3D printed parts- Functional? YES!

Been working on fine tuning the Mendelmax 2.0.  Have figured several things out, and am working on a few "Quickstart" guides.  In the meantime, here's a few of my test pieces.

One of my students asked me if I could make some parts for his dads motorcycle helmet that he apparently was unable to find anywhere.  There were to pieces, mirror images, and only one was broken.  He brought both parts in, I measured them up and drew it up in Sketchup.  The black are the old, you can see the one on the left is missing a piece. Blue are the new parts, and they are pretty darn close!



I had to go back after they printed and cut a little piece out, but it took all of 5 seconds on each part.
 



Had the speeds turned down quite a bit and the quality looks excellent. Took about 13 minutes to finish both of them.  He told me today the parts fit perfectly and the helmet works like new!

'Nuther project for the woods teacher. He wanted some rollers to fit on a pipe rail thingy he's building. Much bigger print, took about 43 minutes for each half at high speed.









As you can see, they are a little rough.  There is a setting to crank up the number of "edges" in a circle in Sketchup, but I forgot to change that and had it printing already. He took it home and tried it on the pipe, said he thinks it will work perfectly the way it is. He needs three more, then he's going to build a rail out of the pipe and a carriage with the wheels to go on the pipe to carry his cutting torch.

Pic he texted me:



And some spare parts just in case. Speed was cranked up on these too, and they came out pretty nice. Maybe a 2 minute print time.




And lastly today's somewhat useless invention. Made these snaps to go on over the extrusions to hold wires down.













I was sure someone had to already have thought of this, turns out I was right...

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:15812

I've been starting to make separate "profiles" in Slic3r- I have one for small parts with slower speeds and cooling fan, and one for larger parts with higher speeds.  Finally starting to get the hang of this thing, LOTSA fun!  The Mendelmax is more than capable- even more than I had hoped.  Still need to get the updated z axis parts installed, maybe over spring break!

Future Project, help wanted!

Alright, so some friends of mine approached me and asked me to build the a bicycle trailer that they can carry their son, Dan in.  Dan is about 35 years old and mentally handicapped.  The trailer is going to have to be strong enough to carry him, light enough to be towed, and safe.

I've been kicking several ideas around for the last week and playing around on Sketchup.  Here's what I've come up with.  Remember, these are JUST ideas at this point, I really don't know much about bicycle trailers but I'm learning a lot along the way, and would love to hear it if anyone has any suggestions.

First sketches:













Real rough.  As you can see from the next few sketches, a lot has changed.  Kicked around a few more ideas, and discarded a few others.

Small tires, with a stroller version. Will be using bike tires, so this is moot.



Seat suspension. Probably won't be doing this.



Extended frame for adding a basket or carrying stuff.



Rollbar / pushbar for stroller.



Stroller, with detachable tongue / attachable caster wheel. Tongue stows under trailer.



Other pics.





Keep in mind these are just design ideas... The trailer will likely be skinnier (this model has a 3' wide frame, will probably cut that down to 2') and change a bunch while building. Sounds like they really want me to build it, so I will, but there are a few other projects on the table and a few other things to iron out here first. May start on it over spring break, we'll just have to wait and see. 


Current things we have decided on: 

Bicycle wheels for sure.  Probably 16", as I've read the smaller tires handle cornering forces better?

Low side mount tongue.

Some type of platform off the back to mount a basket or case of some sorts.

Fenders for the pull bicycles- Store bought.

Fenders for the trailer- going to try hand making them out of aluminum sheet, but no cover on the outside.

Rotomolded racing seat from JEGS, with a 5 pt harness.

Leg board most likely also hand made by me out of aluminum sheet.


Things they seem to maybe want:

Seat suspension

Stroller castor / removable tongue

Powedercoated frame.



There you have it.  I want to try and keep very little weight on the tongue, so the seat position will likely move back.  The axles will be 5/8" rod welded to the top of the frame crossbar to lower the center of gravity more.  I will probably have to build some type of bracket behind the seat to mount the safety harness too as well.

Anything I'm missing?  Or, I know I'm missing about thirteen hundred things, wanna enlighten me on a few?!

Make-It Workshop

Well, I had TWO takers for my community class... Figured it'd help get the word out so we went ahead and did (are doing) the class anyways. I thought people around here would love a cheap hackerspace. Maybe when the word gets out we can do more with that.

Anyways, my two students wanted to do a few different things. One wanted to tune up her bike. No prob, easy peasy. Got that done. Her son (my other student) wants to build a hard top for his Isuzu Amigo. Errr... Okay. No idea how to do that but they seemed willing to experiment and were okay if it doesn't turn out, so here we go...

LOTS of figuring and head scratching.





I'm pretty limited by the size of my tools, but we picked a route to go and we're giving it a try.  I've got a 24" shear and a 24" brake, so anything over 2 feet is out if it needs to be done "in house".


We spent a bunch of time with a marker and some paper to trace the curve and transfer it to the metal.  At the end of the evening, as we were putting on the soft top, I picked up the side window and realized it ALREADY has the perfect shape and we could have just traced it.  Ah well, live and learn.




Got to use my custom built radius fingers!  Made 4 radius bends to get a much larger curved bend to match the corner around the back.




Using the edge former again.  Glad I've spent some time experimenting with it, but I still feel like it can do a lot more than I know.  Need to read into that.




