2013 review of developments, 3D Printing book release and more challenges.

#2014

I missed doing my annual roundup of 3D Printing adventures before Christmas, so here it is, with some plans and updates for 2014.

Firstly thanks for reading this blog and to all the wonderful people who contacted me in 2013, I believe this year is going to be the best yet for 3D Printing, stay tuned and do get in contact if you have something to share or a project collaboration idea.

To catch up on other things I have done over the years, here are past annual reviews, 2012/11, 2011/10

My 2013 year of 3D printing development started with a pledge to be my year of ‘yes’, wherever possible I planned to say ‘yes’ and get as involved as I could manage (with time available).

This led to trying out many new things including speaking at various shows, festivals, events and even on the BBC website and World Service about 3D printing.

I'm working on new designs, prototypes and ideas. Collaborating with different people and always looking out for other 3D printing projects and experiments too, do keep in contact and let me know what you are up to too.

3D Printing for Dummies -

One of the real highlights of 2013 was the experience of writing a book. It’s always been on my lifetime achievement list, and it feels really good to now be a published Author, I really hope to do more as the experience really was exhilarating from start to finish, something I will never forget.

It was a real privilege to be part of this book, and I was very lucky that my co-author Kalani Kirk Hausman had already put in so much work to get the project off-the-ground with the world famous publishers Wiley – so when the chance to contribute to this project came about it was a very easy ‘yes!’. We had a short timescale for the 300+ Page multi-chapter book, and it had to cover a wide range of 3D printing aspects.  The book covers some of the 30 year history of an already well established additive manufacturing industry, and looks at the current and future uses for this technology.

Many people and fantastic developments have helped to make this book a reality, I want to thank everyone involved in the project and all who kindly allowed images to be used for the book.

3D Printing for Dummies on Amazon - Here - 

You can take a look at the Dummies guide to 3D printing book on Amazon now, it’s available in either print or eBook, and various translations are planned. If you do get a chance to read it, Kirk and I would love to know what you thought.

Another interesting aspect was a flurry of 3D printing writing activity from many different people who contacted me during 2013; asking for image permissions in their own books, some are also now released and some ongoing with releases this year. I’m sure much more will be written on the subject, it’s such an amazing technology that will some day impact and benefit the lives of everyone. I'm sure plenty more will be out soon.

On that note, I also finished reading MAKERS by Cory Doctorow ( @doctorow ) again over Christmas, it's now available for free or donation download in many formats here. A fantastic story (it's fiction, not history, but will be :) for anyone living and breathing the 3Dprinting and the fabulous Maker movement. I highly recommend reading it.

I have not added as much as I wanted to RichRap.com some of this was due to the already heavy level of traffic on it, it’s about to blow another bandwidth limit so at some point this year I will fix that, update and add more tutorials and content. In the mean time I also plan to get shorter but more frequent blog posts up on here, some while I do developments rather than a massive post at the end.

Tiny Printing - 

Printing small was a lot of fun, it taught me a lot about 3D Printing and how best to control plastic extrusion, when to use heat and when to cool, more information here.

RepRap Magazine - 

The RepRap Magazing was launched, this is again another great project by people in the community to document and give a wider voice for all things RepRap. - We would like to do and release more issues in 2014.

3D Printing in NYLON - 

My Nylon printing and colouring experiments attracted a lot of attention, this was a lot of fun and very much still something I continue to experiment with. I plan to do a follow-up article later this year about Nylon, mixed materials and further colour experiments.

3DR –

I have always planned to release a RepRap 3D printer, and after a frantic 5 week development during the earlier part of 2013, I had the first 3DR ready for testing.

For me 3DR has been amazing to watch as it goes out into the world as my take on a 3D printed Delta, watching it then evolve into something much more is great.

Releasing 3DR as an open-source project occupied a lot more time than I had expected last year, but it also led to some really great conversations with people and lots of other great things. You initially think that releasing everything and seeing what people do with it would allow more time to work on other things. That was not the case, it's as much work as if you released it for sale or started a company.

I'm planning to release at least another three machines this year, keep an eye out ;)

For me the starting point into the delta geometry was the Rostock, this was a great printer to build and allowed a lot of experimentation, especially with tall prints that had not been possible before.

Open Hand (and an open heart)- 

The Open Hand project by Joel Gibbard was a fantastic project to see come into life, and with healthy backing the project is well underway.

Joel also won the Venturefest award for best newcomer. Congratulations again, and best wishes from me for the ongoing project.

