Team Surface: Easy load/unload printing surface

Hey there.

A friend of mine complained about that it takes time to unload prints from surface and again it takes time again to make surface ready for another print.

I had an idea to make it shorter and easier. So our team which is me and my brother atm, has started working on that. Innitial design is simple and I will share it here very soon. When we get design to a point where we believe it can be tested, we will try it and take photos/videos of the results to share here.

I am keen to have comments about our idea. I wonder if loading/unloading prints is an issue for most users and if it would make mendel better if we would manage to make if easy and fast.

Regards
VuRaL
Team Surface

I have attached a simple reflection of what we think.

Moving surface after print may make it easy to remove.

I think it might be some cloth or a paper like papyrus. Cloth might be better because we might be able to place heaters under surface to avoid warping during printing.

Looking forward to have your comments.

I used cloth (cotton) on a heated build platform for a while. I clamped it down from two sides using angle steel clamps and foam board as a gasket. The gasket is important since the steel or bed won't be perfectly flat and can't grip evenly without it. Ultimately, the parts warped. The problem was that I was trying to constrain movement in the z direction but I didn't have anything nearby holding the cloth down in that way.

I also used printer paper. This had enough rigidness that it didn't lead to any more warping than with just the bed. The paper is absorbant and sticks very well to the plastic. So well, in fact, that the paper could only be used a few times. It was cheap to replace.

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Darwin clone, Gen 2 electronics, Arduino Duemilanove w/ AtMega328, 5D Firmware, Pinchwheel extruder
[www.codeerrors.com]

We had canceled the project as the MakerBot has Automated Build Platform with Relay Board now, we do not have any thing unique left.

[store.makerbot.com]

There is almost always more than one way to solve an engineering problem.

It's a little too early to know whether the MakerBot solution is the best one.

Plus, it would be nice if people with machines which don't have the "Thing-O-Matic" type of build platform can get an add-on unloader. Or design a less expensive method using RepRapped parts. Or determine better surfaces to print on in general.

-- Don