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    2 posts tagged 3dprinting

    An update from the cage.

    make something awesome

    Last month was pretty crazy around the shop.  We pushed out over 50 sets of RepRap Clonedel parts, and we sent molds out far and wide.   We got a visit this weekend from the Electromagnate folks doing their Kickstarter-funded Documentary, and we got invited to 3D DC, a conference in the other Washington to do some dog and pony about 3D printing and Intellectual Property (check out their whitepaper).  We got a rundown on the Open3DP Powder printer, and started doing some customer runs on ours ($35 for a takeout box sized print).  Our Doctor-Intern Lisa has been making awesome progress on the Tilt Mill, and Sutton Beres Culler, our favorite artist-trio has been cranking out an amazing project for their upcoming New York trip.

    We had our first EL Wire workshop, our first OpenSCAD workshop, and finished up our Arduino Outreach program at the Bush School. We hosted an amazing Makerbot/Mendel User Group Meetup, and started working on our own shop Clonedel.   As always, I forget to mention things on the blog, and even though we regularly update our Flickr Stream, I always miss some of the awesome that goes on.  If you’ve got a project that you want us to write about in depth, email allison@sweetium.com

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    It’s been said there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and although I don’t really feel like making sure that’s true, there’s definitely more than one way to make a reprap mendel.   You can build one out of wood, metal, or load up your Makerbot with these production sleds and start printing.   Mark Ganter over at Open3DP has been interested in 3D Printing for a lot longer than most of us.  He’s a professor at the UW Mechanical Engineering Department, and a friend of the shop since we met at dorkbot.  Being at a University has it’s perks.  They’ve got half a dozen commercial 3D printers, and have been experimenting mostly with materials and alternative recipes for powder based printers This is very interesting, because for us, 3D printing means thermoplastics.  For them, it means plaster, glass and ceramics. As an experiment,  Mark has printed up some mendel pieces for us to check out.  They’re printed with plaster, and infused with epoxy, making them high resolution rock hard purple parts.   They look a bit like they’re carved out of stone, and because the recipe for them is plaster based, they’re incredibly incredibly cheap to make.   They’re not very flexible, but they’re extremely accurate.   I am already positive the bed spring isn’t going to work, but that’s probably OK. Alternatively, Mark has also started a full Mendel build using his commercial FDM printer, with which he has calculated out runtime to be about $30/hr.   Estimated time of build is somewhere around 60-70 hours. To me it sounds like a pretty good way to break the bank, but on the other hand, it will be a standard (albeit high resolution)  ABS build. Once that Mendel is printed however, the ability to produce more drops down to more reasonable levels.   ABS plastic for open source printers costs a little over $10 a pound, and you have a growing pool of materials to pick from.  For a rights managed cartridge, it’s $12 per square inch.  There is a resolution difference, but there is a huge cost difference in the machines as well.   For under $1000, you can have an open source printer, a growing community and access to cheap materials.   If you spend $30,000, you get a little bit more resolution and digital rights managed plastics.   It all depends on what you’re doing of course, but for almost all of us, the choice is pretty obvious.

    It’s been said there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and although I don’t really feel like making sure that’s true, there’s definitely more than one way to make a reprap mendel.   You can build one out of wood, metal, or load up your Makerbot with these production sleds and start printing.  

    Mark Ganter over at Open3DP has been interested in 3D Printing for a lot longer than most of us.  He’s a professor at the UW Mechanical Engineering Department, and a friend of the shop since we met at dorkbot.  Being at a University has it’s perks.  They’ve got half a dozen commercial 3D printers, and have been experimenting mostly with materials and alternative recipes for powder based printers

    This is very interesting, because for us, 3D printing means thermoplastics.  For them, it means plaster, glass and ceramics.

    As an experiment,  Mark has printed up some mendel pieces for us to check out.  They’re printed with plaster, and infused with epoxy, making them high resolution rock hard purple parts.   They look a bit like they’re carved out of stone, and because the recipe for them is plaster based, they’re incredibly incredibly cheap to make.   They’re not very flexible, but they’re extremely accurate.   I am already positive the bed spring isn’t going to work, but that’s probably OK.

    Alternatively, Mark has also started a full Mendel build using his commercial FDM printer, with which he has calculated out runtime to be about $30/hr.   Estimated time of build is somewhere around 60-70 hours. To me it sounds like a pretty good way to break the bank, but on the other hand, it will be a standard (albeit high resolution)  ABS build.

    Once that Mendel is printed however, the ability to produce more drops down to more reasonable levels.   ABS plastic for open source printers costs a little over $10 a pound, and you have a growing pool of materials to pick from.  For a rights managed cartridge, it’s $12 per square inch.  There is a resolution difference, but there is a huge cost difference in the machines as well.   For under $1000, you can have an open source printer, a growing community and access to cheap materials.   If you spend $30,000, you get a little bit more resolution and digital rights managed plastics.   It all depends on what you’re doing of course, but for almost all of us, the choice is pretty obvious.

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