Happy Halloween

Here's the printing of a green Skull for halloween! Muhahhahauhaahahhahaaa!

But as it is a festival, and not one of evil, I gave it to my friend Gareth, here he is enjoying it!

The print quality has been improving :D

Hey readers. Here's my latest replace and repair project, not printed it out yet but it should be what the dishwasher needs when it is. 

This week I was at the Berlin relaunch of 3D Hubs at Hub: Raum in beautiful Schöneberg. The best bibimbap in Berlin just happens to be right around there too so the evening began especially well, my family and I haven't been there for bibimbap for a year and we really missed it. 

Hub: Raum is a co-working space in the Telekom building and I'd never been there before. Deutsche Telekom basically snares young innovative startup types with investment and accelerates the innovation out of them. Yes I'm being overly cynical, I just don't trust VCs. I believe probably most wrong in the world has been achieved by going down blind alleys with the promise of pots and pots of gold - I think reprap is about a different future.

The 3D Hubs relaunch event was cool though, Norma from Dimension Alley was there with her new Robox and Bram was there too showing off the latest and greatest Berlin i3. It was an evening of talks basically dedicated to bigging up 3d printing in our city, for some reason the Germans are a little slower on the uptake than elsewhere - NY, London and Amsterdam have way more hubs than we do. Its time I opened one myself - but compare these two:

Two perfectly formed makerbot Marvins

One slightly less perfectly formed Marvin from Foldarap #221

At the moment this level of quality is great for functional parts like the spares for the foldarap itself and the spares for the Huxley rebuild but its not quite at the level required for jewellery - unless like me you happen to love a piece with imperfections all the more!

Tasteful showering

Yes before you ask I did go proudly out and about yesterday wearing this. The print quality could be better but he kinda looks mean with his one eyebrow and stuff. I think its to do with the cooling fan anyway and all I need to print is a duct that directs the air more precisely like this one below by Cyrrus on Thingiverse (still a work in progress.) There are a number of different designs there, I don't think any that would fit my machine perfectly so I'll probably have to design one myself or remix someone else's.

Cool air at the moment of extrusion helps to solidify the plastic in the desired shape

Other than that I've been desperately printing hooks for the shower curtain and I finally got one to come out like I wanted it to. Lots of adhesion problems. I used Pritt Stick and sugar water and after hiking the temperature up to over 200° it finally stuck.

I must try hairspray, perhaps that would work better, a lot of reprappers swear by it. Unfortunately the wife doesn't have any cheap hairspray but so-called hairspray mousse. From what I've heard generic sticky chemicals in a can do the best job, no point smearing Wella mousse on my heatbed.

Much better than the little metal hooks on the left no?

And here's a close up of the finished article, still not without imperfections, but nobody is. Well once I get the fan duct made and blowing I assume all my 3D prints will be completely free of the signs of manufacture, then it will be a case of optimising for speed of print.

At the moment I am happy slowing it down to make it right, like with a lot of things in life, patience is a key element to successful 3D printing. Taking that element of it away would make me appreciate the end results less. Yes the younger generation, I know.

For the kids that I want to teach how to 3D print, the quicker the process is, the more likely they are to remain interested. Is that really what you want though, every kid of every character being interested? Aren't the kids whose attention span barely exceeds that of a chipmunk going to lose interest shortly after they gain it, or feign it?

Harsh on some kids I know. But 3D printing is not for everybody, certainly not yet. Most people don't even have a use for it. In most households a 3D printer would sit around unused for most of the time. Even in the future it will still just be the family member(s) with the most design gumption and imagination that want to play around with it.

Thats the way I envision my shop anyway in case any of you were wondering. Not just a one stop shop for reprappers to come and get their spares, or the latest upgrades, but a free arena for children (of all ages) to come and make customised toys according to their directly imagined vision. 

So I was looking on the Wishlist at Cubehero last night and somebody had posted they wanted a case for their Mac Mini.

I have a Mac Mini! And I don't have a case for it!

The above is the first iteration, perhaps I'll give it a print. It would be four identical pieces that fit together and slide over the top - she specified that it shouldn't completely encapsulate.

It just occurred to me too that you might want to leave space at the back for the wires. I shall just print two pieces first then to see if they slot together - and then keep another two pieces perhaps as separate solution for when you want to take it with you i.e. no wires. Or a panel that just slots in where the wires just got unplugged from.

Here I am saying I want to save the world through 3D printing and I spend time both before and after breakfast designing a superfluous accessory for a very western hi tech luxury. You'd think I'd gotten one glimpse of gold and now I'm just in it for the money.

On the other hand, no rich and famous person has a Mac Mini, only designers and scientists right? I can imagine one rich and famous person saying to another "Oh yeah, the Mac Mini, its a device without a screen. Weird huh, how do you use it then?"

It makes me think of Kindergartens all over this country and many others, where kids have the distinct pleasure of learning about the way things were back before the turn of the century and everyone interacted with technology using a keyboard and - get this - a "Mouse! Ha ha very funny Mum and Dad. History lesson over now, back to the world of touchscreen." The irony being of course that touchscreen will be a thing of the past in the time it takes for a human to grow up.

I did have a moment yesterday when I felt an overwhelming fatherliness being able to go and make a cup of tea whilst the Reprap was printing. It is no longer the case that I need to keep my watchful eye over it when it is doing its thing. I think it needs a name. Steve's Machine isn't enough. All suggestions are welcome.

                                                   

But it's like two contrasting pictures of the same thing side by side, there has to be a balance, the old Ying and Yang. Flow from each side to t'other being of characteristic importance, not either extreme. 