IndiGoGo perks shipped out and hand-designs well under way.

Shows and Events - 

The London Makerfaire, London 3D printshow and TCT Shows were another great highlight of 2013, we have more great things planned for shows this year, TCT is moving to a 3 Day event and will be bigger and better than ever.

Associations - 

We are starting to see many different 3D printing associations and 'standards' being setup, so I was delighted when the 3D printing association asked me to be a member of the board of advisers, we are aiming to promote, guide and advise as many people as possible with 3D printing and all forms of additive manufacturing.

News and dedicated 3D printing websites boomed in 2013 and will continue to grow and mature with both content and advice. It's almost hard to ignore 3D printing now and it's also very apparent, that many people are starting to be aware this technology is becoming useful for small businesses, and at a justifiable cost level.

My go-to news sites for 3D printing news are the 3DPrintingIndustry who I also try to write interesting articles for as time allows, most recently I posted one on filament recycling (tech for trade).

And another is 3DERS.org - an entire website with news and everything you can imagine to do with 3D printing, it's amazing what and how fast they pick up 3DP news and PR.

Sharing - 

We have also seen sharing sites grow and evolve. There are far too many to mention now, but one I have used and will continue with is the Excellent Youmagine (by the Ultimaker team).

And GitHub, where all sort of cool things happen, all the time :)

Kickstarter and IndieGoGo  both had a huge number of 3D printing and associated projects up for funding.

3D Printing Future - 

As usual time and other work got in the way of all the other things I wanted to experiment with and do, my list of projects and ideas grows bigger every month, but I still managed to design and do a lot of things over Christmas, I'll get up blog posts and images as soon as I can on these and future planned work, if any of you want to collaborate on any projects or innovation, do get in contact.

Lots more to share soon. It's going to be a very interesting year indeed.

Nils posted some great predictions by a few in the 3D printing community, lets see how many happen or disappear.

And for inspiration it's world #InventorsDay - go invent something... anything.

Rich.

Yearly RepRap adventures roundup 2012

Another year of RepRapping development adventures is over (for some historic reason my development season runs from October to the end of September each year)

In the last year’s roundup (2010-2011) I had the following to say – Link if you need a reminder.

This last 12 months have been intense and exciting and what a lot of changes this blossoming industry has seen.

Things I’m glad I got on and finished – (is anything ever finished?)

• Universal paste and Chocolate printing, I had been thinking about this for well over a year before actually starting any testing, it was a good learning curve in 3D design (Sketchup) and iterative model testing.

• I have countless people ask me about Chocolate printing!
• It has had quite a few revisions and design changes by other people for other machines and bigger syringes
• Parametric! Version by BonsaiBrain (ifeelbeta.de) - See Thingiverse for details


• Huxley Paste Extruder by mattroberts -Thingiverse

If you have not yet seen the wonderful video by RepRapBCN, take a look below!

• The 3way extruder – Colour blending, lots of further potential, great fun doing it and seeing the first prints.

Joris Van Tubergen also made a 3 filament extruder, but his goal was to be able to extrude more filament for the amazing Kamermaker project his aim is to be able to extrude 1kg and eventually 5kg/hour of plastic.

  

• Slic3r -

Switching across to Slic3r and doing the tutorials was a good experience.

Part1 - Settings and extruder calibration

Part 2 - Filament calibrating and printing

Part 3 - How low can you go? - printing with small layers

I have been meaning to mention the various translations of the Slic3r tutorials out there and also a new getting started guide by Ivan Bortolin and Lorenzo Cantini - the main website Can be found here

The new guide in English PDF and Italian Here

Other translations of my Slic3r tutorials and extended work can be found in Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Italian. - if you know of more do let me know.

Slic3r continues to move on and get stronger with more people using it every month.

If we had 3D printing awards Slic3r would get my vote for first place. My warmest thanks go to Alessandro for bringing Slic3r to all of us.

30 Days of creativity – Was hard work, but a very good focus for getting things started and having some fun with my printer.

I have really enjoyed printing more things for my kids this year, they love them!

It’s certainly easier when you have more than one printer up and running.

More group meetings with local RepRappers – it’s been a great year for getting people up and running.

Things I have not finished quite yet –

• Geared Peristaltic Pump – I have grand plans, and it's working so well but it’s going to take more time before I can get back onto this. Keep an eye out on this development, I'm planning a dedicated printer to use it for something interesting.

