Yesterday I received the MBE extruder I bought. I took the motor out of the package. WOW I had no idea the printers I've been looking at on the forum were so tiny! The attached photo shows what I mean. The one on the bottom is an axis drive motor, the one on top from the extruder. See what I mean? The Ifactory is only about 500 lbs. Compared to my Bridgeport mill at 2000 lbs, or the CNC knby garyhlucas - General
Here is a quick pdf showing how the pulleys are arranged. Hope this helps. Gary H. Lucasby garyhlucas - Developers
Well, when I started with the THK slides for about $2K I thought $3K would do it. My wife says I'm north of $5K right now! I think if I had made a budget I wouldn't have started, now I'm too far in to quit. I've got to push hard so I have something to show soon.by garyhlucas - General
I've been pushing hard and the chief machinist Tyler seen here was a huge help on Saturday. We finished all the machined parts including the Z axis mounting plate and support plus three new motor mounts. Yesterday and today (took some vacation time) I worked on the electrical panels. Those two new surplus panels I paid $25 a piece for look like they were made for this machine! The front cutouby garyhlucas - General
The machine I am putting together right now will have an 18" cube work space. I have an extra axis slide, so I could create a 36" X axis very easily. With some replacement slides of the same type currently on Ebay I could get a 78" X axis for about $650 extra, and a 36" Y and Z axis for another $650. See my Ifactory thread to see the start of what I'm building. Gary H. Lucasby garyhlucas - General
xclusive585 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Nice work man! I'm jealous. Thanks, I'm really anxious to get it all together. I hope to have it substantially complete mechanically by next week, then I'll start wiring. Gary H. Lucasby garyhlucas - General
Google Sketchup? I don't use it but it seems to be popular and somewhat open source.by garyhlucas - General
Are you guys aware that 3d printing of metals using laser sintering currently has something on the order of 60% of the market for metal joint implants? The rough surface and the fact that there is no contamination from machining lubricants is a huge advantage in that market. They make you a custom implant from MRI and Cat scan data. I had pro state cancer. They removed my pro state using theby garyhlucas - General
Well, I've finally gotten nearly every part for the factory and we've started construction. Over the weekend my grandson and I assembled the aluminum base, on Sunday I did most of the machining for the various adapters needed to assemble the slide. Tonight a friend came over and helped me set the table in place. Then I started on adding the enclosure framing. I roughly set the slides on the tby garyhlucas - General
I don't think that people realize that polished shafts used with linear ball bushings are actually TOO smooth for Igus bearings! Igus recommends a rougher shaft and it makes a difference. Also the best polymer bearings have a coefficient of friction of not better than 0.12, and most are higher. So for 1 lb of force against the bearing surface, from load, misalignment, or tight bearings you willby garyhlucas - Mechanics
Mogal Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Grandpa?!?! > is that you!! > > Sounds like a great shop to play in. > I'd be late for dinner every night! > > Southbends are nice machines, I have a SB 10k > myself. > No bridgeport though but a RF40 with DRO. > > Have fun with the build, it is half the fun after > all! I forgot to menby garyhlucas - General
uGen Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Well, it's true that most of us don't build their > machines with many printed parts although it is > theoretically possible (see Beiwagerl). There is a > trend towards non-printed parts, even. It is > rather strange, too, that only few implemented > milling since software and electronic hardware is > quiteby garyhlucas - General
xclusive585 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Cool stuff man. I envy you to do automation for a > living, and to have that full factory at your > disposal. Nice. I plan on (very slowly) getting > enough tabletop machinery to be fully capable of > prototyping and hopefully launch a small family > business from it. > > I look forward to pics oby garyhlucas - General
I've been reading in the RepRap forums for a couple of weeks now. My 9 year old grandson keeps talking about building a robot, not knowing how much that involves. We went a FIRST robotics competition and he was a lot more interested than I expected. I'm an automation guy, with mechanical and electrical backgrounds. I want to pass that on to my grandson if I can. The problem I have with 3D prby garyhlucas - General
I think the memory problem is diffent than you think. I believe that for a move from point A to point B in all four axis requires two bits for each axis or one 8 bit word per step. This implies that a circular move say 6" in diameter with 1/16 microstep needs 16 X 200 steps x 20 pitch x 3.14 x 6 = 1,205,760 bytes for that move.by garyhlucas - Mechanics
Wow! About that light bulb analogy. Yes a 100 watt lightbulb produces less heat than a 100 watt heating element, because some of it left the bulb as light. If you had an led with a 100 watt input you'd get a lot more light and less heat. However put each of them in same size boxes of the same material and the boxes will obtain the exact same temperature, because all the light striking surfacesby garyhlucas - General
I don't think the motor is a stepper. Maxon is known for their servo motors with integral planetary reducers, which is why it is so small. The push rod technique is often seen in dot matrix printers and also plotters. Nice looking extruder head though. I especially like the split heater block. Easy to be sure it isn't clogged. Does the split also provide the clamping of the nozzle? I thinkby garyhlucas - General
Crispy I have an idea for you. About 30 years ago a guy came to me with a real problem. He bid on a job to supply a winch to tow a gunnery target back and forth at a military base. He figured $10,000 would do it and found out the bronze drum winch currently used cost $30,000! When that winch ran the steel cable climbed up the sides of the drum and sparks flew off the cable, which didn't reallby garyhlucas - Developers
Years ago I worked for a small robot manufacturer. The robots were timing belt drives on all axis with steppers and encoder feedback. One day I was looking at the timing pulleys and I asked my boss if we had problems with position being off a few counts on occasion. He said yes and they hadn't figured out why. I pointed to the time pulleys and noted that the tooth profile on a tiny 15 tooth gby garyhlucas - General
Randy, I just started building my Ifactory. Printer, vertical mill, horizontal mill, lathe, knife cutter, plasma cutter, whatever. After looking for a long time I came across 4 identical THK linear slides with caged ball bearing and ball screws, and 18 inches of travel, ready to mount motors. No speed problem here, these were made to move fast. The other day I picked up a precision cast ironby garyhlucas - General
I'm afraid I don't quite get the benefit of the Rostock concept. I keep reading about the accuracies of all the various machines, and for the life of me I can't see how any of them get anywhere near the accuracies claimed. My problem is that I look at a machine that starts out with a very stiff triangulated frame, then suddenly all the moving parts are hanging on long thin rods. I can't help buby garyhlucas - General
Ah, Polystyrene! Just mentioning it brings back the smell of my shoes. My first big electrical customer was a polystyrene plant. They brought in rail cars of Styrene Monomer and bales of Ethyl Diene rubber, Ethyl Benzene and mineral oil and polymerized it in a series of reactors. Finally it devolatolized in a vacuum vessel and extruded through a die head with a line of 100 holes. The strandsby garyhlucas - General
I once saw some extremely accurate mechanical switches made from 4 balls. The forth ball was spring loaded against the other three balls sitting in a triangle. Wires were connected to two of the three balls. The fourth ball makes contact with the other three completing the circuit. The switch plunger passes through the center of the three balls and pushes against the fourth ball. The switch iby garyhlucas - General
coogrrr Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Hello All, > > I am new to this forum and new to RepRap as a > whole. I am NOT new to CNC in fact if you look me > up "coogrrr" on CNCZone.com you will see why I am > posting this question.... here it goes.... > > I have already built a large CNC that has .0001th > inch ability. I have it all runby garyhlucas - General