Metal Printer

Hey guys,

I got an idea for a metal printer, that should be able to print all metals, should be able to do it with a single print head, or possibly print multiple metals at the same time with minimal distortions, without using expensive gases, lasers, powders, clays, heavy hydrolics or loud ultra sonics. It should be scalable to any size from coffee pot to car to aircraft size, and reasonably good precision, comparable to existing abs plastics printing. Should be able to work with steel, aluminum, copper, nickel, platnium, silver, gold, brass. And should not require any changes to the print head between metal changes.

I was thinking of starting an LLC to develop the idea into a fully functional printer. Can I re-use the Mendal design as a starting point? Or the Tri-Color Mendal as a starting point for printing multiple materials? What legal liabilities does this put against my LLC or against me? I can even re-purpose the Mendal and re-sell it as part of a company? Or do I need to start from scratch on the printer design?

My actual goal is to open source this idea once I get it working, and release it with similar GNU licensing. The purpose therefore of the LLC is for liability protections when applying for investments through crowd funding.

Does anybody have any thoughts? Suggestions, Questions, Comments, Rants, Praise, Complaints, Money? :-P j/k

I have a question I'm sure many are thinking, what makes you any different from the many before you who have claimed this idea? Any proof of concept?

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Realizer- One who realizes dreams by making them a reality either by possibility or by completion. Also creating or renewing hopes of dreams.
"keep in mind, even the best printer can not print with the best filament if the user is the problem." -Ohmarinus

That's a great question, and unfortunately the answer is so stinking simple that I can't even give it lest I give everything away! It's actually painfully simple! And that's the beauty of it. I do want to give this tech away, but I also want to retain it until it is ready so I can still be first. ;-) Because it is so friggin simple, If I mentioned to much, there would already be 10 versions out there next month. LOL In fact I would say it's almost as obvious that it would work as completing the following sentence: I feel the urge for a Peanut butter and ____ sandwich!

All I really need to know is can I re-use the Mendal platform to develop this as part of an LLC? Or should I develop a whole new platform from scratch? A production ready Mendal Metal would already be a proof of concept. Once released the technology would explode onto the markets.

There will still be technical challenges, and thermal destortion will still need to be investigated, but I anticipate that heating localization will be so small that whole-model thermal destortion should be minimal.

In addition it should work with higher temp metals like perhaps Titanium, Tungsten, Cobalt, perhaps even Aluminium Oxide. Again with minimal to zero configuration changes. I don't know of any other cheap RepRap printer projects that have ever made such claims, although I'd be happy to know if I'm wrong on this last point, as I've been doing heavy research on this ever since this whole process just clicked in my brain like lighting.

I'm not knowledgeable on legal matters here, but as far as I know, open source is open. You're just not to make the Mendel design exclusive. If you're simply using the architecture there is nothing wrong with that. ETA on proof of concept?

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Realizer- One who realizes dreams by making them a reality either by possibility or by completion. Also creating or renewing hopes of dreams.
"keep in mind, even the best printer can not print with the best filament if the user is the problem." -Ohmarinus

Yea I'm not intending to make it exclusive, unless I designed a printer from scratch, but I don't even really care about that. I'll let other experts have fun doing that. I just want to do the research to make this possible. I don't even really care about making any money from it, although I do need to get funded to make it happen. So I'll work on re-designing the print head with the adjustments that will need to be made. Then start the LLC and launch a crowd funding. Thinking more about the funding, and I expect all the research could probably be done for as little as $20k (was thinking $50k at first, but now don't think it would be that much.). The metal printing systems should cost between 2k and 5k, I'll need to narrow down the price range. Just add the cost of a Mendal to that, and you'd have a full metal printing kit. At this point I'm basically ready to order materials...apart from the print head design. I've been doing research into this area for almost 10 years now, so building a proto-type is just a matter of assembly of parts (fully automatic safety systems, etc...) and optimizing with a few trial and error tests. And I've got friends lined up to help me on the various areas that are difficult such as electronics and power supplies. Most of the electronics are audrino based anyways, so that's easy.

Not sure of the ETA on a fully working system. I'll know more when I get to the point of starting a crowd funding, as I'll have to narrow down a time-frame.
But ETA on the print head should be a perhaps a month or two. It's difficult now that it is growing season, lots of out-door work to get done out-doors. ;-)

Ok looked at the hot end extruder and thinking I'm going to go with this one. I like the smaller diameter that it works with. Perfect, as a fine metal wire is much better than a thick metal wire for metal printing with this process. [reprap.org]

Incidently, the hot end will actually be turned off for metal printing. ;-) So it's not even needed. Although probably good to keep it to make it easy to change between printing metal and printing plastic with the same print head.