• Ceramic Printing, I had all the best intentions to do more ceramic printing, Precious metal clay printing and ‘other’ materials, but just not had the time to set it up again and have a good run at it. – When I think back I did the whole paste extruder development in about 2 weeks. - New 'RepRap year' resolution - 'find, use and develop more materials to 3D print with'

• Further rounds of Polycarbonate printing, I started and then got side-tracked. I’ll pick it up again at some point along with other sorts of materials (Like Laywood).
  
  

• My own machine development – Again started, many things worked out, but everything moves so fast it always needs a little rethink.
• My design looks a little like the TK-O from LulzBot (Aleph objects), so I may take some more inspiration from that to finish-off my 'ultimate 3D printing machine'.
• Recent time has been taken up with Rostock (see below) so what I learn from that and seeing how the TK-0 develops can go into the next revision
  
  
  
  

• Rostock+, doing it now, but stalled a little for the last 6 weeks, need to build some more electronics. 
• The ‘Plus’ part is for the use of Spectra fishing line (Like Tantillus below) instead of belts and pulleys, should look cool and be FAST!

• Tantillus, Building it up now...

• More tutorials and guides, I have started some, it’ll be easier to focus on them in the winter, but I want to make it easier for people to get good 3D printing results and understand more things about the process. > Still learning every day myself!

Things I wish I had more time/resources for –

• Actual 3D modelling and design, I’m planning to spend more time over winter doing 3D design and modelling, some organic and creative, other things more technical.
  
• I want to learn Autocad123D as I have failed to spend any time with it this year – if anyone knows any good starting guide? – I have not really used the Autocad interface and I find it quite counter intuitive.

• I have been inspired with so many works of 3D printing Art this year, far too many to mention, but ones you should really take a look at are the beautiful works by @Dizingof , the mechanical wonder of the planetary gears by aubenc and very stunning Trilobite’s! by AuntDaisy
  
   

• Print challenges are Great! - (link to the RepRap forum printing challenges section) 
• I love to print tricky models, it takes time to work out the best settings and it’s often different for each complex object, but hopefully we will continue to do challenges – they are a great way to learn ‘how to 3D print’

• I do wish I had more time to meet more of the 3D printing community; we need a few more places to meet up during the next year. Any ideas? maybe video links?

• Visiting more printing events and shows, they are great, but take time and money to attend. And are not very family friendly L very disappointed I could not make the London3Dprintshow and the 3D printing event in Eindhoven, but I did make it to a few events.

• I also didn't use IRC as much as I wanted, started off the year using it, then also started on Twitter and didn't have the time to do both along with doing actual physical developments of things.
• But I’ll get back on IRC soon, it’s a great community.

• I answer a lot of e-mails and messages, and try to help people as much as I can, recently the RepRap forum has boomed with new people and questions; it’s hard to keep up!

• I started a dedicated website (richrap.com), with the idea to show projects, tutorials, guides and general RepRap related developments. It needs more time spent on it, but it’s a start.

• Software development, I should spend more time refining some of my developments (3way extruder to be automatic, more firmware integration) I need enough long periods of time to focus on it.

Things I have not started yet (but are on my list) –

• Electronics – I was sure I would have time to do some real electronics development this year, but again so many new boards popped up, my own plans didn't need as much attention as I had thought- still we are some way off a real plug and play solution.
• Adrian just posted up a great little adapter to give your Sanguinololu a 32bit ARMboost
  
• A really big printer! – I really wanted to do something like the Kamermaker (room builder) - cost, space and time just let me down, but I still have a vision for something not quite as big...
  
• Concrete/cement printing – I’m seriously thinking about a good way to do this - anyone want to help me make it a reality?

• Loss wax casting (with PLA) – Some good examples this year, would love to give it a go.

• Resin printing – Almost got motivated to start on a LemonCurry, again didn't get time past reading all about the great project. – Interesting to see the Formlabs printer using a Laser and Resin just got over $2.9 Million on Kickstarter, Wow!

• Experimenting with new support materials – I did just start doing this, some interesting results with sugar, needs a lot more work, Sugar seems very compatible with PLA.

• Wax printing – Still not sure how best to move forwards with this – maybe try a new design of my heated universal paste extruder, it should work.
  
• A Portable 3D printer - I still don’t have a true portable printer (folding or just easy to carry) – finishing Tantillus is my best option for the moment.

• Lasers! – Powder and Sintering – I doubt I’ll be able to work on this area anytime soon! But it’s on the list!

