Hi Toby, ... you have a line, but the stepsizes along the line follows a sine-function, so you have similar recalculations, as with my tripod-systems ... Look at my posts about the tripods ( , and ), especially at the images - here the moving structures didn't have friction or feeding. All stiffness is in the bars and the hinges or magnetic spheres are absolute precise, so this apparatus caby VDX - General
Hi Forrest, Forrest Higgs Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Mind, to the best of my knowledge none of the > commercial firms making 3D printers are trying to > do FDM at room temperature. ... as i know, work most other 3D-printers at room-temp, but not with FDM: - Z-Print prints thinned cyanacrylate from an inkjet on a powder-surface - Objet prints smallby VDX - General
... most of you are focussed on extruding melted plastics, as some comercial 3D-printers do, but there's much more possible, if you let them some time and seed helpful hints In the image you can see some of my 3D-manufactured parts over the last years. - In the foreground there are milled mini- and micro-parts, i realized on 'low-cost' 3D-mills from ISEL (the first one at 1986 for 2500 Deutschby VDX - General
Hi William, ... i fixed the bearings with cyanacrylat on the rods and in the mountings. If i want a better stability, then most with pressing small dots in the aluminium around the bearings, so they will be compressed tightly ... Viktorby VDX - General
... here i have some images from another 2-axis-positioner with a flatbed-structure and relative simply driving and assembly ... Viktorby VDX - General
Hi Ian, ... if you want clear parts in your extruder, and you can't reprap them, then it could be made through inserting of prepared clear plastic- or glass-parts in the molded or reprapped parts. Simply insert a glassplate as window or a tube in the extruder-feeding with glue ... In a more sophisticated manner the glass-parts can be inserted while the reprapping, then the extruder can over-moby VDX - Reprappers
Hi Ian, > ... and intend the actual extruder body to be clear PU to allow a better idea of > whats happening inside but this needs a really > well prepared master to mould off and the RP parts > require quite a lot of finishing. what's with using glass for better visibility? That should be heatresistant and not so expensive with standard quartz-glass-tubes ... Viktorby VDX - Reprappers
Hi Richard, ... no, the only molding plastic i used until now, was my glue-stick ... Actually i'm on dispensing of pastes (glass- and gold-powder in dexpanthenol) at room-temp and then drying, sintering and melting the paste to solid with a diode-laser of maybe 6Watts output-power. The amount is not so big, i have to coat an area of 150x300 microns, so it's not the best way to reprapping ...by VDX - General
Hi Richard, ... maybe this source ( ) is a usefull hint? Viktorby VDX - General
Hi Demented, ... spherical neodymium-magnets with 19 mm diameter are strong enough - i buy them here: For not so exact joints you can use normal ball-joints, they are often used in vibrating machines, can be bought in normal hardware-shops and the counter-glidings are from sintered metall or plastic ... Viktorby VDX - General
Hi Damien, ... actually we live in a market-driven society, so money rulez ... If through technical, ideological an social evolution a broader self-reprapping basis would be seeded, then the market-structures would be massively changed: - all material parts and usefull hardware, which the people build at home or in local community-fabbing-centres goes away from the normal building-selling-reselby VDX - General
Hallo Thomas, ... i'm in Germany too (near Frankfurt/M), didn't actually have a reprap, but i have very good contacts to some 3D-RP-companies, which printed me in past some complex parts for some hundres Euros or sometimes technology-testing-samples for free ... Send me an email or PN with your contact-datas, then we can phone (best in german) too ... Viktorby VDX - Reprappers
Hi Demented Chihuahua, ... if you havn't read this ( and ), then go through the threads and the links i posted - with a self-joining magnetic-joint-tripod i didn't have any work with aligning axes, inserting bearings, gears, belts or other stuff ... You can imagine as fixing three linear drives on a basis-plate, fixing the three arms on the gliders and apply your dispenser (or my diodelaser)by VDX - General
Hi Demented Chihuahua, ... the threaded brass-rods i bought in the tool-store, it's a normal M5-threading - i only lathed the rods for inserting small ball-bearings with 3mm inner hole. The 'velvet' was a synthetic velvet-like fabric, i used it only, because it was there In particular you can use every fabric - it forms with time the form-grip for the threading. You can define the friction aby VDX - General
... some years ago i build a 3-axis cartesian basis for a ferrofluid-nanopositioner - this one was very small, flat and simple - maybe it's of some interest for another easy to realize repstrap ... The foot-print is 18x12 cm (20x20cm with the overlapping knobs and the Z-'tower') and the possible way of 40x25mm wasn't so exorbitant too but as you can see in the second image, the XY-gliders haveby VDX - General
... the parts of the micro-scara-robot are milled from duraluminium (AlMgSi...), so they are strong enough and merely light - drilled holes in the arms lighten them a bit more too ... For my test i would prefer a dibond-compound and maybe stacking several milled sheets in a LOM-waffle or so ... With aiming of a reprappable design there should be tried to build compounds of layered plastics andby VDX - General
