Posts

Finger Starter

Image
I can never have too many projects... Printed out the ' Finger Starter ' for InMoov , an Open Source articulated humanoid robot (well... the upper half anyways). Printed in polycarbonate (PC) with a carbon fiber fill. Instructions call for drilling out inner holes with 3.5mm drill and outer ones with 3.2mm drill, but I currently don't own any metric drill bits. I found the 5/32 for outer holes and 1/8 for inner holes work perfectly for using 3mm filament as a joint pin. It took about 2.5 hours to print and another half hour to find the parts and wire it up.

3D Printer

Image
As the bulk of my posts will be on projects I have 3D printed, my first blog post should be about my printer. My current printer is a DIY Core XY printer, based on these HyperCube Evolution parts available on Thingiverse . The design has been modified to use a single motor to drive the dual lead screws for the Z-axis. The print area is approximately 300mm x 300mm x 425mm. The bed is heated and with the 24v power supply, can reach 80C in less than 5 minutes. The controller is a 32bit Duet 2 WiFi , with a built-in web-based UI. Firmware has been updated to RepRap 3.0 (01/2020). The extruder is an E3D Titan Aero with an E3D v6 hotend . Hardened steel nozzles are used to reduce wear when printing with hybrid filaments. The print surface is removable and can be switched out depending on the type of filament used for printing. For PLA, and PLA based hybrids, I use a BuildTak Flex Plate . For most other materials, I have found a mirror with a coat of Elmers Glue [Stick] works best.