Since you're not willing to give details I'm going to make a guess at how you're considering to do this (please don't take this personally, I just enjoy speculating). In your post you said:

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SethEden
...as a fine metal wire is much better than a thick metal wire for metal printing with this process...

This makes me think you're planning some sort of welding process, i.e. where you apply a voltage between the wire filament and the workpiece and use the current to melt the metal where the two meet. Feel free to tell me if I'm right or wrong . Regardless of this I'd be really interested to see your demonstration.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/20/2014 01:30PM by samp20.

I bet this design could be adapted to print glass and crystal too! :-D Although that would be more work, as bulk glass doesn't do well as a filament. Then again, would be currious to see if fiberglass cord could serve this purpose, and what the quality of the print would be.

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samp20
Since you're not willing to give details I'm going to make a guess at how you're considering to do this (please don't take this personally, I just enjoy speculating). In your post you said:

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SethEden
...as a fine metal wire is much better than a thick metal wire for metal printing with this process...

This makes me think you're planning some sort of welding process, i.e. where you apply a voltage between the wire filament and the workpiece and use the current to melt the metal where the two meet. Feel free to tell me if I'm right or wrong . Regardless of this I'd be really interested to see your demonstration.

Sorry, not going to say one way or the other. ;-)

The moment "won't reveal a basic working principal" and "crowdsourcing" were used in the same paragraph I became oddly sceptical!

Actually, I've got a number of interested investors lined up at this point. So may not go with crowd sourcing. I figure that is a last resort. I didn't have any investor leads at the time, but I've got several now. We'll see how far it gets.

yes well its a open source forum the only way you will get help if you are willing to share the concept with others so then more people can help you develope the printer or concept your trying to deliver to us, for instance I might have the concept of a time machine in my head and say hey ill start a crowd sourcing program also I want it open sourced but cant let the concept idea out because im worried that someones going to steal my idea please give me 20k invest into a concept i only know about, i don't think so, soyou will probably find people on here will help you then try steal your idea

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/28/2014 08:37PM by chris33.

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Check my rubbish blog for my prusa i3

up and running
[3dimetech.blogspot.co.uk]

Well open sourcing it is my prefered option. With or without funding. But if close-sourcing it is the only way I can get funded then I'll close source it. Personally this idea is throw-away for me. I'm even willing to go so far as to start a company and give the company away for free to a close friend! I've got other bigger and FAR more reaching ideas than this. Not a time machine, but nearly as powerful in concept. Not-with-standing, what I've got here is a key-stone project, an enabling technology that makes a lot of other things possible. So my one objective is to get funded, not in a selfish kind of way, but in a way that this key-stone project can get developed. I don't even care if even-that gets open-sourced....I really don't. I just want to get the technology out there! Because again I've got FAR more reaching designs that need to be built and tested. Not just ideas, but actual 3D engineering CAD drawings with wiring harnesses and chassis and coils and circuit diagrams! This is what I do all day and some times all night! and all weekend! Because the truth is....I am Iron Man! :-P hehehe j/k No but seriously if all you want to do is question my motives then your barking up the wrong tree. I don't give a flying hoot about people who question my motives or my methods. If you don't like my ideas or designs then leave them to me and I'll go play with my toys in the closet, just don't expect me to share when I come out with a machine that is an impossible machine and you want a copy of it. If you want to tell me how impossible it is and that I'll never succeed then you should tell that to my university department chair who said I was so stupid that blind people shouldn't be aloud to drive semi-trucks and neither should I be allowed to graduate with a degree in engineering. Or the elementary school principle who said I was so stupid I would never graduate 8th grade! The word "Impossible" is only an emotional reaction to something that is not fully understood. The man who says something is "Impossible" is always interupted by the man who just did it. At this point, I don't care about making millions of bucks! and I don't have time to run a company! And I could care even less about fame or power. Personally I'd be happy driving around in a rusty old 1980's Toyota! I just want to get the ideas in my head out into the real world. I'm not even asking for money from anybody here! I don't need to justify myself, this whole rant is a waste of time. Back to my CAD drawings and CFD simulations! Maybe I'll have more luck building a beowulf cluster from Raspberry Pi's. Peace! & God Bless!

