3D printing anyone?

g.uk

Already using 'plastic' 3D printer. part designed in one location. files shipped to detailer in another location. final versions ok'd and sent to another location where the part was 'printed' then picked up at the printer's and taken over to replace broken part. all within the same day. Very happy customer.

This is the one I'm most familiar with as a 'sprayer' onto plaster of paris type, but now they make other styles.

Sales, Northern California, and Nevada Peak Solutions LLC

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Robert Macy wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@v33g2000yqv.googlegroups.com:

You can get kits to build your own. Check out:

printer

Doug White

One of the UK electronics hobby magazines did a project, maybe half a year ago - AFAIK they made arrangement with a supplier to make kits available.

Yup, that was Silicon Chip.

R.P

Do you remember which mag that was Ian ? I have been considering building one for a while now. At the end of last year, Elektor hinted that they were going to be doing one as a major project in the mag this year, but nothing so far. There are plenty of examples of them working and building DIY ones on YouTube, and the results are surprisingly good. One DIY one is quite famous. I can't for the life of me remember its name right now, but there is quite a community around it, and it is fundamentally self replicating in that a number of people are selling gears and other parts that are required to make one, which have themselves been made on one.

I have a specific purpose in mind for one, so I'd be quite interested in anybody's experiences of a DIY one.

Arfa

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Those Reading bods have a lot of technical and sw knowledge. They've converted to 1/32 microstepping and the use of Arduini ? micro PC and now adapting to using the Pi. It seems one requirement , for the UK, is to establish buying the plastic feedstock direct from China

20 years ago, I converted a 3-axis IC fab handler to drive a dremel tool. When I first learned about this, I considered replacing the dremel with a plastic extruder. Seemed pretty straightforward. Then I looked at the cost of the plastic extrusion filament and dropped the whole project. 3D printing excels when you need the ability to make internal features that can't be machined.

If it wasn't Elektor, it must've been EPE - theyy're the only 2 I get that would handle such a project.

I've handled the output of several of the kit ones that melt strips of plastic together into a part.

There's the novelty in you can make goofy parts on some wooden machine.

The quality of the outputted parts is fairly low though. they all seem to have a really rough texture, like thy're made of shredded wheat- a type of breakfast cereal.

The commercial machines that use the powder and spray produce much much better surface finishes.

For modelling stuff, it probably doesn't matter, but with how slow those kit machines are as well, you're not going to be churning out tons of useful parts for anything.