Turkey Roaster RepRap, almost tempting

I know that the RepRap must be able to duplicate its own parts and must be able to work at room temperture but I live in the land of Menards home improvement stores and their odd selection of afterthought items, and they just put an 18 quart turkey roaster on sale for $20. I'm almost tempted to get it and build a frame for an XYZ head out of alternative material to fit within its envelope but with a custom lid...

Yes, almost tempted at the 150F to 450F control range...

Could be combined with the cookie press modification to produce a self-contained cookie machine.

... or combined with the heated oil bath idea, soy protein is often extruded to give it a meat-like texture. Perhaps you could load some tofu into the extruder and produce some homemade deep fried tofurky. If you're willing to give up the holiday theme, a funnel cake would be a lot more appetizing.

I've stated before that "food replicators" may be a good way for reprap to go. Imagine something like the above on a submarine...fitted out with assorted artificial flavors, and colors, and with techniques built in to moderate density, resiliency, and brittleness.

You could cook something that would look like, taste like, and even have the mouth feel of, whatever food you wanted. Suddenly, tight quarters, (or limited budgets,) wouldn't dictate a small menu.

Then there's the idea of "replicating" an organ with suspended tissue samples...

I do believe that the only appropriate support material would then be... stuffing

"Then there's the idea of "replicating" an organ with suspended tissue samples..."

Brilliant! We could reprap haggis!

hahahah!!! you guys are hilarious. love it!

More seriously, couldn't it be used to extrude over various background temperatures in order to see if that sorts out (or betters) the problems seen in hdpe printing!

/Erik

That's actually what popped into my mind when I first saw it. Unfortunately, it's not something that's going to be self-replicatable anytime soon. No matter, it's an idea. I might have to see about picking one up.

This is exactly how the Stratasys does it after all. Although I don't think you'll be pulling a turkey out of one anytime soon. I think the biggest thing that makes me wish that I didn't have to look at this option is the power loss factor.

Isn't the main problem that parts made by FDM will not be able to operate at oven temperature, so you cannot have self replication if an oven is involved?

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

Well, Fernando is playing around with photo-cured plastics. Someone mentioned heat-cured, as opposed to thermo-, plastics.
Both of those could be layed down and fixed, so further application of heat, (or light,) didn't cause them to soften.
There is still hope for an oven that can "bake" its own replacement.
I suppose the best real-world reference would be a brick-lined kiln. The bricks themselves were baked in a similar kiln, and yet they don't melt when fired a second time.

... i think, for supporting FDM-extruding, an intermediate temperature of 50

Otherwise I think that the molds produced in the blogs lately might turn to an alternate path. Maybe parts could be cast in some material that can take heat and then the printed objects would only be used as templates and for things outside the reprap machine itself.

Sort of like a two-phase reprap.

The technique of making molds go back several thousand years, what we could add is a way for anyone not an artist to produce or printout a template of any shape and then reproduce it.

The problem with that is that molds can only make a subset of the shapes that can be made by FDM.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

Not if they're single use molds. Imagine a wax mold, with a wax core. Pour your material, then bake it to dispose of the mold.

I don't like a two-stage approach, however, as it would limit how many people would be willing to adopt the reprap.

Another thing I want to try is the bellows idea I discussed in a previous thread (Bellows would keep the temperature only on the extruder and part being made, thus saving the rest of the machine from melting.

It would be interesting to buy this thing just to see how much electricity it draws if you want to keep it at an even 60 C.

Using it at winter would simply help heating my house.

Maybe a black cover over the extrusion part would raise the temperature considering an equatorial third-world application. Drawbacks might be to only be able to extrude during daytime and keeping the temperature even, perhaps a computer fan with thermostat could remedy that?