I would still like to buy a new Lathe; still saving up…a few people have offered to help me out with new things needing machining – Thank you.

+++ Lots of stuff I have not even thought of yet !

Final thoughts - 

So, I have had some real proud moments in my 2012 RepRap developments; I have had fantastic people from all walks of life contact me. My work has been featured on lots of blogs and in magazines, interviewed, mentioned and cited in reports and academic works. I have done presentations and uploaded work and videos to university intranets and had people translate my projects into different languages.

Thank you all.

This is all open-source and as a hobby on a very teeny tiny budget, and I’m just one of many makers doing lots of things in this Great community.

The next development cycle has now started, I have some big goals for the next 12 months, no one knows where 3D printing is heading, and what it will look like in a further year, but it will continue to be exciting.

If you can make it, come and join us at Cheltenham Geeks in November, It's free but with limited spaces, go and register now over at meetup.com. Hamish and I will be presenting an evening of RepRap fun and developments, along with 3D printing demo's and beer, what more could you want? 

Thanks for reading; I hope you are enjoying the adventure, See you soon for more.

Rich.

Yearly review of my Rep-Rapping adventures Sep2010 -> Sep2011

Wow! that went quickly. Review Sep 2010 - > Sep2011

I have some really interesting things planned for the next 12 months rep-rapping, but here is a round-up of my adventures in the last 12 months -

Starting out -
When I first started I made a few incorrect assumptions about the available DIY 3D printers out there, this initially led me to design and build my Screwball-Bot, very strong, highly accurate, but quite slow and VERY heavy.

My advice to anyone thinking about making 'the ultimate', 'strong' 3D printer out of T-slot and ballscrews, don't do it. It's just way overkill, I really enjoyed making Screwball-Bot and I have a really cool plan for it's ongoing use but a Prusa Mendel is almost as accurate, much faster and much easier to build.

If you want a 3D printer make a Prusa Mendel. but if you really want (and need) to be able to Mill/CNC then maybe T-slot and ballscrews are still a good option for you, but think if you will ever really do that when you have a 3D printer? I have never bothered with Subtractive / CNC machining even though I have a machine that could do it really well.
And if you don't fancy sourcing all the parts for making a Prusa, check out the eMaker Huxley, it's a lovely machine (I have one) and is a great way to start on your journey into DIY 3D printing.

Screwball-Bot Links - Concept, Design, Build-up, Wiring, Bowden_Extruder, Test, Printed Results with Reprap Host,  printed results with Skeinforge, Multicolour Printing

Most popular Blog posts -
According to the stats my most popular Blog post is on Skeinforge V41, it now needs an update and maybe a few more details about how to refine settings and what some of the other functions do so maybe I should do an updated one, and as many people now use SFACT maybe that's also worth a write-up.
* We have Skeinforge V42 just landed officially, that's going to be fun - check out the SKIN function* -

Polycarbonate Printing has rocketed up to the number 2 spot.

The other most popular posts are my DIY hot-end and the high-power hot-end
The Filament joiner
Colour 3D printing
Pimp my Mendel - Mendel *Bling*
Masterclass event Organised by eMaker
Bowden Extruder and 1.75mm Push-fit Hot-end

Not many people showed much interest in the Microscopy I did on extruded filament, which is a shame as I thought that was quite neat and I need to do some more to help with understanding the Polycarbonate printing process.

Multicolour printing (Layer selective colour printing) -

 

One of my most interesting adventure was into colour printing, this was always planned from the very start and now we are seeing all sorts of new ways to do this, so it's going to be really fun watching future progress in this area.

My particular way was to join sections of coloured filament together (with my filament joiner)
And as far as I know at least one other person has managed to do the same, with cool results.

Printed by Lenbok

And as Rep-G now has a Dual extruder option, things like these below are starting to pop-up.

Take a look at this 2 colour 3D Globe 

Prusa Mendel's -
Building them is addictive, they are just so neat, and it's great helping people build them up.
My collection is growing.
My original Bath Mendel that's currently being upgraded.
And the pimped-up Mendel *BLING* is working well.
My eMaker Huxley Machine (Number 8) - Blog post on this planned.
Shortly the British Mendel will be posted, I'm planning on that machine to accommodate a dual extruder
And then after that who knows, but I'm really enjoying watching progress with the Vertical X carriage challenge by bryanandaimee and I have some other ideas for a 'Hybrid Prusa'
All of my machines have built-in Filament holders, it's quickly the first problem anyone faces after getting the printer working.