One side down.  The top edge of the side will be folded over and the current plan is to rivet the top to the side along that bend.  Obviously, that means the top back corner will need trimmed still, but the lower edges seem to fit well and the edge we rolled on them even snaps in to the existing frame fairly evenly!





One side "done". Still need to clean up the rolled edge and trim a few parts off.  Originally the plan was to make the top in two pieces, then two sides, and then a back piece.  He's going to contact some other shops and see if he can find access to a larger break so we can make the top and back in one big piece, then rivet the sides on. More to follow after class next week!

Cafe Seat.

NOT 3D printer related...

This is work I had done a few weeks ago, but havent had a chance to show y'all 'till now.  I had arranged for a day off but then the plans we had for the day fell through so I was left home, alone, with some tools and supplies...

Add sewing to the list of things that I'm not all that great at...

Lets see what I can do with all of this crap.





Today's helper: Slinky.



Measurin an markin:





Turns out sewing zig zags are a little tricky. Meh. Good enough for now.



Really tricky getting the ends on.





Fitting it up.



Add some bling.



Done for now.





Turned out about how I envisioned it, which I *think* is a good thing. Still need to figure out a hinge for the cover on the back, the tail light, and some sort of mount to attach the whole shootin' match to the bike. I've got a pretty good idea how to do it, just need to DO it. The sleeping pad cushion is surprisingly comfortable too!

Fabbed up some brackets for the seat.





Made some rubber mounts out of stoppers to absorb some of the vibes...



And made a little side cover to kind of tie in the tank and seat. Not sure it will stay, have a few other ideas in mind as well, but this is what I've got for now.





Its just sitting in there loose in the last pic. I will probably have to remake it when I get the tank finished to make it match the lines. 

So that's where project POJ sits as of now.  Been so long that I think I've forgotten how to TIG weld.  I've been on the hunt for a nice welder, but havent found anything in my price range (free or close to it.  Yeah, that'll happen.) yet- have a few more "junkyards" to check out though.  I did pick up a tail light to stuff in the seat bump and have tinkered with that a bit but still haven't decided anything for sure.  More in a few weeks... I hope.

REPRAP.

A 3D printer, printing parts for itself.  "REProducible RAPid prototyper".  Drew up a spool holder in Sketchup last night, cranked up the speeds in Slic3r, and tried my biggest print yet.  It worked!  The spools of plastic come on reels almost identical to what wire for a MIG welder comes on.  I bought a few pounds of plastic without a spool (cheaper) and a few pounds with.  Designed this to fit both of them. Hopefully one teeny little screw through the center will be enough to hold it- the piece will be sitting on top of a cross bar so all it really has to do is balance the roll.  I did design a clip in the center so if I need to, I can also design a cap that will snap on over the top of the spool to the spool holder.




Time lapse of the print!  Made this with http://gifninja.com , really slick.  Upload as many pics as you want (theres around 30 here...) set the size and speed, and the ninja does the rest!



And the completed spool holder.



I think it turned out okay.  I mentioned I cranked up the speeds-  all except one.  Turned up the infill speeds (120mm/s from 60mm/s, but can still go higher apparently) but forgot to turn up the border / skirt feeds- which 90% of this print was just a border, so the bottom disc printed reaalllyy fast, the then rest of it took foooooreeeeevvverrrrrrr.  About 2 1/2 hours.  Ah well, live and learn.  Also got a little warpage on the disk part, but not bad.

Spool holder installed.  One screw down through the center.



Spool installed!  I was going to make some fancy tensioner to keep the plastic from unwinding itself, but then I realized I can just loosen the screw, slide the whole thing over until the edge of the spool rubs on something (side of the motor?), and re-tighten the screw.




And why I think its WELL worth the extra $$$ to buy the plastic on a spool.



Thought I could adapt that wire feed welder spool to the plastic, and it would probably be okay but I've been using the plastic and its got itself snarled up pretty good. Not looking forward to untangling that mess.

Got an email from makerstoolworks.com letting me know that my new z-axis parts are on the way.  Should be here sometime next week!

Where do we go from here?

So I'm having a fair bit of success with my Mendelmax so far.  Still learning all kinds of things and continuing to get better results, but I still have a few bugs to work out.  If you remember, there was a known issue with the z axis when my printer was sent out.  The new parts are supposed to be here in the nest week or two, so we'll have some more post relating to that, but in the meantime, where do we go from here?!!?

I had a conversation with a few other guys about printing with metal.  I jokingly mentioned that solder has a lower melting point than the plastic we use.  Apparently, its already been tried with mixed results.  Then I got to thinking...  What if?




Obviously, the welder is just sitting there.  I played around a little and was able to get a few semi decent ultra tiny beads out of the welder.  No penetration whatsoever, but I think with some tinkering and some consistent feeds, I could get beads about 1mm wide and maybe .25mm tall.  The trick then will be getting the printer software to think its melting plastic.  I *think* I have a few ideas on how to make that work.  Maybe a solenoid or two to activate the wire feed and welder.  It would have to have a sacrificial base plate, but that could probably be cut off fairly easily after the fact if needed.

Am I crazy? Probably.  Will I ever actually try this?  Maybe.  I'd REALLY like to, but you know how life goes... If you are interested in reading about another's attempts at printing metal, check this out:

http://blog.reprap.org/2011/06/new-approach-to-printing-metals.html

http://blog.reprap.org/search?q=metal

And a cool video with metal printing:



In the meantime, a few shots of my latest prints.