Hi drvanthorp, ... here ( or -on the last side) you have a sample of a micro-scara-robot with a similar mechanic - here you have an accuracy in submicron-range. As you can read above, i wrote "With stiff arms ..." - the arms should be of a leightweight, but stable structure, maybe a honeycomb- or dibond-compound (for example made out of plastic-foam and aluminium-sheets). This kind of stiffby VDX - General
Hi drvanthorp, ... most cartesian plotters have rails, which are fixed only on one side, the other runs free on a roll, so the rail isn't stable enough to move the extruder without deformation ... I found on both sides feeded rails (wire-moving) in old XY-writers and used this principle on a laserplotter-design, what worked very well - if you want a sketch, i can draw it ... For a lightweight-by VDX - General
Hi all, here i have some images of another noncartesic 2-axis-positioner (proof of concept only). Two motors turn arms (direct or over angular belts), which are closed to a kinematic structure, that can be used for dispensing or other tool-works too. With stiff arms and compressed slack-free bearings there should be enough stability to perform milling or drilling too! The working-area isn't rby VDX - General
Hi Forrest, ... in the first post i described how to build thick layers out of construction-foam ... The outputted 2-components-mixture expands 5 to 10-fold, so a tray of 2 mm thickness (as extruded from the pinhole on the tube) would expand to a finger-thick cylinder. A normal tube has a weight of merely 500 gramms and the end-volume of the foam may be 15 liters or more! In school-experimentby VDX - General
... for me the Mega-reprap-concept would be very interesting, because here i can show the supreme capabilities of my magnet-joint-hinges in a tripod, which normally is not meant to build bigger than some centimeters in size because of the structural weakness of normally milled solidstate-hinges ... So i will probaly try it on my own ... Viktorby VDX - General
... we had to bring to work a CNC-system with a dispenser-head for automated glueing clutch-tubes in aluminium-rings. With a air/vacuum-dsispenser and the special heat-curing glue there was a lot of trouble with controlling the heating of the dispenser and the nozzle. In particular we had to deal with the room-temperature and humidity at the workplace, so in the end i inserted a 3-staged heatinby VDX - General
Hi jono, ... i'm going the way of simplify the driving by using ready microstep-drivers as for example the 1/16-step SMC11 from nanotec ( ~ costs 30 to 25 Euros) or my own 1/8-step-boards with an IMT901 drivers-IC for use with 200-steps-motors (which i have in big quantity and varying sices and powers in stock, so i can give away some too). This simplify the software to output only two signalsby VDX - Controllers
Hi SOI, ... my PSU inserted in the laserplotter supported the interface-electronics (PIC16??-CPU), front-controls and IMT901-driver-boards, two steppers with 1Amps-per-phase (in chopper-mode) and a RF-CO2-laser with 5 to 6 Amps at continuous running. The temperature over some hours continuous working was not more then 40by VDX - Controllers
Hi Sean, ... a longer belt-drive was my first thought too, but this isn't the optimum yet ... If i use the original micron-screws, then i have the higher accuracy with 1 millimeter per revolution, but only 25 millimeters maximum way for X and Y (Z has two rails, both a bit harder to turn, so i have to insert a complete new axis). When i remove the 25-mm-micron-screws and insert a linear-steppeby VDX - General
Hi all, ... how can i best motorize the micron-screws in an oldstyle measure-microscope? Two images are applied - the screws goes in and out, when turned, so i have to deal with this too ... My first idea was to fix belt-gears at the outer ends of the screw-heads and simply drive them with a tooth-belt and a stepper-motor, so the belt can swoop over the disposition, but maybe someone has a beby VDX - General
... here i have some images of my '20-years-old-but-still-working-prototype' 2-28V/12Amp-powersupply and the second-generation-pcb for 8xLM317T. With more LM's parallel i can add the currents - i think with a good heatsink there's {N}x1,3Amps without limit - as much N's, as you insert LM317T and shunts ... The other images are from my 2xIMT901-finestep-motordrivers and from an MC3479P-prototypeby VDX - Controllers
Hi folks, ... what's about building a very big reprap (maybe 2 x 2 x 2 meters) with wood- or better bamboo-sticks for dispensing some centimeter thick trays of construction-foam? This would be a real eye-catcher at fairs or presentations and this sort of reprap could build really big (but coarse) objects, as for example scanned 3D-data from visitors, really usable furniture or other mega-sizedby VDX - General
... i build a power-supply with 8 parallel LM317T and shunt-resistors for balancing the differences (as in an old project from a electronic magazine). With this i drived a laser-plotter with two 2Amps-per-phase-steppers an the supply of a RF-CO2-laser. The power-supply is regulated and can output from 2 to 28 Volts at currents until 10 Amps (max 1,5 Amps per LM317T, so 12 Amps would be the abs.by VDX - Controllers
Hi Andy, ... you are right - for real 3D-printing you need a second extruder with support-material for overlapping and nonplanar geometries ... But there are other ideas, beside of extruding plastics, for building 3D-objects, so there sould be forks not only in the use of electronics, but in every aspect too. I throw in the discussion noncartesic mechanics with a very simple assembly, dotprintby VDX - Controllers