Firmware -
I'm only really using Sprinter because of the SDCARD support and the fact it works really, really well and is very easy to understand.
Many others are worth watching, but for me until they have SDCARD support I don't have time to test them.

Electronics -
This would have been an obvious area for me to develop, but so many people are working on hardware enhancements at the moment I'm more than happy to use what's already available.

I have not tried Gen 6 or Gen 7 and don't really see a personal need to use them, the SDCARD support of RAMPS and Sanguinololu electronics are really important to me, so I'm looking forward to any new hardware with local memory or SD support the connection to the PC is becoming much less important.
LCD displays and menu / navigation keys are also increasing in use.

Extruder's -
Again, at the start I believed that I could make the 'ultimate' Extruder, and I believe 'this design' is good and works extremely well as a Bowden set-up. But for Prusa Mendel I would recommend you start with Greg's excellent accessable WADE style and as I have done, then refine aspects for what you need.

Hot-Ends (and cool/cold zones) -
It sometimes looks like Everyone tries to make their own Hot-ends when starting out, (It's the most searched term on my blog stats) it is a critical area of the machine and can have such a massive effect on reliability and quality.
I have made quite a few now and I'm still not completely happy with all aspects but for what it's worth my current angle on this is to use 2 x 10Ohm 3W resistor's in parallel for heating element, a triangle shaped heating block and a PTFE liner (tube) for filament transport that goes right from the hot-end to just short of the Hobbed bolt inside the extruder body.
I Still use PEEK (and PTFE) as the cool transition zone but any new investigations will start to use Stainless steel (and other materials) as the 'cool' zone.
And use these Thermistors, they are so much easier than the tiny ones normally used.

I also have a little fan duct for assisting the cool-end that's designed to fit onto Greg's X-Carriage, this really helps quality and is essential for extreme long-running print runs or build-plates.

Plastic (Filament) -
I have found out a lot about plastic and still have so many more things to learn and experiment with in this area, but for a status so-far I can say the following -

PLA - (Start with PLA), it's easy to extrude and gives good results. My favourite PLA supply is from Faberdashery, it's simply the best filament I have used to date, dimensionally excellent between different colours and batches, colour intensity and choice is amazing and it extrudes so smoothly, no blobs, less ooze and no bubbles and best of all it's not brittle - (I have now used and tested many colours from 8 different PLA suppliers all over the world - a future Blog post planned on this).

ABS - I use it for Extruder's, X-carriages and Y bearing holders and I don't like using it. yes you can get some funky colours but it's annoyingly softer than PLA so I personally tend to get more filament drive issues (clogged hobbed bolts usually) I need to find a nicer way to use it more, but it's not my preferable material.
Again tried 5 different suppliers so far and usable quality seems more of an issue with ABS than with PLA.

Polycarbonate - I'm still testing and not very many (any?) people seem to have used it in DIY 3D printing, but WOW! it's strong and could be the very best material to use for machine-part Rep-rapping, very interesting. - And thanks to everyone that has contacted me about the Blog post and testing, I have had a tremendous response and it's great to see so many enthusiastic and supportive people involved in this wonderful project. Thank you.

PC-ABS - Still to test this mix, the intention is to lower the required extruding temperature.

Other materials - stay tuned, some more are planned (I'm also open to ideas?)

Meeting people (other rep-rappers) 'in real life' -
It was a good year for sharing, we had a really great Masterclass weekend organised by Jean-Marc of eMaker and for me the West of England RepRap user group is starting to get organised and planning to meet regularly.

I can't wait to see what we all do in the next year, it's going to be great!

Resources and contact-
My Youtube channel is here, all HI-Def video content.
Thingiverse Here
You can find me on the Reprap Forum (PM me if you want to make contact)
eMaker forum
Reprap Wiki
And at some point soon I'll find time to try IRC
Should I bother with twitter?

I love reading other people's Blogs, far too many to list, but thanks to all the re-rappers that have helped, problem-solved, discussed or generally inspired me to be part of this great project.

So if you have managed to read this far down I would really like to hear from you on what you would like me to investigate, design, experiment with over the next year? I don't have infinite time or resources, but I'm interested and up for any challenge connected to 3D printing.

Also this would be a great time to tell me what you like and dislike about my Blog posts or content?

Any feedback greatly appreciated.

I wonder what 2012 will bring to our industry? Predictions anyone?

Rich.