FlatPack
A FlatPack RepStrap or FlatPack RepRap is analogous to flat pack furniture. Some characteristics common to all three are:
- Most of the parts are effectively 2D shapes cut out of flat materials. (Rather than arbitrary-cross section Extruded Aluminum or the thick, complicated 3D shapes that can be produced by a rapid prototype printer).
- Since most parts are flat, they are easy to stack and pack into a relatively small box, making it easier to store and deliver.
- It requires only simple tools to assemble.
A FlatPack RepStrap -- such as PonokoRepRap or LeCorb or RapMan or CupCake or CupCakeStrap or Isaac -- is designed to make the same thick, complicated 3D shapes that the RepRaps can make -- for example, all the reprapped parts needed to build a Mendel. However, a FlatPack RepStrap is unable to make parts identical to the parts that went into it. Since cutting such 2D shapes is relatively easy with *other* simple tools, however, this is no great loss -- and it makes FlatPack RepStrap a useful RepStrap pathway to start from simple tools and end up with capability of producing thick, complicated 3D shapes that can only be produced by a rapid prototype printer.
It appears that it takes fewer parts and is therefore faster to assemble an adequately stiff outer frame out of a few large flat sheets than out of a bunch of studding (allthread) and nuts and angle braces.
A FlatPack RepRap -- such as most LaserCut RepStraps (Builders/LaserCut RepStraps) designs -- is a machine that designed to both be assembled out of such parts, and then cut flat materials into parts identical to the parts that went into it. (A FlatPack RepRap does not necessarily have the ability to make thick, complicated 3D shapes like other rapid prototype printers, but that seems like a useful ability to have, and it apparently only requires swapping out the head).
A CNC Router is one machine that can cut such shapes out of flat materials.
A Laser Cutter is a very different kind of machine that can cut such shapes (Laser Cut Mendel Pulleys) out of flat materials.
A water jet cutter is another kind of machine that cut such shapes out of flat materials.
Structural frame materials suitable for building FlatPack designs include
- plywood: many PlywoodRepRaps
- MDF (medium-density fibreboard): SGBot, OverlapStrap[1][2], WedgeStrap [3], RepStrap Bertha[4] ... also used as the build platform in many, many RepStraps and RepRaps.
- acrylic: Huxley Seedling, BitsFromBytesRepRap, Delta, ...
- polycarbonate: Kiwi-M5 Mendel Battle Tank
- Is it possible to build a RepStrap mostly out of "Laminated Laser-cut Cardboard"[5]?
- ... other materials ...
... Is it possible to take a FlatPack RepStrap design intended for one material -- say, acrylic -- and built it out of some other material -- say, MDF ? ...
... what other kinds of tools can cut such shapes out of flat materials? ...
... mention something about Flatpack PourStrap and PlywoodRepRaps ...
... MegaRap is designed to cut a full-sized sheet of plywood ...
water jet cutting vs laser cutting
Further reading
- If you don't have access to a laser cutter, PrintItStickItCutit describes an alternative way to cut out all the pieces of a FlatPack design using low-cost tools.
