The original design used to have a printed ABS top roller and I just pushed the roller against the flanges and finger-tightened the nut.  The problem was people kept taking it apart, so I added rubber bands to pull the roller down, and a nylock nut to prevent tool-free disassembly.  Then the rubber bands kept disappearing, and Tom came up with the idea of making a heavy top roller so the rubber bands wouldn’t be needed.  He cut a new, steel top roller on the lathe and it works great!  The bolt is just loose enough to let the roller slide up and down in the slot in the frame.  The roller is heavy enough that it just falls into position on the spool flanges.

Tangle-free filament spool holder

Broken upper left Z axis guide rail bracket!

I lifted it out of the box and discovered that the left Z axis motor mount was also broken:

Broken upper left guide rail bracket and left Z motor mount.

A quick trip to the Prusa web site found STL files ready for printing…

New motor mount and upper left guide rail clamp printing on UMMD.

Finally, printed parts installed…

Broken parts replaced.

Alas, it appears that the lead screw is bent- you can see it wobbling when it rotates.  I’ll be contacting Mr. Prusa for a replacement…

Sparks!  The VDG produces about 400 kV.

Then I found a plastic bucket and the fun really started.  We had kids and many adults who were definitely much too heavy, standing on the bucket and making their hair stand up with moms, dads, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, partners all taking pictures.   I had to move one gentleman who was breathing oxygen from a tank away from the machine.  Fortunately, no one fell off the bucket or caught on fire, and next year we’ll do it right and take a block of styrofoam for people to fall off of  to stand on.

Kylee was ready to join the Makerspace just for this… and with that shirt, she’d fit right in!

Blondes really do have more fun!

Even Gordon couldn’t resist!

Last year Son of MegaMax (a 3D printer built at the Milwaukee Makerspace) went to the Faire.  This year he had two companions to keep him company- an extra-beefy printer being built by Erich Zeimantz: MiniMax XY.  MMXY isn’t complete yet, but promises to be a super high quality, high speed printer.  He’ll be operational at next year’s Maker Faire.  SoM also brought his big brother, Ultra MegaMax Dominator, named that because he is ultra, mega, maximum, and he dominates.

MiniMax XY at Milwaukee Maker Faire

Ultra MegaMax Dominator and Son of MegaMax at the Milwaukee Maker Faire

UMMD and SoM rotated between the booth and the dark room where the both printers’ UV lighting and fluorescent filament was a big hit.

UMMD in the Dark Room at Milwaukee Maker Faire 2017

We had a few things besides 3D printers at the booth.  Tony brought in some Bismuth crystals to give away, and surprisingly, they didn’t all disappear in the first hour.  Tony thinks people left them because the Makerspace logo on the info board on which the crystals were sitting looked a lot like the skull and crossbones that usually indicates poison.  The crystals do have an other-worldly toxic look about them.  Oh well…

Bismuth Crystal

Marcin’s LED signs on the table at the booth and hanging above the entrance to the Dark Room were also very popular and hard to miss, though I managed not to take any pictures of either.  The one above the Dark Room was so bright that if you saw it, you’ve probably still got its image burned into your retinas.

Everyone involved had a great time and we’ll be there again next year with even more cool stuff!

I am designing and building a homemade telescope, loosely following designs from here. While a lot of their components are ingeniously designed, I wasn’t satisfied with the spider plans they provided. I decided to try my hand at designing my own spider in Fusion 360 (using their free enthusiast subscription) and 3D printing it.

The spider snugly fits in an 8″ diameter tube. There are 3 slots in the perimeter to allow rotational alignment along the axis of the tube. There are 3 additional screws in the central cylinder that tilt the diagonal mirror holder and provided height adjustment. The diagonal holder has multiple grooves to provide more surface area for the silicone to bond to. The surface the mirror mounts on is on a 45. The entire thing was printed in PLA on Mark’s SOM printer (huge thanks to Mark for helping out).

A similar design could be constructed in the machine shop with multiple operations and perhaps even some welding, but the ease of designing this in Fusion 360 along with the little setup involved in the 3D printing process made this an ideal path to choose.

I started by cutting the under carriage down and modifying it for a three point leveling system instead of the stock four point undercarriage/bed plate bending scheme.

Modified undercarriage mounted on the printer

The original heater was separated from the shards of glass and glued to the 12″ x 12″ x 1/4″ cast aluminum tooling plate using high temperature silicone.  3x #10 countersunk screws and springs support the plate on heat resistant teflon blocks.  The whole assembly stands about 1 cm taller than the original bed plate so I printed a small extension for the Z=0 set screw so it would trip the switch from the higher position.  I tested the heating time and found that the bed gets up to 110C in about 16 minutes- a little slow, but we probably won’t be printing much ABS with this open frame machine anyway.  Next- run PID autotune for the bed heater and adjust acceleration (greater moving mass means lower acceleration and print speeds).

New bed plate and undercarriage mounted on the printer

Some of you might ask why I would replace the glass bed with a piece of cast aluminum tooling plate.  Thermal performance is one good reason.  Here’s an IR photo of the original glass bed:

IR image of the Taz 3 printer with original glass bed.

