Parts

Parts ready to be sorted and inventoried

Okay, so this is more of an extremely large list of parts that I've recieved and may have been a little bit preoccupied and not bothered to post anything. So, this is all of that stuff:

I.D, stands for Inner Diameter

O.D. stands for Outer Diameter

Keep in mind that the number of pieces that we have is NOT the number required. It is the same as or higher than the number required.

My trip to the Innisfil HackLab

First off, Happy New Year everybody! Yes, I'm working on New Year's Eve because I'm not doing anything else today.


So, a few days ago I took a trip down to the MakerSpace in Innisfil to meet Alan, one of the people who works there helping people print off their own designs, troubleshoot ideas, or cut something out on their ABSOLUTELY AMAZING LASER CUTTER! Anyways, he was nice enough to take some time to talk to me about my project and possibly supporting my project. He also invited me to next year's maker fest, which you can look at here. I'll probably be at the 2016 makerfest, but that's a ways away for now. I hope to have the printer finished by the time the festival rolls around.

During a talk with him, I realized that one of the extruders that I wanted to try was completely useless and should be abandoned immediately. For those of you who don't know what an extruder is, it's basically the piece of the printer that takes the plastic from a giant spool, melts it, and lays it down on the print bed. It's got a few different parts, and so you can see what one looks like I'll put a picture of one in the blog as well.


Anyways, thanks to that conversation, it saved me a TON of plastic and time, so that's good.


I'd like to extend my thanks again to Alan and the Innisfil library for their time, and if you get the opportunity then you should go and check it out. It's a pretty cool facility with a lot of pretty cool people. Music recording stuff, private study rooms, makerspace equipped with a laser cutter and two 3D printers. So go do that. Seriously. It's a cool place.

Alan and I at the HackLab

An Extruder

Merry Christmas!

'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring - not even a mouse.... but the 3D printer was grinding and noisy. . . It could be heard all through the house!    😊.     2015 - Christmas with the 3D printer

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and happy New Year!

Small Update

Small update, I don't actually have to write a blog right now, so..


I've started ordering parts in hope of starting assembly over the christmas break. I've ordered bar stock, washers, screws and nuts. Just so you know.

Well...

Well, here it is folks. We have received help in the form of a 3D printer. That has to go back on Monday. We used to have 48 hours of print time left and now we have 36 left. That's convenient. However, due to the fact that the 3D printer is a MakerBot Replicator Mini, it prints with a thing called a raft. And it has a fairly small print bed. You can see the raft in the picture. It's a layer of plastic. Sorry that the image is in a terrible resolution. Anyways, that adds the extra step of peeling a layer of plastic from EVERY SINGLE PIECE! Don't get me wrong, I am glad for the help. I did, however try to disable this with an extremely long process that I'm sure nobody wants to hear about, but that caused the parts to go absolutely crazy instead of behaving like they're supposed too. Which sucks. Alot. So, I'm back to printing with this silly rafty thingy instead of the other printer, the Dremel3D printer which I'm still using but due to availability, I'm still fighting with print ability.

My random piece of writing

Why not put in a steam engine? It's related to my paragraph

Well, I haven't made any progress other than trying to continue securing help to get pieces printed, so I figured I would put in a small piece of writing for no real reason other than the fact that it's related. So here it is.


A 3D printer in the home is an almost unimaginable feat for most people, including myself, but what if it wasn’t? Introducing the Mendel. Made by a small company called Reprap, it costs almost $1500 to make. I’m looking to lower that cost to less than $1000 and make the printer easier to assemble and use. This will target entrepreneurs looking to kick-start a manufacturing business, and will also be of interest to residential users looking for a hobby, similar to myself. This project marks the start of something bigger for me, allowing me to see that I can build machines that could change the world.

Having the ability to design something that can replicate itself is amazing! Why was I inspired to do this project instead of some other one, like designing a toy or a car for the marketplace? That's because I am passionate about engineering; the art of taking knowledge of mathematics and science and using them to invent, design and build many amazing things. One great example of such ingenuity is the steam engine, a driving factor in the industrial revolution and a key player in the evolution of technology. What's the next step in our technological evolution? Robots? Flying cars? My belief is that our next major step forward in our path of technology is a 3D printer which is able to do something so large scale such as to print houses out of mud, or do something so delicate as printing a human organ, single cells at a time. Having an understanding of the technology that may one day become a part of our society in more ways than one would be extremely important in my lifetime, which is why I wish to pursue this project. Through this project I hope to gain an understanding of what may one day make most of the world, and maybe even the people, around us.

Something Amazing

Help has fallen from the sky. I'm talking to someone who might be able to give me access to more printers so that I can increase my productivity. I am happy, none the less, although help is not sealed down as of yet. I was hoping to print all of the pieces on the same 3D printer to prove that you can replicate a 3D printer using a 3D printer, to prove that printer-ception is possible. By the way, I've made a little bit of progress in between blogs and I've printed a part or two. I think that I'm going to wrap up this blog early so that I can add in a time log down below so you guys can see the total amount of time spent on this project.


Time Printing: 24hrs

Troubleshooting print time issues: 2hrs

Assembly: 0hrs

Transportation of parts: 8hrs

Time for parts to ship: 0hrs

Bill of materials: 2hrs

Time spent blogging: 5hrs

What I'm Aiming to Build

That's it. That's what I have to build. It's going to take a while, but that's it. I need parts. There's something like a thousand parts total. But there's only 150 parts that I need to print. I still need to do 96. It's a problem. December 18 is the beginning of Christmas break, and that's the deadline for at least 90 percent of the parts. This is a PAIN. I waaaaay underestimated the number of parts that I needed to print. "What needs to happen?" I hear you saying. Well, the fact is I need help with this. I've started a log of time in case the project fails. If it does, I'll be prepared. Hopefully, I'll get the help that I need with my project, or maybe Christmas break will be the end. Who knows? Maybe I will finish this printer. I want to finish it. I just don't know.

The Second Post that Says the Same Thing as the Last

I still haven't made any progress to print parts. Our library got a new fancy 3D scanner and because of it everyone wants to print off their head. I'm going to have to wait for the hype around the scanner to die down. I'm seriously worried though. If I'm not allowed to print off more parts soon, I'm going to fail my project. This is a serious setback. It's also causing a whole bunch of stress, and I'm going to lose funding if I don't have the rest of the parts printed by Christmas break. That means the project won't be funded and I won't be able to buy any of the motors that I need to do the project. These are dire straits folks. I can't risk any other issues, or else this 'journey' will come to an end. I hope to finish more parts by next week though. I can't bear the thought of failing just because of people printing off heads.

Parts SUCK!

Currently, I am attempting to print of all the parts I need. Printing off parts from a 3D printer takes a LONG time. FOUR HOURS a piece. I've finished 10 parts out of over 50. I don't have access to the 3D printer every day, which is also a huge pain. I also can't print on weekends or overnight. Hopefully I will be able to make at least 5 more parts by next week. I won't have any funding until I finish printing off all the printed parts, which means no actual printer assembly until after Christmas break. I'm hoping to have the parts done before Christmas and I also hope to have the printer finished before the end of the year. However, with continual delays, I most likely will not finish the printer by the end of the year. Sadly. It sucks. I know. However, hopefully productivity will spike after I get the parts printed.