Glossary

Glossary

ABS

Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene

A Thermoplastic material which is used in plastic printers from which objects are made from.

Often ABS is used as a short form, actually referring to filament made of ABS: do you use ABS in your Mendel?

Bed

The build plate of the 3D printer on which parts are actually made.

Belt

Toothed gear belt. Usually fiber-reinforced to prevent stretching. Used to transfer movement from the motors to other parts of a machine

BOM

Bill of Materials. a list of parts. There are BOM for the whole Mendel and for individual components.

Carriage

The moving middle assembly on the x-axis of Mendel which holds the extruder. Often referred to as: x-carriage.

Extrude

The act of placing the build material on the build platform. Normally by heating plastic to a liquid state and pushing it through a small nozzle.

Extruder

A group of parts which handles feeding and extruding of the build material. Consists of 2 assemblies: a cold side to pull and feed the thermoplastic from the spool, and a hot side that melts and extrudes the thermoplastic.

FDM

Fused Deposition Method Where a droplet of one material (plastic, wax, metal, etc.) is deposited on top or alongside the same material making a joint (by heat or adhesion).

Filament

Two uses:

• Plastic material made into (often 3mm) string to be used as raw material in 3D printers.
  
• Extruded plastic (often <1 mm)

Heated Bed

A build surface that is warmed in order to keep the base of an extruded part from cooling (and shrinking) too quickly. Such shrinking leads to warping internal stresses in RP parts. The most common result is corners of parts lifting off the build surface. Heated beds usually yield higher quality finished builds.

Hot End

The parts of the extruder that get hot enough to melt plastic, or potentially other materials. Hot end parts use materials that can stand up to ~240 C heat (for current thermoplastic extrusion). The hot end usually refers to the tip of the extruder as it should be hottest there.

Kapton tape

Used to secure the heating element to the extruder barrel. It can also be used on the surface of a heated bed.

Nichrome

An alloy of Nickel and Chromium. Nichrome wire is used as a heating element in many extruder barrels and some heated bed designs. Simpler and less messy enamel resistors are often used for the same purpose.

NEMA

• NEMA14 - A smaller StepperMotor used in Huxley and others.
• NEMA17 - A larger, more powerful StepperMotor used in Mendel, and many others.
• NEMA23 - An even larger, very powerful StepperMotor.

PEEK

Polyether ether ketone

Heat resisting thermoplastic used as a thermal barrier in the extruder.

PLA

Polylactic acid

A biodegradable polymer which is used as a 3D printer material.

Often PLA is used as a short form, actually referring to filament made of PLA: I use PLA in my Mendel.

PTFE

Polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon)

A slippery thermoplastic often used as a barrel in the extruder to minimize friction with the filament.

Raft

A technique used to prevent warping. Parts are built on top of a 'raft' of disposable material instead of directly on the build surface. The raft is larger than the part and so has more adhesion. Rarely used with heated build surfaces.

RAMPS

Reprap Arduino Mega Pololu Shield

RP

Rapid Prototyping

Creating an object in a matter of hours on a "3D printer" as opposed to sending out a job to a modelling shop that can take days or weeks.

RepStrap

A 3d printing machine that is not a reprap, as it wasn't made by something like itself, which can be used to make a RepRap. Becoming less common as Mendel printed plastic parts become more available, but still very popular. Often sold in kit form or custom-made from scrounged parts.

Stepper Motor

Motors which operate only in discrete increments of rotation. This is the type of motor most commonly used in Mendel, the earlier Darwin, and.

STL

Stereo Lithographic

A file format used to describe 3D objects. A design program (e.g. AoI) can produce an STL file which can then be fed to a 3D printer or 3D rendering graphics package.

Wade's Extruder

An alternative to the standard extruder