Notice the hot and cool spots- 30C temperature variation across the bed.

Here’s what the new aluminum bed plate looks like:

Temperature variation is just a few degrees over the entire surface (the bright almost horizontal lines are not hot spots- they are reflections of the X axis guide rails).

I have run the PID tuning on the new bed and modified the firmware with the new constants.  It heats from 25C to 100C in about 9 minutes.

I officially declare the Taz printer ready for action.

There are many possible solutions.  I can add a heater to the exit port to prevent formation of ice, or dry the air going into the box using a dessicant cannister or maybe just use water ice instead of dry ice if the higher temperature will still cool the chocolate adequately.   Maybe using an old miniature freezer with an air hose coiled inside would do the job.  It would be really interesting if I could use the waste heat from a freezer to keep the chocolate liquified and flowing.  Back to the drawing board!

A couple weeks ago I got a blower from American Science and Surplus and this week I got it running by using a model airplane ESC and servo tester to drive its brushless DC motor.  It appears to be capable of blowing much more air than I’ll need.  There are many unknowns yet to test.  How much chilled air/CO2 will it take to solidify the chocolate after it leaves the extruder?  How long will a block of dry ice last when used this way?  Will ice build-up inside the chiller box adversely affect its performance?

I designed and printed three parts for this system- a mount to attach the blower to a foam box up to 1.5″ thick, a hose coupler to allow delivery of the chilled air/CO2 to the print, and a hole saw to cut holes to fit the other two parts.   The printed parts fit as if they were designed for the job!

3D printed hole saw

Hose connected to hose coupler

Hose coupler parts

Blower mount for air chiller box

I mixed about 1 liter of extra thick pancake batter to a consistency that I thought would be much thicker than molten chocolate (pancake batter is much cheaper than chocolate) and shoveled it into the syringe, then bolted on the pusher and hooked it up to a power supply:

Looking back, I probably should have loaded the syringe from the other end.

Syringe loaded with super thick pancake batter.

Here’s the actual test.  It gets especially interesting about 1 minute in:

The syringe continued drooling after power was removed due to air that was trapped inside the syringe.  As the plunger pushed, the air was compressed.  When the motor stopped the compressed air continued to push out the batter.  I will have to be careful to eliminate air bubbles in the material when it comes time to use this in a printer.

It only took a couple minutes to clean out the syringe after the test was done.

The pusher did its job much better than expected, and the plunger held up just fine, too.  I feel confident that this device will be able to extrude chocolate.   Now the real work begins…

The syringe is made from PVC pipe using mostly standard fittings.  One piece that wasn’t standard was the plunger that fits inside the syringe tube and pushes on the chocolate contained therein.  I had to design and fabricate the plunger.  PVC pipe isn’t perfectly smooth or perfectly round inside, so I needed something compliant enough to ride out the pipe’s bumps and constrictions while maintaining a seal.  The seal needed to be tough, yet safe for use with food because it will be in contact with the chocolate inside the syringe.  I found some food-grade silicone casting material and ordered it.

While waiting for the silicone to arrive, I designed a 3D printable core for the plunger and a mold and jig.  The core fits on the end of a linear actuator that will provide the push.  The jig centered the core a few mm above the bottom of the mold.  The mold was tapered and the widest part -the bottom- was a few mm larger diameter than the pipe, and several mm larger diameter than the core.  The silicone envelops the core and is locked in place by holes that connect top and bottom side of the core.  The plunger squeeze-fits into the pipe to maintain the seal against the uneven inner surface of the pipe.

Mold, jig, and core for syringe plunger

Mold, jig, and core for syringe showing core inserted into jig.

Mold, jig, and core assembled for silicone over-molding.

I measured and mixed the silicone, coated the core with it and then set the core and jig in/on the mold and let it cure for 24 hours.  Then I removed the jig and broke the now silicone covered core out of the mold.  Result: a perfect, tight fit inside the syringe tube.

Core in mold with silicone.

Finished plunger removed from the mold.  The mold had to be broken off by design.

Plunger mounted on linear actuator.

The assembled syringe.

The telescope adapter firmly grips the phone and the eyepiece.

Initial tests were a little disappointing.  The combination of the phone’s camera and the telescope’s optics has significant pincushion distortion.  The image has only been mirrored L-R and scaled down (original is 21 Mp).  Note the lack of contrast (looking through 1/2 mile of humid air) and the curves in the power line and pole, and even the grass line:

A quick search found that the Gimp has built in transform tools to correct (or create) lens distortion.

It only took a couple minutes of messing around to get acceptable results.  Here’s the same image with the pincushion distortion corrected (whole image), contrast stretched and white balance corrected (rectangular area).  The pole, power line, and even the grass line now look straight.

And here’s the final image with all corrections and cropping applied:

Next step: photograph known square grids through the microscope and telescope and then create and save some preset corrections to apply with Gimp.

I wonder if something like this exists for video.  Hmmmmm…