Progress

Part of the progress on the build so far

First things first, I'd like to apologize for not posting any blogs for the past few weeks. It has been quite busy recently, in terms of working on building, schoolwork, and many other things as well.

However, quite a bit of progress has been made on the build. As you can see from the picture above, we have started assembly.  In fact we have made a tiny bit of progress since the picture was taken, but an issue has been encountered with some parts. We encountered this issue when we changed the extruder design from the original Mendel extruder to Wade's extruder because it functioned better. That means that before we can continue building, we need to order more parts.  We also decided to change the opto-flag system to a 3D printed design which will accomplish the same thing with increased rigidity.

The opto-flag system uses a set of three flags that, when moved to  a certain position by the motors, block a beam of invisible infrared light, telling a computer to stop the motor from moving. Think of the safety mechanisms on most garage doors. There's a beam of light that shines across to a light sensor. When an object, the equivalent of an opto-flag, passes through the beam of light, the light receiver stops receiving light, and makes the garage door stop, or go back up depending on your garage door. The opto-flag operates on the same principle; it stops the motor from crashing into the side of the printer and damaging the frame.  Having a flimsy piece of metal for the opto-flag is most likely not the best idea.


I'll try to keep up on the blog posts from now on, especially now that we've started building.  That does it for this now though, so have a good week. If you have any comments, post them below and I'll get right back to you.


Thanks for reading!

Preparing to Build the Printer

The RepRap Logo

Hello again! I write bearing exciting news. We have all of the parts we need to start assembly! 

We are still missing parts such as circuit boards, belts, and the printing surface, but we are going to try our hand at assembly first. If you are interested in technical specifications of the printer, interested in building one yourself, or want the bill of materials, you can find all of the information you need HERE.

We cleared off a table in our basement to assemble the printer on, and have sufficient room for parts. Our next steps are to start assembling the frame and perform a final sort on all of the parts to make sure we have enough of them. We've bought some inexpensive disposable containers to keep parts organized. The build manual we are using can be found HERE. This is an older model of the RepRap printer, however it has been perfected and is no longer in active development. This makes it much harder to source parts, but it means that the documentation is of a higher, finished, quality, as it is no longer a work in progress. 

That's about it for this week. Other that that, thank you for your continuing support. If you have any questions or comments, please do write them in the comments section below and, as always, have a good week!

Lost Wax and other updates

A silicon bronze cast of Yoda from Star Wars


Hi there again guys,

Even though I posted something yesterday, I thought I should post again to make it up to you guys. I wanted to talk about some new developments in technology and I'll attach a copy of my updated bill of materials right HERE.

And my source for the following info HERE, which is similar, but I'll try to make it simpler than the article.


So, my Dad pointed me in the direction for this piece. He shared a method for casting metal parts out of the plastic printed ones, which would significantly increase the cost of the printer, but make it more durable. I personally prefer the printed parts for the printer, because you can print an infinite amount of them as long as you have plastic, but having a metal structured part like the one above would be pretty awesome. The detail is stunning as well. Under a microscope, you can see where the strings from the printer were laid down. Here's how it works.


First, you take your printed parts and string them up on a tree-like structure made of wax. Wax can be melted easily, making it easy to remove. Then you want to take your investment, or the ceramic mix that, when fired, will create a mold. Then, the wax inside is melted, leaving only the cast behind. After that, the molten metal in poured into the cast, the cast is retrieved from within the metal, and the parts are cut off of the 'tree' and then you have your parts. You might wonder how you print the parts out of wax in the first place. There is the option of vaporizing the plastic with an extremely powerful heat source, but there's now a company that makes spools of wax filament for 3D printers specifically for lost wax castings. You can find the link Here.

As always, the link for my new blog can be found Here.

I'm pretty sure that's about it, so I hope you guys have a great day!

Alright!

From left to right: M3 Nylock, M4 Mudguard Washers, M4 Washers, M8
Hex Nuts (The box in the middle has two types of parts in it)


Hi there!


This is my first post in quite a while, and I am sorry for that. There's not really been a ton to write about lately. We ordered some more parts; washers, nuts, screws, that kind of thing.

Anyways, we got M8 washers as well. 208 of the required 104. Double what we need isn't that bad of a number.

But, we only got parts in yesterday, and late at night too. I finished taking inventory today and we got 96 M3 Nylocs, which is interesting, because we only need 13... Strange, but at least we have extra. We also noticed that we ordered 100, but only got 96, so we did some investigating.

Also, another interesting thing that I learned about companies that ship in bulk is that if you order, say 200 of them, you'll only get 192 because they sort the parts by weight, and each part is a different, however similar, weight. The more parts you get, the more inaccurate your number is. I noticed that the number tends to be around a 1:25 ratio, or one part missing for every 25 parts ordered. Lesson here is ALWAYS order extra. People aren't perfect, and we were nearly short a piece because of it. It's a good thing we had extra.

Also, in other news, I got a cool backdrop to take photos on. You can probably see this in the photo up above, but it's a black tri-fold board, the kind that you might use for a science project, and two pieces of Bristol board. It works quite well, and I would recommend it because even after I finish this project, I'll be able to use it. It's handy to have around. The reason that picture isn't the greatest ever is that where I was taking the photo really doesn't have enough light. That has a big impact on taking photos. Many photographers have this issue too.

Again, I would like to stress that even though I am still posting here, the link for the new blog can be found HERE

Anyways, I think that just about sums it up for this blog post. I guess we'll see if any more parts arrive. Until then, though, thanks for reading and have a good week too!