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SethEden
If you don't like my ideas or designs...

How can we possibly decide if we like them or not when you won't tell us what they are?

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MattMoses

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SethEden
If you don't like my ideas or designs...

How can we possibly decide if we like them or not when you won't tell us what they are?

Good point. ;-) Well I'm working on it. Need to go through a vetting process with some folks, and see where they stand and what they would like to do and what their involvement will be. I'm giving them first option being close friends, and putting together a full disclosure prospectus (nearly done, except for the ROI calculations). Really it's all about determining if they want to do funding, how much funding, and their level of involvement as a result of that funding. And to the person/people giving the funding, its their money so they should reserve the right to open-source or close-source as far as I'm concerned. As I said I'd prefer open-source, but I can only make suggestions and a few business cases one way or the other. Both have their benefits and draw-backs. In this case open-source tends to have slightly more business benefits, and close-source has slightly more draw-backs. Although that's not the only reason I'd be leaning towards open-source. There is the principle of open-source, which I also personally support, esspecially in this instance, for a laundry list of reasons. Ok that is an exceedingly generic set of statements...I know. Blanket statements are not usually my thing....LOL But in this case I need to be careful. This is the kind of technology that people get assassinated over, or disappeared over! I don't want to disappear. Maybe go hide in the woods and live off the land. I could go for that! :-D Ok I seriously just need to shut up and do the vetting to figure out which way this tech is going to slide. I'll post some updates here when I find out more.

i have been on this forum for the past 2yrs although it says 1 yr also 537 posts, and i will tell you this now the sort of attitude you give out isn't really going to get you anywhere you have come and said you want this you need funding but how can you anyone put funding to a concept they don't know only yourself knows. You say its so simple can't believe no one has thought of it and you want to start with a mendel machine i really intrigued how you going to convert a plastic extruding machine into a metal printer on the basis of what temps you will need to achieve, i will agree you will probably be better using your own platform then trying to convert a opensource printer as people with mendals might want to upgrade there machines to adapt your new idea, but if you wont opensource anything then basically your just using the community to benifit your profit gain like good old makerbot. please tell us how your going to achieve it and whats your idea because more and likely anyway its prob been tried and tested before anyways you cant expect no1 to give you funding with out knowing the concept you go to any funding places and they would say no

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Check my rubbish blog for my prusa i3

up and running
[3dimetech.blogspot.co.uk]

As I said I'm not asking for any money from here, and those that could give funding will have full disclosure. It's looking more like we might be going with open source, but I cannot confirm anything with 100% certainty yet.

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SethEden
And to the person/people giving the funding, it's their money so they should reserve the right to open-source or close-source as far as I'm concerned.

This is perfectly reasonable.

chris33, SethEden probably has some kind of non-disclosure agreement with his potential funders. So they probably know more about it than we do.

SethEden's original question was "Can I re-use the Mendel design as a starting point?" The simple answer to this simple question is "Yes."

Ideally, when someone improves an open source design, they release that improvement back to the community so that everyone can benefit from their work, just as they benefitted from the work of those that came before. But the world is not an ideal place, and sometimes the midnight engineer has to make compromises just to get their work realized. That said, I am pretty skeptical of SethEden's claims. But who knows, maybe he's on to something...

Note: For anyone reading this thread that doesn't know about this already, people at [metalbot.org] are working on an open source metal printer, and they've been reporting some pretty interesting progress lately.

Yes thanks Matt, this is all true. I had been watching the metalbot, and the Vader projects and the Mig welding guys from Michigan. All of them have their strengths, either in low cost, high precision, etc...I believe our system will similarly have it's limitations as with any system, but it should have it's own strengths as well. I just believe that it should be possible to print all or most metals with a single printer in a low-cost and simple approach exactly as it is done with plastics, even with the same printer and minor modifications to the print head.

Personally I find it truely amazing that this could really be possible! I guess we will find out. ;-)

... there are some other (not so common or well known) 'metal-printing' methodes like DLM, ILS, MDI and more out there since +10 years, that are used for comercial fabbing, for actual developments or as 'reserve' for future concepts.

I'm personally are using or developing some of this and other (self invented) methodes and applications around fabbing/printing with metal and other materials (ceramics, glass, organics) since 20 years now ... sometimes 'closed' (under NDA's), sometimes 'open', but not blogged or published in public.

So there is much more possible, than actually known -- but this is a really complex field ...

