Re: 3D printing, powder spreading

Graham,

Your pursuits are always informative and interesting...

Thank You for the video; at least one of the "How do they do that's"
seems now in reach. Building and Leveling the powder in the build
area. that "snowplow technique" is a Doh! kinda thing. Makes perfect
sense.

Do you have any patents that may be relevant? (Pictures and
descriptions may prove useful?) Claims may be worth knowing...

I'm pretty sure the Zcorp brand is the one which uses "starch" and
binder. I've got a multi-color ball bearing that came from Westec a
few years back when they first introduced the ability to do multiple
colors. The bearing actually works, and was printed in one shot.
Pretty cool. But nowhere near usable for any but a confirmation of
general size and shapes/color. Feels like it will crumble in your
hand, and has a powdery surface feel.

Any idea what they're using for the clear binder?

Which HP printer/head are you going with?

I agree that Dave has the BEST dumpsters; none like that near me
that I know of either!

So, to my "general" questions:

Does anyone have a service and/or user manual for ANY of these RP
machines?

Dave, if you've still got the machine... How about a few dozens of
pics of it from various views (even if it was physically "trashed"
too, there may be LOTS of clues in such pics)

Could someone with--access to--one of these 3d printers post some
pics of the mechanism for raising/lowering the build/supply bins?

(An exploded assembly drawing from a service manual would likely be
worth "thousand$" in what it could show and save in time
and "figuring out") The few pics on the website are pretty small and
low-res.

Thank you in advance,

Ballendo

P.S. I'm wondering how the use of the sharp "lawnmower" Dave
described might affect the build quality of the Machine Dan M posted
the link to recently. Seems it might reduce some variable enough to
be worth figuring out how to add it to thaqt "extruder-based"
machine...

In CCED, "Graham Stabler" <grezmos@...> wrote:

>Ah that's a different sort, this prints binder on to corn starch or
>plaster. I wish I had dumpsters like that near me :)

>>In CCED, "turbulatordude" <dave_mucha@> wrote:
>>On the unit I got from teh dumpster, the part was 'printed' with
>>some hot polimer, then trimmed with a rotating cuter. much like an
>>old style lawnmower.
>>
>>So, each pass of the printing was followed by a pass of the cutter.
>>the part was then lowered by some increment and the next layer was
>>laid down.
>>
>>I never saw it work, but the roller seems to be sharp and rotate.