has a great new tool for viewing diffs between different versions of objects. There’s even a lot of work in making the Github landing page more like a Thingiverse page. This doesn’t address the core value of Thingiverse – if all the objects aren’t catalogued in one database, searchable by anyone, it’s just not as useful a site as Thingiverse.

I’m simply not smart enough to offer up a solution to this problem. Therefore, I’m turning it on to you: how should the 3D printer community retain the great value Thingiverse offers while still making something as usable as the now-malagined site? Should any new site mirror objects already on Thingiverse a la DEFCAD, only with proper attribution? Who should control the portal to all the objects, if anyone?

If you have any ideas on how to solve the problem of Thingiverse, drop a note in the comments.

3D Printering: Alternative Filaments

September 18, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 15 Comments

ABS and PLA are the backbones of the 3D printing world. They’re both easy to obtain and are good enough for most applications. They are not, however, the be-all, end-all filaments for all your 3D printing needs. Depending on your design, you may need something that is much tougher, much more flexible, or simply has a different appearance or texture. Here are a few alternative plastics for your RepRap, Makerbot, or other 3D printer:

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