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

by the way i know you wasn't asking for funding but still intrigued about the concept been registered on here 11 days said hes looking to crowd source then says hes already got other investors sounds dubious to me you all can follow the ride this is my last comment bye ps didnt makerbot not use the reprap community to there adv

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/30/2014 04:56AM by chris33.

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Check my rubbish blog for my prusa i3

up and running
[3dimetech.blogspot.co.uk]

Drama drama drama. Blah blah blah, I don't like you, now I fit in, right? I'm cool?
Anyways.

Look at the straight line V6 from Chrysler; makes perfect sense once you look at it, right? Common sense some might say. Yet how long did it take humanity to get there? It was a single man's idea, a duh moment. How long have people been making and improving engines? Here where I work, they've been in business a long time, but I came in and just started asking simple questions as to why they did things, gave out simple ideas for improvement, and as a result I've cut processing time down to half. What he's saying doesn't make me any more doubtful, sure, I think he's not handeling it the way I think it should be handled, hints of some immaturatity, but what's new in the modern world? If a child came and told me he found out how to make my printer work three times faster, I'd listen. Wasn't the low cost filament extruder developed by a man in his old age? He didn't only learn a new trick, he taught it to himself. But the way he did it made perfect sense. I don't get what society has against simplicity or new ideas in an old field. Maybe it's because you've been in it so long, with aged eyes, that you can't see fresh ideas as working. I can see this in myself. The more I try and plan my printer build, the more I find I'm out of fresh ideas, I'm just using things I've learned. It happens.

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Realizer- One who realizes dreams by making them a reality either by possibility or by completion. Also creating or renewing hopes of dreams.
"keep in mind, even the best printer can not print with the best filament if the user is the problem." -Ohmarinus

Anybody who has ever built a company knows that nothing ever goes as planned! Esspecially early on! Things change and they change drastically and they change fast! That's just the nature of business. You can try and plan it out, write out documents, but things change so fast the documents are out-dated nearly on a daily basis. Esspecially these days with the pace of development being so fast!

SethEden:
I hope you are successful.
The heart of the design will be the print head - why not just make that first (since you are just going to modify an existing hot-end) and see if the concept works?

Thanks for the vote of confidence!

That's exactly what I intend to do. Except I need to build the proto-type key-stone project that will power the whole system. That will have some safety systems that will need to be tested and proven. Then there will be reliability testing for the print head sub-systems, and finally integration. Then we can do as you say. Most of the design work is done except for the power supply and power regulator, those are probably going to be the most complex comonents of the whole thing. I've got a guy lined up to help with the power supply which leaves me to work on the power regulator. Still working on securing funding, but it is in-work. I think this week is shot due to some community service that needed to be done. I'll have some design work to do on the print head, but I don't expect that to be overly complex. That's mostly just basic mechanical engineering and fairly easy to work out. If we confirm funding, and confirm open-source, I might be willing to recruit some extra help from here under NDA. But those are some pretty big IF's. We got some major hurdles to cross before we get to that point. ;-)

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MrDoctorDIV

Look at the straight line V6 from Chrysler; makes perfect sense once you look at it, right?

???

Off topic, but I'm curious...

I searched that term and found nothing. Plenty of images of V6 and inline 6 engines, but no "straight line V6" engines.

Could you please elaborate?

Thanks.

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DonaldJ
I searched that term and found nothing. Plenty of images of V6 and inline 6 engines, but no "straight line V6" engines.

Further OT, maybe he was confused about the manufacturer? The Volkswagen VR6 (where VR = Vee Reihenmotor or Inline Vee) had the cylinders angled only 15 degrees apart, so they could use a single cylinder head and make it fit in a front-wheel drive car with a transaxle. They later created the WR12 engine used by VW/Audi/Bentley by imaging two VR6 blocks in a "W" formation at 72 degrees apart sharing a common crank. Just saying that a "straight line V6" engine *does* exist, and I have the screen name to to back it up.....

Sorry, the "inline six" or "straight six" was an AMC engine originally in Chrysler that became the basis for almost all AMC engines for long after, especially prominent and successful in Jeeps. Even today engine enthusiasts who look at things other than new cars find it, in their respective opinions, the best engine of all time.
Not at all a car buff, but I've heard my share of people tell me about this engine.

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Realizer- One who realizes dreams by making them a reality either by possibility or by completion. Also creating or renewing hopes of dreams.
"keep in mind, even the best printer can not print with the best filament if the user is the problem." -Ohmarinus