Collaborate Disseminate
The 3D printing community is simply stirring with excitement over toolchanging printers, but these machines are still the exception rather than the norm. Here’s an exceptional exception: [Paul Paukstelis] built a five-color printer with a novel head-changing solution.
[Paul’s] 3D printer is a hat-tip to anyone who’s spent time in …read more
Continue reading Microscope-Inspired Toolchanger Spins Multicolor 3D Prints
In the 3D-printing community, [Mark Peeters] may be known-and-loved for his drooloop printing, but that’s not enough to stop him from pushing the spectrum of printing tricks even further. Dubbed Toolpath Painting, [Mark] is taking that glorious sheen from the bottom layer of a 3D print and putting it to …read more
Continue reading Toolpath Painting Brings Out That First Layer Sparkle
3D Printers have been in the hands of hackers for well over ten years, but the dream is far from over and certainly not overslept. This year’s Midwest RepRap Festival is a testament to the still-growing excitement, and world where 3D printing is alive and kicking on the next level. …read more
Continue reading The 3D Printing Dream is Still Alive at 2019’s Midwest RepRap Festival
We can make our 3D-printed parts even more capable when we start mixing them with some essential “mechanical vitamins.” By combining prints with screws, nuts, fasteners, and pins, we get a rich ecosystem for mechanism-making with capabilities beyond what we could simply print alone.
Today I’d like to share some …read more
Continue reading Threading 3D Printed Parts: How to Use Heat-Set Inserts
Over my many years of many side-projects, getting mechanical parts has always been a creative misadventure. Sure, I’d shop for them. But I’d also turn them up from dumpsters, turn them down from aluminum, cut them with lasers, or ooze them out of plastic. My adventures making parts first took root when I jumped into college. Back-in-the-day, I wanted to learn how to build robots. I quickly learned that “robot building” meant learning how to make their constituent parts.
Today I want to take you on a personal journey in my own mechanical “partmaking.” It’s a story told in schools, …read more
Continue reading Eight Years of Partmaking: A Love Story for Parts
Open-Source Extruded Profile systems are a mature breed these days. With Openbuilds, Makerslide, and Openbeam, we’ve got plenty of systems to choose from; and Amazon and Alibaba are coming in strong with lots of generic interchangeable parts. These open-source framing systems have borrowed tricks from some decades-old industry players like Rexroth and 80/20. But from all they’ve gleaned, there’s still one trick they haven’t snagged yet: affordable springloaded T-nuts.
I’ve discussed a few tricks when working with these systems before, and Roger Cheng came up with a 3D printed technique for working with T-nuts. But today I’ll take another step …read more
Continue reading How To Make Your Own Springs for Extruded Rail T-Nuts
It’s hard to pass up another lesson in good machine design brought to us by [Mark Rehorst]. This time, [Mark] combats the relentless forces of bed deformation due to thermal expansion.
Did you think your printer stayed the same size when it heated up? Well, think again! According to [Mark’s] calculations, when heated, the bed can expand by as much as half a millimeter in the x/y direction. While x/y deformation seems like something we can ignore, that’s not always true. If our bed is rigidly fixed in place, then that change in dimension will only result in a …read more
Continue reading Expanding 3D Printer Bed Stays True Under Fire
3D Printer tool changers are bedazzling to watch, but even failed attempts at tool changers can yield something marvelous. Such is the case for [Raymond] who transformed a tool changer attempt into a perfectly capable z-level probe that uses the hotend itself as a limit switch.
The secret sauce behind this mechanism: a kinematic coupling. This coupling takes two planar surfaces and perfectly constrains them relative to each other by mating them together at exactly 6 points of contact. The result is that repeatedly separating and joining the two surfaces will always land them in the same spot within a …read more
Continue reading Hotend Becomes the Z Probe with a Kinematic Coupling
3D Printer tool changers are bedazzling to watch, but even failed attempts at tool changers can yield something marvelous. Such is the case for [Raymond] who transformed a tool changer attempt into a perfectly capable z-level probe that uses the hotend itself as a limit switch.
The secret sauce behind this mechanism: a kinematic coupling. This coupling takes two planar surfaces and perfectly constrains them relative to each other by mating them together at exactly 6 points of contact. The result is that repeatedly separating and joining the two surfaces will always land them in the same spot within a …read more
Continue reading Hotend Becomes the Z Probe with a Kinematic Coupling
These days, budget CNC builds are mainstream. Homebrew 3D printers and even laser cutters are old hats. Now I find myself constantly asking: “where’s it all going?” In the book, Designing Reality, Prof Neil Gershenfeld and his two brothers, Alan and Joel, team up to answer that question. In 250 pages, they forecast a future where digital fabrication tools become accessible to everyone on the planet, a planet where people now thrive in networked communities focused on learning and making.
Designing Reality asks us to look forward to the next implications of the word “digital”. On its surface, digital …read more