Foton 3Dprinter

So this is what the second stage of the development of this printer looks like, basically been working on improving the overall stability, adding reinforcements to the base, steel to the frame, changing over to polyester resin, all the details and images are on the wiki. There’s also one up on eBay for anyone who might be interested and thanks to everyone who has had their say on the subject the feed back has been very helpful.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/14/2010 05:25PM by foton.

Nice casting job, what material do you use for the molds?

What stops the Y and X carriages lifting up or rocking? do they have clamps or another set of bearings on the underside?

Do you add any metal or support in the castings? to aid strength.

Have you printed anything on it yet?

Hi richrap

To answer some of your questions....
The mold is made from a product call Vinamold it’s a PVC compound, it’s low cost and reusable which makes it well suited to quite large molds like this one.
The Y and X carriage are held down by gravity and the fact that the belts are holding them from underneath, I haven’t yet experienced any real problem with them lifting.
The first one of these I made before this had carbon fiber embedded in the resin and it is very, but since this I have found the polyester resin strong enough on it’s own for this application with out any reinforcing additives, Still haven’t reached the printing stage with this yet but should be there soon enough.