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Background
3D printing is an additive process of creation. Not unlike an inkjet printer, a printer head draws a slightly extruded image, steps up one level, draws another, another, and so on until a 3D thing is formed. There are many 3D printing processes including Vat photopolymerisation, material jetting, binder jetting, material extrusion, powder bed fusion, sheet lamination and directed energy deposition (which are rundown here).
3-D Computer-Controlled Printing posts...
- Prototyping the infinity axis | 2017 Apr 23 | 5 minute read
- Prototyping a belt axis | 2017 Apr 23 | 3 minute read
- Prototyping the effector | 2017 Apr 22 | 4 minute read
- Mathematica model..? (no) | 2017 Mar 01 | 5 minute read
- Performance testing MakerBot Replicator II | 2017 Feb 25 | 4 minute read
Now we have an operational prototype. Now we have a barely operational prototype. We decided I would focus on the mechanics of the second prototype. I wanted to improve several aspects of the first prototype. One, the robot should be easily portable, which I think works best if it can be easily dissambled and assembled. Two, the wheels do not balance the robot. Three, the effector and stage should be customized to the dimensions and requirements of this robot. In this section I will focus on the wheels, or the (Y) axis, the infinity axis. First, Saverio found this video...
The Gestalt linear stage used a screw drive mechanic which we thought would be too limiting dimensionally for our purposes. Therefore, we decided to change this axis to a belt drive mechanic. I also wanted to see if this axis could be freed from the cardboard structure of the Gestalt model so it might have interchangeable rod lengths. I went about designing these pieces thinking three-d printing would be the optimal method because I could make non-planar things without worrying about connections and alignments. Three-d printing is slow. Three-d printing, however, is also passive which lets me focus on other...
The effector pushes the brush into the drawing surface and pulls it away. Included in the mechanism is the flow of water from the reservoir into the brush tip. This design uses a 2BBYJ-48 stepper motor we had in stock in the lab. Precision of movement is not needed. In the design of the stage, I left some gaps that could be used to attach an effector shield. We also looked at an effector designed by Simone Boasso previously. With these starting points, I designed this: I created a larger guide for the vertical movement with a perpindicular axis for...
I am forever in awe of math derived computer geometries. I would love to learn how to write scripts that generate models in a CAD application soon. For the first draft, I decided it would be much faster to sketch a model based on visual cues and test it in a 3D printer. I used Autodesk Maya for this sketch. This little thing fits within a 35mm radius sphere. I am trying to push the tolerances of machine to an extreme here. The first pass I will try 1.2mm wall thickness with some temporary scaffolding. I am forever in awe...
The lab has a many 3D printers. I started with the MakerBot Replicator 2, which is a material extrusion printer which only uses Polylactic acid (PLA) plastic. "PLA is a biodegradable and bioactive thermoplastic aliphatic polyester derived from renewable resources, such as corn starch (in the United States and Canada), tapioca roots, chips or starch (mostly in Asia), or sugarcane (in the rest of the world)." Wikipedia The first operations are testing the limitations of the machine. ZhaoWei and I tested two models. The first, Zhaowei had on hand giving us time to draw the second while the machine printed....