Mini - MendelMAX - #30DoC days 11,12 & 13

I'm getting a little behind Blogging my 30 days of creativity ( #30DoC ) updates, but it has still been going on.

Believe it or not, I do work full time, so getting any time for RepRap is actually extremely tricky, and the daily updates have been getting later and later, so I'm going to blog a few days at a time until the end of the month if I can actually manage to stick it out that long!

One thing this has taught me is that I really enjoy writing up my ideas, developments and adventures with RepRap, but I prefer to do it after a good long session of work rather than every day...

That said, I do think it's pushing me to get around to starting all the many things I have had on my RepRap list for so long. I may not get them finished or even working, but a start is better than nothing, so I'll continue to blog ideas as I think of them and hopefully take a few of them all the way to complete solutions or working prototypes. I also think it may help as I have had so many comments, suggestions and people contacting me with similar ideas, that it's convinced me that a few smaller updates are better than one big one  when the project's finished - let me know what you think?

Mini - MendelMAX -


Recently I have had a need for a smaller machine, that's rock solid, and prints mainly smaller parts with a finer nozzle and 1.75mm filament, so I decided to build up the parts into a mini sized MendelMax (as I had initially planned many months ago, when I built up my first MAX)

Mini MendelMAX - small but great. - progress so far after 3 evenings building up.

It's not all wired up and without electronics or power at the moment.

I printed this set of parts last month, but didn't get around to deciding on a build for them, it's based on the MendelMAX V1.5 and some excellent derivatives I'll talk about below.

The lower vertex sections are the integrated design by Jib there is even a triple height version now!

The Awesome printed Y axis is by tommyc - LM8UU Y carriage for MendelMAX, and I love this design.

I disassembled my earlier frame made of green PLA-V1 MendelMAX parts and replaced them with shiny new Gold and black parts. All the black parts including the Y carriage and Quick-Fit X are made with RepRapsource ABS, all the other parts are printed with Faberdashery PLA.

I'm planning for this to print in both PLA and ABS, so I have made my own smaller heated bed with resistors and PCB Material.

I will be using the little quick-fit  'Huxley sized' extruder on this machine.

The new MendelMAX Y mentioner is really handy, as you can make your belt a little tighter just with a quick turn of the screw on the front.

The lower Motor mounts work very well, and just make the machine even easier to assemble.

For the Z Axis I decided to stick with theM6 threaded rods, they work so much better than M8, this machine will not be doing very high printing, but it will be doing very low layer heights, so M6 being 1mm pitch is a good choice.

The only thing I'm changing is by using an M6 studding connector instead of two M6 nuts, I think this should give me a little more stability, and a little more friction to deal with.

The only other mechanical change I made was to add some little PTFE end-caps to the threaded rod ends, this helps stop them wobbling around and reduces noise.

I also wanted a small printer robust enough to carry around to events and meetings, this should do the trick, it's going to be bomb-proof.

I'll let you know how the rest of the build goes, and also how well it prints.

Thanks for looking.

Rich.

123 Counting Fun for Kids - #30DoC Days 9&10

Day's 9 and 10 of my 30 days of creativity ( #30DoC ) involved my Kids, they are always such a massive source of ideas and creative opportunity. We have been doing numbers and basic maths recently with them, using the normal flash cards and coins. They are still not visualising numbers all that well so I decided to try and design a basic set of counters that could form games and number play before bedtime.

The visual numbers board is similar to the ones used in UK schools, but as it's 3D printed I can evolve it over time.

A simple Sketchup design gave me a board of 100 squares, a strip of 10 and a single counter.

The main board is 150mm x 150mm so fits on a Prusa Heated bed, I also used this model to test out the 'Brim' idea to stop warping, see below- 

The 'Brim' as proposed by Idolcrasher here  uses the normal outline that's used to prime the extruder, but given 0mm distance from the part and with more outlines makes a 'Brim' on the border of the thing being printed. the only down-side is that it does not hug the outline of the printed object especially if you print more than one thing at a time.

This was a very large single print, but I was impressed with how level and smooth the first two layers went down, this was quite a mesmerising print to watch, build up, I almost watched the entire thing for over an hour.

It's printing at 80mm/sec so it's really nice to see no gaps in the filament.

I switched to Neon Pink, during the last final layer before doing the numbers.

Very Pink! 

I was very pleased with the end result, and so were the kids. No warping at all thanks to the Brim?

The files are up on Thingiverse here, if you fancy printing a set or improving it.

Thanks for looking,

Cheers,

Rich.

