3D Printing With LEGO

October 18, 2010 by Mike Szczys 27 Comments

With 2400 LEGO bricks and a lot of patience, [Will Gorman] built a LEGO 3D printer. It’s similar to a RepRap or a Makerbot, but instead of extruding plastic, it uses pre-extruded building blocks (aka LEGO bricks). The grey wall extending far above the unit itself is a feed magazine which holds the raw material. A Java application takes an MLCad file and translates it into building instructions for the printer. Those instructions are then sent to the device via USB. See it happen after the break.

Now this just needs to be combined with the LEGO sorting machine for an inexhaustible supply of bricks.

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DIY Print Head Experiments

October 13, 2010 by Caleb Kraft 5 Comments

Inkjet printheads are a pretty rare thing to see done in home workshops. We would love to see more and got really excited when we saw this single nozzle, drop on demand, head being built. using a piezo disk intended to be a cheap buzzer and some reprap magic, [Johnrpm] got some results. [Madscifi] has been refining the design of the nozzle and the two have shared the process with us. Since it drops a single droplet of liquid, it can be used in a variety of manners, such as dropping plain old boring ink, or dropping a solvent into a powder for some 3d printing. You can see an example of the 3d printing in sugar above.

[via Makezine]

Laser Cutter Doubles As A 3D Printer

September 9, 2010 by Mike Szczys 10 Comments

[Bart] figured out how to use his laser cutter as a 3D printer. We’ve checked in on his open source laser cutter in the past and we’re happy to see he’s now done with the build. But rather than stop there he took it a step further. For less than $200 he built an extruder head and added RepRap circuitry. You can see in the image above the laser tube is in the background and the extruder head with a line of black filament is mounted on the gantry. [Bart] has other plans for extensibility as well, including a knife cutter, a pen plotter, and a Dremel mount.

From RepStrap To RepRap; A 3D Printer Is Born

August 29, 2010 by Mike Szczys 33 Comments

[Gavilan Steinman] just printed and assembled his own RepRap machine and filmed the process. This isn’t news but we found it very interesting to watch. He started with a RepStrap, a rapid-prototyping 3D printer that as built by hand instead of printed by a similar machine. This is the seminal step in the self-replicating process.

From there he prints an extruder head which improves the quality of the parts the RepStrap can produce. We then see time-lapse footage of the printing process for a Mendel unit, the second generation of RepRap machines. We’ve embedded the video after the break. It’s a great way to spend ten minutes on a Sunday afternoon.

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CNC Build Ditches Rods For Hardboard

July 16, 2010 by Mike Szczys 29 Comments

This is a redesigned x-axis for [Peter Jansen’s] selective laser sintering rig. We looked in on his SLS project last month and since then he’s been refining the design. The new component uses a rack and pinion system, relying on some Kapton tape to reduce friction for a nice smooth slide. One stepper motor powers the laser-cut gear box with four gears interfacing the sled to the frame for stable and accurate motion. Now he’s just got to work out the math/physics that go into finding the optimal gear ratios as this prototype is just a rough guess. If you’ve got the skills to work it out please lend [Peter] a hand as we’re quite excited with where this is going.

CNC Plotter From Old Parts

March 31, 2010 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/10479779]

Get a quick fix of CNC for the day with this plotter. [Francisco Dulanto] grabbed the cartridge carriage from an old inkjet printer and turned it into a gantry by mounting it on two drawer sliders. The optical head assembly from a cd-rom provides the Z-axis movement with the whole thing controlled by three RepRap boards. [Francisco] called his project a joke compared to the Turing Machine, but we like it and we’re glad he tipped us off. There’s something zen-like about the projects that are thrown together with what you have available. After all, he’s certainly achieve a clean-looking build that does what it’s intended to do.

3D Printing On A Much Larger Scale

March 15, 2010 by Mike Szczys 44 Comments

The end goal of this giant rapid prototyping machine is to print buildings. We’re not holding our breath for a brand new Flintstones-esque abode, but their whimsical suggesting of printed buildings on the moon seems like science fiction with potential. The machine operates similar to a RepRap but instead of plastic parts, it prints stone by binding sand with epoxy. This method is not revolutionary, but hasn’t really been seen in applications larger than a square meter or so. It’s fun to see the things we dabble in heading for industrial production applications.

[Thanks Juan]