3D printers

[Joeman]

When I was in college we did sand casting aluminium. We made a shape out of Styrofoam, burried it in sand and poured molten aluminium in. The foam melted the the aluminium took its place....

Now if we could 3D print a material that burnt away like the styrofoam did, we could cast all kinds of cool metal stuff!!

Or just 3D print the shape and use it as a plug for making molds so you don't need to take ages printing a new one each time lol

[Via]

When I was in college we did sand casting aluminium. We made a shape out of Styrofoam, burried it in sand and poured molten aluminium in. The foam melted the the aluminium took its place....

Now if we could 3D print a material that burnt away like the styrofoam did, we could cast all kinds of cool metal stuff!!

Or just 3D print the shape and use it as a plug for making molds so you don't need to take ages printing a new one each time lol

 

Actually you can get Styrofoam type filaments! That's a good idea to try.

You can also print a material that dissolves inn water, used quite a lot in dual extruder machines (can print from 2 different spools) as a support material so you can print more complex objects not normally possible.

As for the superbike... Have 12 days already started? If so may be a push as printer don't get delivered until tomorrow

[Via]

I love it when a plan.... morphs completely out of control.

So it’s agreed, Via will invest heavily and master new technologies to print our very first superbike.

Deadline?

 

@via he's going to be head over heels about that.

Ohh hold on

 

[Slowlycatchymonkey]

A days grace to read the instructions cos everyone knows printers were sent to earth to torture mortals, then it’s Sunday which religious or not is a day of rest so I make the 10th Sept the start date and the grand unveiling 21st September. Looking forward to it. Hoorah for Via, printer of superbikes.

Dibs on the 3rd off the production line!

[Via]

Starting to think 12 days is a bit optimistic...

 

[Slowlycatchymonkey]

Nah easy peasy, you did jigsaw puzzles as a kiddy.

[Bender]

You just look at jigsaws though, that thing has to do stuff.

[Via]

You just look at jigsaws though, that thing has to do stuff.

 

Well it's [mention]goat[/mention] who will be risking his life as test pilot so may as well just throw it together and see what happens

On a serious note it took 6 hours but it is built (kinda). Annoyingly a micro switch for X axis stop is busted and with Maplin gone now have no choice but to wait for one off the internet. Otherwise all fires up and seems ok, moves smoothly and feeds filament through ok, can't print anything until new switch fitted though.

Also need to cut hot bed and nozzle heater wiring to run through mofsets instead, don't want to do that though until 100% sure its working as standard but as such the wiring is a mess as no point wrapping and cable tying in place if I've got to rip out out again, but I give you the superbike maker 5000...

 

[Slowlycatchymonkey]

 

Great scott he’s got it

Now just need the switchy thing to make the jigsaw thing print 3D jigsawy things and we’re there.

I think I should apply for technical assistant I clearly have excellent knowledge of the printery thingamy processes.

[Muttly]

Your command of the technical language is quite intimidating.

If you decide to start with a 125 as practice, [mention]Via[/mention] I shall gladly volunteer as test dummy

[Via]

Well wasted most of day waiting for switches to arrive from Amazon and when delivery finally turned up they had sent me a USB cable instead

So decided to see what I had and found a nice push button that I managed to rig up in its place.

Spent hours since then fiddling with settings, belt tension, remounting runners, aligning bed etc... Did my first test print of a gear and have to say I'm impressed with the accuracy.

 

 

Stopped the print at few mm high though as was just a test run.

Noticed a few issues though, while gear printed fine trying to print a smaller part resulted in it separating from the heat bed after a while, I've got a glass sheet to go on top of bed will see if that makes any difference. Also while heating up the nozzle oozes a fair bit which means when print starts nozzle is empty and takes a bit of time before it feeds enough through, found a bit of coding though which will hopefully fix that issue.

Early days still but happy so far. Trouble is only had the evenings to play with it so far so hoping will have more time tomorrow to get the teething problems ironed out.

[Slowlycatchymonkey]

With the fast progress you’ve made the TMBF Via superbike will be ready in under 12 days!

[Via]

Well things coming along nicely, today printed out a blower for standard fan (temporary for now) with that fitted then printed out bracket for new fan and now doing the blower for that.

 

 

Had a few issues with that one which I traced to memory card, made the mistake of using the cheapie 1GB included card annoying as 2 hour print and 3 attempts failed over an hour into the print.

So far mega impressed with the quality and accuracy of prints so far, the fan mount was spot on.

Got more improvement stuff to print and then can start on fun stuff.

[Joeman]

Got a link the place you bought from?? I'm curious now having seen the quality of those items.

[Via]

Got a link the place you bought from?? I'm curious now having seen the quality of those items.

 

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F142892911697

That's one I got, tbh I'm absolutely shocked at quality of the prints, took a lot of patience putting it together and getting it setup but I've not done much more than that yet, only upgrades on it so far are fiberglass reinforced belts, plastic bearings and better power supply.

Before I got it had a look at all starting problems and fixes so I knew what to do with what faults expecting most if not all to pop up, happy to say I've not seen any of them and prints have been quite good from the start minus teething problems with machine but not a single bad print.

They are shockingly slow though, I've got to print a mosfet mount and that alone is estimated at 3 1/2 hours, that said I've not done anything to try and see how fast it can go and that may be why prints are so nice that I'm not trying to rush it.

[Slowlycatchymonkey]

Love it. I can see why they caused such excitement when they landed now.

Didn’t someone print a house?

[Guest]

Timings are relative.

That mosfet mount that takes 3 and a half hours should not be compared to printing off a typed document on a laser printer but instead compare it to phoning up a supplier and placing an order for collection of a mosfet mount, then donning your leathers and riding to the supplier picking up the item and returning, then removing the leathers. Both are similar timings I suspect. The printer might even win.

Printing a part for the bike would compare favourably against hunting for stock material, designing the part, and then fabricating it in a workshop in the garage.

3 and a half hours only matters if you simply sit and look at it while munching toast and drinking tea.

[Muttly]

It might be because I have two small children but the idea of sitting drinking tea and eating toast watching the printer sound brilliant!

[Slowlycatchymonkey]

I was thinking that!

[Via]

Admittedly I've lost so much time sitting there watching it print, it's quite fascinating

[Via]

Just finished this print, it is a better filament holder as one that comes with printer was too close to motor mount so could get jammed on it. Not a complex print but amazed at simplistic quality of this one, sides are perfectly straight the whole way up, there is a printed rectangular lug plus a countersunk M4 hole for nut and bolt, no adaption needed fitted perfectly, hole lined up and screw slipped through easily.

 

[Slowlycatchymonkey]

I have that feeling I used to get when the children were young and came home with a painting....

“Oh wow, that’s lovely, really lovely, well done. What is it?”

[Guest]

From your brown period. I like it.

[Via]

Ok time for first print of my own design, this is to mount motherboard plus 2 mosfets on frame, used openscad to design which is quite nice as it uses a coding language to design...

 

 

Then into printer splicer...

 

 

Printing now and will hopefully have a photo that looks like that in a few hours

[Slowlycatchymonkey]

It really is a revelation. I cant code.... or use a printer very well! Look forward to seeing the results