Now that is truly weird. Frozen nanometer(>100) thin films drifting through the air.by Gene Hacker - Plastic Extruder Working Group
Actually printing ice isn't too complicated. You certainly don't need cryogenic temperatures, just temperatures below 0 degrees C. As for printing in liquids, The plastic will only float on the surface if the amount of liquid displaced weighs more than the force applied by the plastic stream from the extruder.by Gene Hacker - Plastic Extruder Working Group
Hey why not something along the lines of this: A forklift robot that can repair other forklift robots with parts stored in a "warehouse."by Gene Hacker - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
Great work! Now if reprap could only print a Stirling engine so we can get reprap running on solar power. This requires the ability to cut or mold metal though... If we could achieve total replication, we might be able to do this:by Gene Hacker - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
Before we can start printing good looking creatures from Spore, we need a support material head. It would be very hard to print something like this without support material.by Gene Hacker - General
From what it seems, air core motor still require permanent magnets. Definately reprapable. Probably fairly accurate. On eliminating magnets, variable reluctance stepper motors, have no permanent magnets. The only problem is they are weak, and require reprap to cut ferromagnetic metal sheets. So does reprap have a working milling head?by Gene Hacker - General
Jay, that's where the bearing comes in. The hardest part in printing motors is the bearing. Reprap can't print it so you have to buy it.by Gene Hacker - General
Hmmmm, I don't know, we'd have to calculate Darwin's power consumption to do that. Oh yeah, feel free to copy and distribute these STL files, just give me credit.by Gene Hacker - General
I too am thinking of printing this, if I can get my repstrap to extrude something other than frosting... Well, I have been contemplating steppers. I've been thinking something akin to a brushless motor, with coils on the inside and a bunch of magnets on the outside. 360 magnets, at one magnet per degree, which could be expensive. Well, it just so happens that they sell big sheets of the stuff thby Gene Hacker - General
There is a lot of space in space, even around our sun. We might try building a Dyson sphere to exploit it, which is really just a bunch of space colonies surrounding a star. Speaking of space and self replication, it would take about 100 million years for a self-replicating device to consume much of the matter in the galaxy. This is with the ability to move to star to star at C and taking oneby Gene Hacker - General
You know I think the simplest manipulator for SMD components might be a vacuum pump. You could use a coil driven magnet attached to a plastic membrane covered chamber connected to some membrane valves. This is pretty much what Plus, your not as likely to kill the more static sensitive components with a vacuum pump. I have access to a high voltage source(gutted ionizer), so I'll have to try thiby Gene Hacker - Mechanics
Stl file for armature:by Gene Hacker - General
Check out this reprapable 3 phase alternator I made, I don't have a reprap so it hasn't been tested yet. It is fairly crude, but it should be able to generate electricity. You need: 8 mm threaded rod nuts and washers enamel coated copper wire, about 36 gauge should do 1 608 skate bearing, 8mm ID, 22 mm OD, cost $1.00 8 9 mm diameter neodymium disc or ring magnets, cost $5.20 Epoxy or glue Powby Gene Hacker - General
You might try controlling the humidity inside the print chamber and see if it effects curl. You might also try distilled water with some glycerol, instead of tap water and see if it makes a difference. Heating the print chamber is another thing too, Z-corp printers have a mysterious temperature control thing. Z-corp printers also have a some sort of wash sequence.by Gene Hacker - Powder Printing and Selective Laser Sintering
So these molecular manufacturers work at cold temperatures right?by Gene Hacker - General
The real question is, how do you make atom scale support material?by Gene Hacker - General
Can we just forget about the philosophy and improve reprap? OK?by Gene Hacker - General
Molecular manufacturing has one problem, it takes a long time. The higher the resolution usually the slower the printing. Reprap takes hours to print something, just imagine how long it takes to print a part with single atom resolution.by Gene Hacker - General
Are the models strong enough to be removed from the powder? If they are you can try hardening them by (carefully)dripping cyanoacrylate super glue on to them. You can get big bottle of cyanoacrylate glue from hobby shops.by Gene Hacker - Powder Printing and Selective Laser Sintering
Cool, do you have any details of your printing set up? I am thinking about building my own inkjet based 3d printer. Could you provide details of your experiments? Have you been able to get the plaster to stick together, even loosely? Here's where you can get some PVA powder: You can also obtain polyvinyl alcohol from slime making kits. You might also try sifting in this or other powdered wateby Gene Hacker - Powder Printing and Selective Laser Sintering
Wait plants are 3% efficient? Your kidding me! We might not be too far from 80% efficiency solar cells: Only problem with them right now is that they only put out ultra-high-frequency AC current. Very easy to make, no exotic elementsby Gene Hacker - General
I think I just figured out what Z-Corp ink is made of. Apparently, they list out most of the ingredients in the MSDS's for the powder and ink. Turn out Z-Corp powder is just overpriced plaster and Z-Corp binder is water with pigments in it. Binder Powder Sulfate salt is probably Calcium Sulfate. Vinyl polymer is probably polyvinyl alcohol or polyvinyl acetate, which are substances used in glueby Gene Hacker - Powder Printing and Selective Laser Sintering
There is one big problem with that big yellow fusion reactor, you need space to capture it's energy. Trees in a forest often compete for a limited amount of sunlight.by Gene Hacker - General
Agar is not very reusable. Sure you can melt it down into a liquid again, but it just so happens that agar is one of the absolute best growth media for bacteria.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agar_plate) So after a couple of uses, it might get little gross. (http://librarynews.rockefeller.edu/?p=24) Fortunately, it can be made from certain types of algae.by Gene Hacker - Plastic Extruder Working Group
The main advantage is cheapness. Servos are a lot cheaper than stepper motors. By servos, we mean continuous rotation servos, which maybe used in RC airplanes, cars, etc. A repraped geartrain may not be needed. Servos also open up some interesting possibilities, a servo is nothing more than a motor hooked up to a measuring device. I believe it is feasible for reprap to make motors using threadeby Gene Hacker - Mechanics
Since furfural alcohol is cellulose based could you potentially make it from grass? This is so you could take your lawn clippings and turn them into stuff.by Gene Hacker - Polymer Working Group
Or instead of going through all the trouble to extrude clay, you could just extrude wax and do lost wax casting with plaster of paris.by Gene Hacker - Plastic Extruder Working Group
You wouldn't happen to live near a Fry's? They have this stuff: BTW, do you know if you can solder stuff to it?by Gene Hacker - General
Well then, only do conductive materials.by Gene Hacker - General
Well, with electron optics(think lenses for electrons), you could get much higher resolution. Possibly in the nanometer range(1000-100 at best)by Gene Hacker - General