Key Skins - #30DoC Day 7

The creative inspiration for Day 7 came out of necessity today, I had yet another Key given to me, and it was starting to get to the point of madness with all my key-rings and fobs. I decided to make it easy to recognise my keys at a glance and hopefully be able to remove some of my key-ring-trinkets.

Part of my 30 days of creativity ( #30DoC ) month -

I'm calling them Key Skins, and before you say, I know you can buy things a bit like this, but I wanted to make them *custom* and different coloured, also I wanted them to fit my keys and not take up too much extra space.

The first job was to simply scan my keys, import the image into Sketchup and trace around the outline of the key, much easier then measuring anything.

Then just extrude the outline and put a top on it. I made the internal dimension 2.6mm as most keys seem to be under 2.5mm thick.

Within 15 minutes I had the basic Key-Skin for the two most common shaped keys I have.

Quick Print, and they fit well.

Add some extra identification (H = House, G = Garage etc.)

The possibilities are endless! I'm sure you can think of more uses for Key Skins - Files are up on Thingiverse

Print them in Bright fluorescent colours if you always loose your keys!


Thanks for reading, more tomorrow.

Cheers,

Rich.

Half a Ball of Stars - Support structures #30DoC day 6

For Day 6 of  30 days of creativity ( #30DoC ) I'm having a rest from designing things, but I wanted to give my printer a challenging print while I worked.


A few weeks ago I did a quick test print of the Ball of Stars Created by @Dizingof
I used basic support structure and low-grade PLA just to test it out.

I have been meaning to print another one, much bigger and with full support structure. Today I set it off to print while I worked. It would have been a 17+ hour print, but 9 hours into it, at about half way it shifted on the Y axis, probably due to the head catching on the massive structure with the rather high acceleration settings I use on MendelMax.

Some of the support removed.

You can see that about 40% into the build the Y axis shifted, so when I came home I stopped the print.

Before removing support - This is what it looked like after 9 hours of printing (the half a ball of stars is inside there somewhere!)

This was my first test print a few weeks back, I didn't clean all the support structure off, and it had some unsupported areas, this was sliced with Skeinforge V46 using external support structure at >60 degrees overhang giving me some sections that sagged when they printed in free space.

For the new print today, I made it 150mm wide and enabled support everywhere, as you can see from the above Visual Gcode (Repetier Host) it was a real monster! Skeinforge had to slice for almost 2 hours to output the Gcode for it.

In hindsight a little too ambitious and I should have slowed down the travel moves and enabled Z Lift (Hop) I think it would have printed OK if I had done that.

Doing the same model in Slic3r with support enabled only gives a support column in the centre of the model, so I could not use Slic3r for this print unfortunately, a real shame as it slices in just 8 mins.

It is fun watching these things print.

And it used a fair bit of PLA.

Removal of the support structure is quite easy, but takes a little time.

It needs a little more support removed, but I'm quite happy with how it came out, and it would have looked really good as a complete model and not for the Y Axis Shift.

My proposed new settings for a future print attempt -

I have sliced it again and this time enabled Z lift (Hop) and used Exterior Only support with a 45 Degree minimum support angle, this should give me some support on almost everything, but not cover the entire model.
These are my support settings shown above, if anyone can give any advice to improve these, do get in touch or leave a comment, I hardly ever use support, so could do with any pointers you have.

It still looks like a lot of material, but compare the Gcode image below with the failed print above -

Fingers crossed, it should print well next time, and have a lot less support material to remove.

I'll give it another try soon and give an update.

Thanks for reading,

Cheers,

Rich.

Quick-fit Extruder mount and X Axis for the Printrbot 3D printer #30DoC day 5

For Day 5 of  30 days of creativity ( #30DoC ) I give you another addition to the Quick-Fit family, here is a Quick-Fit X carriage and mount for the Printrbot. Designed for any extruder's that can go on my Quick-Fit X carriage.

Mount with 3 LM8UU linear bearings and 4 x M4 bolts rather than the original 2.

Bad photo, but you get the Idea.

I have upgraded the dual bearing X Axis on the original Printrbot to a 3 bearing design, It should now perform better and be more stable doing this.

Above is the new design, below is the original - Note you don't loose any X axis movement or printing area with the Quick-Fit mount.

I'm calling it the PINKrBot for obvious reasons, if you need some ultra bright Pink PLA, Faberdashery have just launched an insanely bright and fluorescent range for the summer - * Punk Star Pink *

Files for the Printrbot Quick-Fit X carriage are up on Thingiverse Here.

