W.I.P.

Work In Progress...  Been playing around with Sketchup and have managed to learn myself a few new tricks.  Gotta love Sketchucation and all of the cool rubys and plugins you add on to Sketchup.  A few months ago I downloaded and printed this engine from Thingiverse.



It works great, but I've wanted to design my own engine for a while now so here's where its at.  I thought it would be cool to make them "stackable" so this is my expandable air engine.  The idea being you print one, and it runs off of compressed air like the one above.  If you wanted, you could then print another long block that could be plugged in behind the first, but with the piston and valving running at a different timing- 180 degrees out, 90 degrees out, whatever.






Little hard to understand, but heres a shot of the rotary valve.



Still working on getting tolerances figured out but its close to actually running.





Getting closer.  At the rate I work on projects I might be done by June!  Of 2018...

Mendelmax 2.0: Tech and Design's latest 3D printed cars.

Finished last trimester's Tech and Design car prints. Little over 50 of them, and there are 10 or 15 more that had some manifold issues so they wouldnt print properly. If the students come back in and fix them, we'll get them a print as well.

Works in progress. Gluing wheels.



3 classes worth.



1st hour's.



2nd hour's.



and 5th hour's.



Here's a few of the more interesting designs. This one was named the "Hippy Bus" by its owner.



Love the lightning pattern on the side of the one, and the truck on the far right I didn't think was going to print because he hollowed it out. Actually turned out pretty decent! May start letting them do that a bit more!



The convertible is pretty cool, the interior adds a lot of detail to the car.



In another month or so I should have some Tech 2 projects done- they usually are a little bigger and more detailed. Harder to get them to work the way the students envision, but thats part of the purpose of the printer- to let them create something and see if it actually WORKS!

Still impressed every time I see the designs these kids come up with. Most of them are only 12 years old, and these were the simplified versions of their designs. The full size models had waaayyyy more details. Some days (okay, most days), I really love my job.






On a related note, there was a great writeup in a neighboring cities paper about a rural library near me that recently also got a 3D printer.  Great to see these popping up close to me.  REALLY wish I could get some locals around here interested in doing some sort of a community class / makerspace... I'll keep trying.  Hoping to offer another class starting February, so if anyones interested, let me know!

Mendelmax 2.0: Misprints and Experiments.

Ramping up the printer for this and next tri's student projects.  Been messing around some more, tried a few things out with ABS and decided to experiment with PLA a bit. This means I've got LOTS of misprints from my experiments! Here's a few.

Students just finished their cars, which means printing about 300 wheels, at 80 a batch. Its SPOSED to look like this:



'sept when you experiment with hairspray instead of the ABS goop and the prints don't stick, and you leave for 2 hrs to a class in a different room. Then it looks like this.



Next up was a larger print with ABS and the hairspray stick 'em. Looks not half bad...



Until you look a little closer.





The bottom warped really bad because I forgot the fan was on... Joy's of using ABS. Then I tried pulling it off while it was still warm and the bottom stuck so hard to the glass (hairspray) that it "bubbled" when I pulled it off.

Pretty sure I have the hairspray figured out and it seems to work great.  Finally, the kids believe me when I say it's for the printer and NOT my hair!!!

This one is just icky. Switched back to PLA and was experimenting with temps, speeds, etc. Finally discovered a partially plugged hot end and solved this little problem.



This is new for me: tried printing a hollow "shell". Came out okay, and with a few tweaks I'll be doing this for all of the students cars with a twist.



Here's what the inside looks like:



And some students cars printing. Notice the .05 infill density honeycomb pattern.



2 cars down, 73 more to go.   Classes finish up tomorrow (we spend every class all day long giving the shop a deep clean) and the new tri starts Monday.  Will be starting right of the bat with Tech 2 on the printer, so in a few more weeks I should have some more cool projects to post.  I'm impressed with what these kids come up with, as you'll see when I get all of these cars done!

The dryer broke.

So I have a couple of days off, and think maybe I can catch up on a few things around the house. Morning started off great, then after lunch the dryer suddenly sounds like it sucked up one of the cats and is slowly ripping its fur off.

Broke.



Nothing serious though, the pulley on the belt tensioner finally wore through and split in half. The belt was just running on the rod and rubbing on part of the pulley making a heck of a racket.





Called around, no one local had one in stock so it would have been Monday before I could fix it AND the pulley would've cost $24!

Hey, I've got a 3D printer!!! Took about 15 minutes to draw it up and about an hour to print.







Installed with the belt not routed quite right.





Well, its in and it's drying. We'll see how long it last! Saved myself about $23 bucks AND I don't have to wait 4 more days for the parts to show up, so I can catch the laundry up!

"VACANT" experiments.

My principle asked me if I could come up with some sort of system to let people know if one of our handicapped bathrooms was occupied.  I kicked around a few ideas and came up with this.  



Been awhile since I've used the printer so I fired it up...



Dang, the MM 2.0 is just tooooo fast. Let me slow that down a bit.








These were supposed to be test prints checking for size, but I decided they were plenty good enough, even running at 121% of maximum speed!


Here's the rest of the sign for the bathroom... Left goes on the outside, right on the inside.



Bar will go through a hole in the door, then the covers go over the dials and are screwed to the door. That way, you can tell from inside the bathroom what it says outside.



Inside:



Outside.



Little rough for a print, but again, I was running pretty darn fast.

Cleaned them up a bit with an acetone fuming,









Slapped some paint on the disks,



and gathered up all the parts.



Tried gluing in a clear piece of plastic to prevent kids from sticking a pencil in there and turning it from the outside... We'll see how long that lasts.



Drill a hole in a perfectly good door,



Put the bar in the front disk and slide it through,



and screw the cover on over top.



On the back:



Put the knob on,



and screw it's cover on.



There you go!





Guess we'll see if it works or not.  Thats the best part about the printer-  I can make changes and run off a new copy in just a few minutes.  Glad that I've been able to use the printer around the school for more than just student projects!