The whole oxidization issue is a head ache i no there shielding gas but a vacuum takes care of it for you!

How would you go about certifying your laser weld to prove there is no contamination? It would have to be xrayed right?

... laser-welding didn't emit x-rays, but electrons doo, when high enough accelerated in vacuum!

The problem with vacuum is the complexity of designing the airtight housing and sealings with openings for loading/unloading the building chamber (the time for re-evacuating too), so Argon as shielding gas is much simpler and cheaper too ...

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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]

Yea I agree with you there. The version on here with the split chambers seams to address that issue? E-beam in its own vac chamber with window to a chamber containing argon.

... the e-beam won't pass the window or any gas atmosphere - you'll need a good vacuum for the complete building chamber and dust bins ...

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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]

They have written up the difflection of the beam in 5mm of argon. and the window will have a very small hole for the beam to go thru. and from what i understood the self built titanium sublimation pump will be able to keep up the loss thru the hole. then the "dust bins" will be in the argon atmosphere and not the vacuum

My metal plastic multi material printer project had me thinking about a kicksterter in much the same way. I'm trying to build a hypersonic powder deposition system that at minimum will do a number of metals and plastics.

Assuming I can get the system to work and show its a viable idea then what would I do.

The problem would be I do not have the programing or electronics expertise to construct a controller and I wouldn't know where to start making the software to create the code.

If I left it to community support then perhaps I could get people to help. But I fear the printer would probably end up very complicated and confusing and still be quite costly to obtain. While I love the reprap project it is not extremely user friendly. And that's with a very small number of matirials and a relatively simple construction. I might be able to do small crowdsourced projects to get all the necessary parts developed and a small production run but how many people would really benefit if it is too complex to use or make.

The go big approach would have to be a very big fund to employ people to help me design and make it really nice. It could then be a finished complete unit with software and be much simpler to use. More like a commercial machine. The software would then allow the printing of multi material objects while being user friendly and well tested.This may end up more expensive to buy each unit but it would be far more useful to more people. But would I ever really get that kind of interest to raise that kind of money. It would essentially be staring a new company. As soon as you start adding it all up it heads toward the millions rather than a couple of hundred K. 2 years would seem to be the kind of time required.

I'm not really sure what would be the better approach.

Obviously its all a bit academic at the moment but worth thinking about.

It would be really nice if there were some videos and things about the Metalrap. Especially how it will look and work.

If anyone's interested I can make a video showing the parts I have made so far and perhaps explain a bit about it. Made a bit of progress recently but getting married very soon so free time is a scarce commodity atm.

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Make your Mendel twice as accurate.
[www.thingiverse.com]

I agree with your frustrations. I've actually got a lot of mech, elec and software skills. So I know i can do everything. But there's only so much free time in the day that i have to pick what i work on. I've decided that I'm going to get a very basic and small build chamber (~50mmx50mm) and prove it can make blob's that kinda resemble the model that went in. Then as i can show blob's forming i will take some video's and try make it viral.

Every hobbyist's dream is to make stuff, if this project can make extra stuff and you have this awesome machine that looks like iron man made would have in the lab.

This should bump up the numbers for later, but in the mean time I'm planning to go for this setup, what to you guys think? Kick starter target $1000 total ...

$10 for certificates + mailing list, (email certificate ok? or should this be mailed?)
$15 for certificate + small vial of the titanium powder I use
$20 for simple blob out of titanium as it looks straight out the chamber
$30 for complex blob out of titanium as it looks straight out the chamber
$50 for simple blob + tidy and polish out of titanium.
$60 for complex blob + tidy and polish out of titanium.
$150 1 each of all above
$200 and I will try make your own blob as long as it fits in my build chamber out of titanium.
$350 1 each of everything including your own custom blob
$500 if over $4k 2 gears and a back plate tidied up and polished AND rotatable by hand

If it reaches over 4000 i will make 2 gears and a back plate tidied up and polished AND rotatable by hand for $500

Over 10k, Ill build a full size machine able to print 300mmx300mmx300mm custom objects and create a new kickstarter for parts from this big machine, or add them to this kickstarter?

By blob I'm thinking of 2 shapes to aim for, one being 2D, Perhaps of the logo for this project, bottle opener, tweezers?

The second shape will be a complex shape, sphere, monopoly piece?

How long should I leave the kick starter project open?

I would really appreciate feedback on this, Will you buy anything?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/16/2013 06:22PM by pyrotronics.

Keep it open a couple of months perhaps and post links to it in the general section of this forum as it seems to be where most of the talking goes on.

I might get a subscription or blob as I'm getting married next week so no need to ask how much money I have. lol. Have got the last main bits for the depositing head prototype coming though.

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Make your Mendel twice as accurate.
[www.thingiverse.com]

You should check the rules of kickstarter before posting an idea up there. Kickstarter is not a source of development funding for an idea.

You have to show a working prototype of your design before asking for money. See the following guideline lifted from their site.

"In addition, Design and Technology projects that are developing new hardware or products must show on their project pages a functional prototype — meaning a prototype that currently does the things a creator says it can do — and detailed information about their experience. Projects developing new hardware or products are also prohibited from using product simulations, photorealistic product renderings, and offering multiple/bulk quantities of the product as a reward."

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Helium Frog Website

bugger!,

Thanks for that very important information You just saved me from going down that path. I will wait till i have something working first

Both pozzible and indiegogo allow projects that don't yet have a working prototype. I think several small campaigns ($10000ish each) would be the way to go. If the first campaign is sucessful, you can point to whatever outcome it had as evidence that you will reach later goals. As it is, even though you technically don't need a prototype for pozzible/indiegogo, I don't think you'd have a chance of reaching a really big goal (a few million dollars) without one.

Best of luck.

If you were to lay down a 'layer' of water on top of a printed layer using the surface tension of the water to hold it to the top of the layer, and the water is only broken by the toolhead depositing the next pass, could that hold off oxidization long enough to allow the layers to fuse?