"West is the Best" mentality appears to be slipping slowly from its pedestal in the view of the general public here, and the same will of course follow through into the rest as soon as they all develop by taking on board and absorbing some of the things we've done well and hopefully disregard others, our gung ho lust for capitalism being one.

Replicating 3d printers will obviously help dissolve the reliance on shipping and logistics - it just makes sense to print a pair of shoes around the corner than to ship them in from afar - even if they're the same price. In the mean time there's still plenty of work to do however and we should all get back to it!  

 Voila!

Off I go to print some more, who needs to blog...

I printed the World Cup last night. After many long hours of fiddling and tinkering, I feel like I've earned it, here it is:

As you can see there are some imperfections to it, but in general I think the quality is a good starting point for more. So I've printed a couple more things this morning, despite changing colour being a very frustrating process, so frustrating that I bought a modulor extruder online (one thats put together for you) from German Reprap GmbH. Uh oh, have I become one of them?

 This is a pawn whose head stayed gooey whilst being printed and now he has a face.

Ta da!

The broken spool holder

And the new golden one, hot off the bed!

Here it is in action, printing the next golden world cup....let me go see how thats doing....

Homage to all my failed prints

So many fails peeled off a still warm printbed  

Now look. A piece for the old Huxley. Printed on the new Foldarap! Oh and there's another broken bit so I know what to print next. Then Bob is getting his complete set of parts. Then my wife is getting a cool Penrose flower. Then I'm open for business!

And here again, all my recent fails, and some not so recent, to appreciate from another angle.            Its been a productive morning.

This is the hanging x-axis of my Huxley. This design makes sure the rotation of the motor (top) is the same as the rotation of the threaded rod (the big screw at the bottom.)

Its nicely held on by two reprapped brackets like above and two screws, like below.

Problems did emerge though while I was using this configuration, like the screwy bit unscrewing just to screw with me and screw up all my prints. Screw it.

The design has also come up against much criticism because its not precise enough and it leads to problems. The most famous and successful reprap, the Prusa, changed in its third iteration (the i3) to having all the Z motors at the bottom, just to let gravity help us rather than hinder us I think. The same coupling technique is still sometimes used, like this, most of the coupling is with one of these:

Although there is a better (in that it can be printed) solution by the legendary Nophead, here

So in order to resurrect my Huxley I thought I'd make a few improvements and customise a thing or two. I've always thought there is a lot of room for highly stylising your reprap. And if the benefits of 3d printing are all about ultimate choice in customisation, then why not have a reprap with black spikes coming out of it for the rocker guy and pink flowery parts for the wee girl?

Now that I've got the Foldarap working (more or less) I can use it to print new parts for the Huxley rebuild. In reprap lore though you're supposed to print a complete set of spare parts first in case anything breaks and then do the same for a friend Bob has the honour of receiving my second set.

I can still print some interesting things in the mean time, don't worry! Firstly though I have to come to terms with the fact that sometimes I am very very stupid. Somehow in the process of cleaning up and hopefully improving the extrusion by taking apart the hot end, I misplaced the thermistor. Without the thermistor, I cannot print. Clever boy. A new one is in the post, or perhaps I can get one of the cheap Chinese ones that I have lying around to work, even if they are too big to fit in the right hole.

I spent my Friday night sitting at my workbench fiddling with settings and mechanics, fine tuning the machine instead of going out and getting drunk with my friends. I must be getting really old - I would just rather stay in and print a nice object or two sometimes. There should be a video of it right there ->

Here it is, a bit sloppy still but solid enough

There are still some extrusion issues as you can see, thats my Saturday!

I went to the bike shop yesterday to collect my bike and it turns out its not the problem they thought it was. It turns out it was the 'Windel' on the 'Laufrad' that was worn down. I know what these words mean of course - nappy (daiper for you Americans) and training bike (without stabilisers or pedals, literally run-bike, or bike for running) so finding out their second meanings is always nice. Anything that decreases the amount of ignorance in the world right?

After I gave them my best zen look upon finding out my bike was still not ready to be picked up, they kindly asked if I would like a bike. I said yes of course and in a jiffy I had in my possession a nice shiny new courtesy bike. I was mobile again! First stop the screw shop http://www.schraubenscholz.de/ except that I didn't know what to call it so I had to take the bike there and ask after it in person, which I like to do anyhow. Madenschrauben is what you call them.

 Here we go, now no more X-slider wobble like what you can see in the video up there. However, also as a video up there is some Z-slider wobble, and in this case there are no screw holes to press the plastic against the aluminium at just the right pressure.

The extruder motor is also drooping slightly from when I was running the motor too hot. Oops!

Perhaps I can drill some, good idea Steve, try it out on the old ones. In case that doesn't work, I went and printed some fresh new ones at Dimension alley for good measure. I've figured out it always pays to have a plan B (and C usually too) up your sleeve to prepare you for the inevitable.

Nice and shiny aren't they?

Now I don't mind buying good quality 3d-printed parts - after all I am going to be selling them sooner or later so I might as well lead by example! I don't even mind when they're printed by the machine of the market leader - the Makerbot replicator. What I mind is when the parent company Stratasys tries to patent ideas from the open source community, http://3dprintingindustry.com/2014/05/28/makerbot-become-takerbot/ (here is the discussion erweitert auf Deutsch http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?245,360482)

We will have to wait and see what happens in this battle between us and the big players but I don't think they will be able to compete with our sheer ability to grow when it comes to winning the war. Their R&D departments could be funded with millions of dollars but still they pale in comparison against the growing number of reprappers in India and Brazil. We will overcome.