Assembly has started
I have started recieving all the components of the new printer and I have started the assembly process, not all components have arrived but it is almost ready to start the motion system testing.
Updates
Here the latest updates on printed parts or machine updates will be posted in regard to the metal base system. Press the Read more button at the bottom of the message to see more pictures and videos.
Design completed
I have finished the design of the new machine and made a little animation of the system. The parts have been ordered and starting end of november the assembly of this system will start. More info will follow once the parts arrive.
Safety
A selective laser melting machine contains a couple of risk that need to be mitigated so the machine can be used safely.
Density testing
The last month I have been focussing on determining and improving the product density and also the skin of the 3d printed products. This is done by printing a lot of density cubes. Since the last update I have printed in total 68 density cubes to try to improve the density. The density is dertermined by first measuring the weight of the density cube and after that determining the volume by floating the cube under water, this gives the displacement of the water in grams and 1gram=1cm3.
First parts of the production model
Today i assembled the first pistons of the production model. The right part is fully assembled and the left one is only semi assembled and is still missing the seals and the 3d printed connection part that I will be printing on monday.For the next few months these pistons will be running an endurance test with 2000 layers being done in about 15 minutes. This will do almost 2 years of movements in little over 7 days.
Another step in quality
The latest result of the process development really improved the quality of the part. the part on the right is the latest one, the one on the left is the one before that.
how a small change can have a big impact
I found out that at some point i had changed the printing strategy from infill/inner/outer to outer/inner/infill. I spotted this error last time and corrected it for the latest print. This really helped with the outside finish of the part. The front part in the pictures is the one printed with the outer/inner/infill strategy and the rear one with infill/inner/outer strategy.
Start of the next generation
While doing some process development I'm also starting slowly with some design and realisation of parts of the next generation.
NEMA 23 Motor upgrade complete
The upgrade to the nema 23 motors is complete and the first test print has been completed asswell. in the pictures to the side you can see the difference between my original beer opener and the newly printed one. The new one was printed with 0.05mm wall layers and 0.1mm fill layers.The top 2 images show both openers after some media blasting and the last 2 images show the new opener without any post processing.
various updates
It has been a while since the last update but a lot has happened.
Beer opener timelaps
I made another beer opener for a friend and made a timelaps of the process. The next step is to further optimise the airflow as the printer is still disturbing the powder bed a bit too much which makes large surfaces more difficult to print.
Finally i can open my beers
Finally it was time to print a beer opener. the part was printed with 0.1mm layer height and was completed in just over 4 hours. The surface quality is a little rough due to all the overhangs and layer thickness but for a bottle opener this is perfect.