The idea of using aluminum extruded in a high temperature chamber is interesting, but how would you manage the flow of liquid metal? I was thinking of something along the lines of surface tension printing, where a drop of liquid metal (small diameter) would be dragged over the surface to draw the structure. The main issue would seem to be that the first layer wont have much to stick to. Howeveby cephdon - Powder Printing and Selective Laser Sintering
Ahh, I am not using tape as the tensioned surface. That may make a difference.by cephdon - Kartik M. Gada Humanitarian Innovation Prize
So then it is your opinion that it's not possible? Afterall, infinite tension would be impossible to generate. I am not so sure... not yet anyway. /grinby cephdon - Kartik M. Gada Humanitarian Innovation Prize
It doesn't have to be that complicated..... There are many ways to create the necessary tension without getting overly complex. My method will use some appropriately designed rails and flexible but relatively large diameter wire as guide and tensioner. When I get the design up it will be more clear.by cephdon - Kartik M. Gada Humanitarian Innovation Prize
Just announcing my presence and getting started on this. My Wiki location is at Team Replicant. It might take me a bit to get everything up as I get going, but hopefully not too long.by cephdon - Kartik M. Gada Humanitarian Innovation Prize
I have been thinking about this idea for several weeks. One of the problems that I see is that it may be difficult or complicated to uniformly heat disconnected segments (tracks/treads). Also, the bed would not be one continuous sheet at that point, which may produce undesirable effects on the print (maybe warping of the "bed" in strange ways). I will detail my solution to this in my contest eby cephdon - Kartik M. Gada Humanitarian Innovation Prize
So, I see on the registration page that various projects (well 3 of them) have been registered for parts of the completed system. Is the idea that we will register for the parts we are working on, or register teams working on complete designs, or both?by cephdon - Kartik M. Gada Humanitarian Innovation Prize
Which means there's almost no space left for bolts, bars and other hardware. Requires more plastic to build then and raises the production time of one machine... this point will be very tricky IMO. The structure could be created without all of the large supporting bolts. A large portion of the mendel design can be easily designed to fit withing the constraints outlined for volumn. Their minimby cephdon - Kartik M. Gada Humanitarian Innovation Prize