Geek alert, 3D printing, rapid prototyping / RepRap Mendel

I think I know what Tynan is up to.

Here is one of the 3D printed items on Flickr.

The comment HAS to be sarcastic. They made a polystyrene cup for goodness sake!

Hack A Day is a good blog for this sort of stuff because they love it.

http://hackaday.com/tag/3d-printing/

Lots of Blog posts and links to stuff about 3d Printing.

The comment HAS to be sarcastic. They made a polystyrene cup for goodness sake!

Heh, I think it was a "well done for finally getting the fucking thing working"..

3d printing with ABS if fairly temperature sensitive, so it entirely didn't work until a couple of weeks ago ;)

Bump.

Going to interview the chap behind this, Dr Adrian Bowyer, sometime in October, anyone have any questions they want asked?

Well excited :)

Article and video recently in the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/technology/14print.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=3d%20printing&st=cse

Nice read, thanks for that.

kinda, sorta, maybe related

YouTube - Foam Printer

So, 7 years on, I have a 3d printer and 3d scanner sitting under my desk at home. Any other 3d printing enthusiasts on here?

not so much 3d printing atm but considering building my own CNC machine and been using school stuff when I can actually get access... Definitely interested to experiment with 3d printing when I actually get the time/opportunity though.

Im wondering if i can purchase somebody's skills..i require two new shims for a bladed corima seatpost to make it 27.2mm as the originals have begun to perish and break up. Is polymer based 3d material available likely to be up to the job of being clamped tightly to prevent slippage? and could the design be modified so that the top lips of the spacers are not at 90 degrees but rather slash cut. i have considered that other materials may be able to do the job such as wood or maybe recycling an old round carbon seatpost.

From my understanding, most 3D printing based polymers deteriorate quite rapidly-especially if in contact with oils etc. So it might do for a short while but I don't know if I'd trust it to be load bearing like that as it will inevitably distort over time and could split.

If you have the seatpost you could quite easily get a couple of split shims milled out of aluminium or similar? Again, I don't know if wood would be prone to splitting.

You could always buy a bag of alginate, make two really simple molds of the shims and then use a hard grade of two part silicone to cast them (the kind they make cooking spatulas etc out of). Super easy, non-toxic, takes compression well and wouldn't deteriorate.

I am not an expert but I do know that the more common 3d printable materials such as PLA and ABS certainly wouldn't be able to handle the compression required.

There are people out there with some pretty rad printers out there though. I saw some carbon reinforced filament that is supposed to be ok under compression loads but it also eats your extruder nozzle so i'd be surprised if many people use it.

If you find somebody who can print it in a suitable material I'd be happy to scan it for you but I suspect that anybody with specialist enough kit to do that kind of job would have a scanner of their own.

I think for the shape of the seatpost it would take anyone with the equipment a few minutes to just measure and model the profile of the post and then extrude/subtract from a 27.2 diameter tube. For the complexity of the object I think just popping into a machine shop would be the best bet anyway-might be the kind of thing @Hulsroy could knock off quite easily

^ And that's why I'm not an expert.

cheers for the replies all. It may just end up being a DIY project using quickalloy or something similar.

Take a look at Alginate molds-super cheap and quick to make-a £5 bag would do you easy-the silicone might be about a tenner if you shop about for a small kit.

You could measure how far in your frame the post is going to go, then make your thingy to go either side and under the post in the right length so there's no chance of slipping.
So all one piece, sort of U shape rather than two piece || shape

Trying to decide on a 3d printer to get for prototyping parts, anyone got any thoughts? Looking at prusa i3 Mk 2 or a davinci xyz 2.0 atm. Has anyone used them?

I've got a xyz 1.0 and its a lot of printer for the money. Physically and functionally.

You're limited to xyz filament which is pricey though. Of course, you do what I did and flash the firmware to print generic filament via Repetier instead but that isn't for the faint hearted. It involve shorting circuits and emulating eeprom updaters.

Formlabs Form 2.
Renders all other current desktop printers obsolete IMHO. FDM can >>>>>

This.

£4k now though, which is a big chunk out of my CNC mill fund.

Have found a XYZ 2.0 with repetier firmware for £300, so will be giving that a go. If I get on with it then I'll grab one of those.

£4k now though, which is a big chunk out of my CNC mill Volvo fund.

Unlike some (cough Neil cough) I actually spend very little on my volvo. Most of it I do myself, badly.