Re: 3D Printer fun

Hi All

Thought I'd jump here with some old information...

Many moons ago, I built a similar system using a stripped-down inkjet
printer (old gummed up HP Deskwriter as I remember).

Anyway, the system was to lay down a layer of cornflour (cornstarch in the
US?) then fire the pattern on using sugar solution - anyone that can cook
will know how hard this mixture can be when it goes off!
Being a Scotsman of course, the financial advantages had some appeal :-))
The Z axis was a really crude M6 threaded stepper - the powder was dumped
via a small hopper at one end and spread using a plastic spreader attached
to a model aircraft servo (financial again :-) The whole assembly moved
under the printhead .The print area was quite small - about 70 * 70mm.
The sugar solution was dumped into the printhead the same way that we refill
cartridges today (syringe).
As you can imagine, the initial results were crap - the main problem being
to find a decent solution to the powder spreading - ensuring also that
there weren't any draughts helped :-)
However, with perseverance, I eventually produced a semi-useable part (the
only one :-) - it was a special aileron horn for a model a/c I was building
at the time. I never did produce the rubber mould for it, but the part is
still sitting on my workbench somewhere today (assuming it hasn't dissolved
(the parts are a little hygroscopic of course - perhaps 30 mins at gas mark
5 might help :-)

I didn't have any special STL software to produce the rasters for each layer
- I ended up building the original model in Vectorworks on my Macintosh,
then manually taking a cross-section every 0.5mm to produce each layer -
PAINFULL !! As an aside, I did the same thing to produce one of those
pharaohs heads in balsa wood :-)))

The printer was just attached to the printer port on the mac - the other
items were serially driven using a PIC attached to the modem port - all a
bit agricultural of course - mad eh :-)

Perhaps this may give someone a few building blocks for something a bit
fancier. One thing I would suggest 'though is to use a raster system rather
than the vectored approach of the usual CNC "router".

I'd be interested to see photos of any attempts that might be made - I
always fancied having another more serious attempt at it.

Cheers

Neil



___________________________________________________________________________

Neil D. Gillies Tel: +44 (0)1383-823489
iGull Technologies Fax: +44 (0)8707-059481
11 River View Mobile: +44 (0)771-4330793
Dalgety Bay, Fife neil@...
Scotland KY11 9YE http://www.igull.co.uk
http://www.sea-gull.demon.co.uk