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!

Leftover Printer Projects.

So I found a few pictures from my tech 2 class from last school year.  Thought I posted them already but apparently not, so here they are.

I gave them a pretty simple set of directions:  Design something in Sketchup with at least 3 different parts, one of which must "move".  I had several kids try and do cases for phones and ipods, but they proved a little to detail rich for most of them.  Here are a couple that I managed to take pics of before they left for the year.

Airplane.  Printed in several different pieces then assembled with glue.  The propeller spins!





Ipod charging stand.  No moving parts, but very functional!



 

Lego guy and a robot.The one on the right has moving arms.



Turntable.  Tried printing rollers for it but ended up using ball bearings.



f
And a couple of pics while on the printer.


 


 

There were several others, but I didn't get a chance to take pictures of them.  Had a couple of R/C winches and a really cool bicycle with spinning wheels and a working set of handlebars.  I'd like to reprint that one for my classroom sometime.

Just for fun, a few from today.  Making an "Occupied" sign for the handicapped bathrooms at school.  Cranked up the speed, man is that thing fast!




 
 

There you go.  I'm sure we'll have plenty of projects to post in the coming months!

Printer prep. Got 300 kids that want to play with it this year!

Dug my MM 2.0 out of the closet and got it set up and running in anticipation of 300 new students that want to try it out this year...

'Course, had to do a test run...









Printer ran great, although my design needs some tweaking to prevent warpage.

Thought I needed to give the printer a workout, so I found a broken bit of plastic I needed repaired.

I've got Pelican cases on my KTM, and one of the latches lost some teeth. The release would still catch and sort of hold it on, but I didn't want my lunch flying out on the way to school.

Gettin the dang thing apart proved to be a chore... Had to drill a hole to get to the back side of the pin so I could punch it out.



Pin on its way out:



Viola! Latch removed. You can sort of see where the broken teeth are- the bottom piece where it sticks down is supposed to have a hook on it.



Sketchup to the rescue.



Took me about 5 attempts before I got one that fit nicely and pulled the door shut tight enough.

Gettin a print ready:



One of the early attempts:





Heres the one I'm currently "testing". It was printed with only 10% infill, so I don't think it will hold up long. We'll see. Already found a few minor changes I want to make, but here it is as printed:



Cut and ready to fit:



Assembled:



Installed.



So here is the before:



and the after:



Had some issues with the printer this time. Think I've had problems with my control board from day one (pretty sure its one of the first RUMBA boards- every now and then I get a random issue where after every move, it pauses for about a second.  Think I found a workaround today though). If I have any money left over in the school budget I might just spring for a new one to rule that out.

Also going to start experimenting with settings (jerk, in particular) to see if I can get better quality and higher speeds.

One other thing (okay, 2) that I want to learn more about is Bridging and "moving part" prints.  Both I can attempt with this model-  could do 2 bridges and have only 2 pieces printed instead of 3, and print them in place.  The harder one would be to print bridged, with pins in the holes so I didn't have to use metal.  Probably too weak for real life application, but it would be pretty neat to print the part, pull it off and have a moving part with out any other assembly!