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.

DIY Filament: The Filabot Wee

November 22, 2013 by Marsh 24 Comments

filabotwee

Now there’s yet another option for making your own 3D printer filament: the Filabot Wee. It looks like their once open source model that they pulled from Thinigiverse earlier this year has received a significant makeover, though we aren’t sure what parts may have changed. (EDIT: Filabot says the Wee is still open source, and that once they’ve updated the files they will be available again.)

As you would expect, the Wee has a PID temperature controller and is capable of extruding both ABS and PLA pellets into either 1.75mm or 3mm-diameter filament. Speed varies depending on materials and thickness, but can reach 5 to 20 inches per minute of filament extrusion. Though the Filabot gang is selling the extruder as a kit, you can probably save a few bucks if you have access to a laser cutter and some other basic materials.

You should expect to spend more for Filabot parts ($649) than you would for the original Lyman extruder, though perhaps a more fair comparison would be the new third version of the Lyman extruder, whose bill of materials approaches $900. Considering Lyman’s recent comments that indicate an extrusion rate of 40-50 inches per minute, the extra bucks may be worth it. You can check out a demonstration video of the Filabot Wee after the break.

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A Deck Screw Extruder

August 17, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 28 Comments

deck

A lot of great ideas happen in the middle of the night, and for [Werner] it’s no different. One night he came up with an idea for a new 3D printer extruder, and after a very basic prototype, we’d have to say he might be on to something. It’s basically a deck screw acting as a worm gear to drive filament, but this simple idea has a lot of really cool advantages.

There are two really interesting features of this extruder, should [Werner] ever decide to flesh out his idea into a real prototype. First, the stepper motor for this extruder can be extremely small and mounted directly above the extruder. This opens up the doors to easily creating multi-extrusion printers that can handle more than one filament. Secondly, using a deck screw as a worm gear means there is a huge area of contact between the plastic filament and the driver gear.

Whereas the usual extruder setup only makes contact with the plastic filament along one or two splines of a hobbed bolt, [Werner]’s design drives the filament along the entire length of the deck screw worm gear. This could easily translate into much more accurate extrusion without all the fiddling around with springs and hobbed bolts today’s extruders have.

In any event, it’s a very interesting idea, and we’d love to see [Werner] or someone else make a functioning extruder with this design.

Is A LEGO 3D Printer By Definition Self-replicating?

July 18, 2013 by Mike Szczys 35 Comments

lego-3d-printer

LEGO parts are plastic. 3D printers make parts out of plastic. So the transitive property tells us that a LEGO 3D printer should be able to recreate itself. This one’s not quite there yet, mostly because it doesn’t use plastic filament as a printing medium. Look close and you’ll probably recognize that extruder as the tip of a hot glue gun. If all else fails you can use the machine as a precision hot glue applicator.

The instructions to make your own version include the design reference and a few ideas for getting the most out of the glue dispenser. For the design phase [Matstermind] used LEGO Digital Designer. It’s basically CAD with the entire library of LEGO parts available as building blocks. from there he assembled the machine which is controlled by an NXT brick. He goes on to link to a few different printing mediums. There’s instructions for using crayons to make colored glue sticks, as well as a method of printing in sugar using the hot glue extruder.

We remember seeing one other LEGO 3D printer. That one didn’t use an extruder either. It placed blocks based on the design to be printed.

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Delta-type 3D Printer Built Using Extruded Rails

June 2, 2013 by Mike Szczys 18 Comments

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From concept to completion this delta-style 3D printer (translated) is a sweet build. The quality of the work comes as no surprise. We’re familiar with [Arkadiusz Spiewak’s] craftsmanship from that H-bot type 3D printer we saw from him back in April.

Planning started off with a render of the design using Blender 3D. Not only did this give him a 3D model to use as his building reference, but the animation framework allowed him to test the kinematics of the design. After ordering an extruded rail system and assembling the frame he found the pillars had too much flex to them due to the rails used on the top and bottom. The fix was to mill a top and bottom plate to stiffen things up. After testing out the motors and the extruder head mount he made one final design change. He exported his Blender design as dxf files to cut and weld an aluminum replacement for the extruder mounting platform. As you can see in this video, the preliminary results are looking good!

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SCARA Arm 3D Printer

February 8, 2013 by Mike Szczys 29 Comments

scara-3d-printer

[Quentin Harley] must really have wanted to test his snuff when it comes to mechanical engineering. He’s been hard at work for a couple of years now designing his own SCARA arm 3D printer. That link leads to a recent summary article in which he shows off the build as seen above. It’s not fully functional yet, but he’s at the point where it’s time to develop the driver circuitry and firmware so he’s close. His blog is dedicated to this single project so click around and see what he went through along the journey.

The SCARA arm is seen in blue, using a couple of stepper motors to move the extruder mount along the x and y axes. The bed itself moves along the Z axis via two precision rods with a threaded rod in the center. As you can see, some of the parts are made of wood, and he used PVC for the cross supports between the upper and lower base platforms. But the majority of the build uses 3D printed parts, including the arms, drive gears, and mounting brackets.

[Thanks Peter]

3D Printed Christmas Cookies

December 20, 2012 by Mike Szczys 15 Comments

3d-printing-christmas-cookies

Here is yet another way to get into the holiday spirit at your local Hackerspace (or at home if you’re happen to have your own 3D printer). [Ralph Holleis] wrote in to show off his 3D printed Christmas cookies. The majority of the info on this project comes from the video embedded after the break. The extruder head he’s using includes a syringe which is filled with what we assume is Spritz Cookie dough. It is squeezed out in a pattern before heading to the oven for baking.

[Ralph] mentioned that he’s using UNFOLD Pastruder as the print head. We looked and couldn’t find that exact design, but it seems like it might be related to this Claystruder head designed by a user named [Unfold]. If you have the exact link to the extruder design seen above please let us know in the comments section.

If you don’t already have this type of head it’s just a matter of printing the mounting brackets and buying a syringe to match. But you’ll also need compressed air and a valve to regulate the flow of dough. It might be easier just to print your own cookie cutters. This is a great project for people who don’t have access to a laser cutter for gingerbread house work.

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