While I was in the middle of drawing this for the Printrbot, a quick-fit adapter for Huxley was requested, as they share a vertical X arrangement, it should be possible. I'm just a little worried it will use up all of Huxley's X space!

#30DoC Day 5 - for inspirational work from around the world

I'm not obsessed with Extruder's and X carriages, I just really like them :)

 ** - Also Awesome things are happening over at the Unfold-Fab, right now, do take a look.

Thanks for looking, let me know if you have a Printrbot (built up) and also if you print one of these.

More tomorrow.

Cheers,

Rich

Mini Quick-Fit Huxley sized extruder #30DoC day 4

For Day 4 of  30 days of creativity ( #30DoC ) here is a miniature sized Huxley extruder, designed for my Quick-Fit X carriage.

Ideal if you need a small and lightweight 1.75mm extruder for your 3D printer.

It's a direct extruder (not Bowden) using a Nema14 Motor. 

It also has an inbuilt mount for a 30mm fan to keep your thermal block nice and cool.

It's designed to be used with the Huxley Herringbone gear set I did for Day 2.

It all seems to be mechanically working, but it's not fully tried and tested quite yet.

And I made a new Idler block with a bit more strength to it

The files you need are up on Thingiverse Here.

A little late publishing, but it's still just day 4 here in the UK, time for bed...


Don't forget to take a look at all the other wonderful work for 30 days of creation, * be inspired *
#30DoC the story so far - Day 1 -    Day 2 -   Day 3 -  Day 4 -

Thanks for looking, let me know if you print one.

More tomorrow.

Cheers,

Rich

Simplified multi-colour filament experiment - #30DoC day 3

I woke up today and had an idea for a simple way to join lots of tiny sections of plastic printing filament together, so I thought I would give it a try for Day 3 of  30 days of creativity ( #30DoC ).

Ever since my first filament joiner I have been thinking about easier ways to simplify the process. It's quite hard to join sections smaller than about 50mm manually and I always wanted a simple way to change with lots of colours every layer of an object, that would indeed look totally great!
Filament joiner here on Thingiverse if you fancy making one.

So my idea was to use PTFE tube (6mm outer and 3mm inner) to hold tiny cut sections of 3mm printing filament and pop the coiled tube in an oven to fuse the sections together, all sounds perfectly dandy and totally awesome? it should work? right?

Cutting sections of PLA and inserting into the tube was no problems at all.
I had a 1.2M coil of PTFE tube and lots of tiny sections of filament.

It coiled easily and fitted in the oven, heated up and the filament started to melt.

It has a little oozing at each end and I could see the sections were not fusing together as I had hoped.

Exactly the opposite was happening, they were moving apart from each other.

The PLA was getting nice and soft, unfortunately so was the PTFE tube. I removed it and tried to push a 2.5mm metal rod up the tube, this didn't work and I concluded the tube was just too long.

I cut the tube in half and popped it back in the oven, this time it worked a little and I had a section of joined filament out the other end. Then the PTFE tube cooled down and trapped my rod inside the tube stuck to the filament!

I had a few more attempts, but each time the sections that came out were not fused well enough together or the PTFE tube swelled and got jammed up.

I'm pretty sure that PTFE tube elongates as it heats up, and as my PLA sections were not constrained in the tube they also moved along the tube or generally decided to not want to fuse together and actually shrink in length while getting a little fatter in diameter.

So could blocking one end of the tube with a M3.5 bolt and then compressing the filament the other end as it heats up give a single filament? well worth a try at some point?

Or maybe the tube needs to be quickly cooled down so the contraction helps form the filament?

Or possibly the filament needs to be squashed down the tube while still hot and then allowed to cool. (I'm thinking that it will never come out again then)...

Or just maybe the hot tube and contents needs to be passed through a number of aligned sets of bearings squashing it and it's contents to allow fusion and also reducing the filament inside a little to give it a fighting chance to get the damn filament out of the tube again!

Thinking about it now as I type this, it's the same problem we get when the thermal insulator of a hot-end is above 60 degrees C, the PLA jambs up and refused to slide so it could just need to be mechanically stretched after fusing inside the tube while it's still all hot, the bearing die idea may actually work...

So it failed... but I still wanted to post the idea as someone out there may well be able to make it work.

It could have been great! If I get more time I'll try again, Ideas anyone?

Don't forget to take a look at all the other wonderful work for 30 days of creation, * be inspired *
#30DoC the story so far - Day 1 -    Day 2 -   Day 3 -

This is really going to bug me now...I was dreaming of printing a rainbow Giraffe for you all :(

You gotta fail a bit or you're not trying hard enough!

More tomorrow.

Cheers,

Rich