Excuse the quality of the video but I hope it can give some idea of the processes I am going through to print pots. To ensure a good flow of clay ooze during a print I remix, blend just enough clay to fill a syringe for each print. The video does not show it but the syringe is attached to an air compressor, you can see the air hose, and it is set at about 3 Bars of pressure.
I'm such a geek that when I read "the processes I am going through to print pots," I thought "Printing potentiometers? When did we start printing resistors?!"
ReplyDeleteI love your technique with this gardenhoseclamp-to-syringe !!
ReplyDeleteand hey.. have a tipp for you too. to easily fill your syringe.. have a second syringe with cutout bottom... fill this one roughly and now you can slam it on the table to get the airbubbles out. then just transfer the clay with the syringestamp from the filling-syringe to the printing-syringe..
our biggest problem with clayprinting at the HyperWerk is that our reprap board crashes nearly everytime when we try to pause the printing process. And the pausing is needed to refill our 120ml syringe... :-(
would love it if you have a hint on that one.
I too have the problem of reprap going to temperature error if I pause for more than about fifteen seconds. (Bits from Bytes firmware is not designed for non plastic print heads) It is something I would like sorted out but just at the moment I am happy printing with one syringe full.
ReplyDeleteTo begin with I was filling syringes with a large clay extruder that did the fill very well and easily. But I am finding that to get a good print where I am not having to regulate the pressure all the time - I want to walk away from the machine to do other things,I am blending just enough clay before each print and then I find it easiest just to fill the syringe as you see in the video. Thanks for feedback.
Why not use a mechanical corkscrew advance like in a chapstick tube or a manual turn cookie press? Drive it with a stepper motor. A small cookie press or pastry press would also allow you to load from the tip end and be able to change tips for different projects.
ReplyDeletealready made tryals with an automated 1000w sausagepress but failed.. the clay fought its way trough all bearings and right into the gear box. now the machine has ben made clayproof and i will try again soon.
ReplyDeleteRight now im printing quite good with clay that was put under vacuum for a while.
@yzorg: The cut off bottom syringe transfer was already described here in a previous post. To get a consistent mixture we knead the clay between cotton cloth to get rid of most of the bubbles and then use the transfer syringe to suck it in.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to temperature errors, I never have those on neither one of our machines (mixture of 3.0 and 3.3 boards) but we use firmware 1.0.8 on all and maybe thats the reason. Did you try bridging the thermistor pins with a resistor of a set temperature value? Measure the original thermistor at room temperature and use that value. Then you will have a constant temp reading and your board will always get out of pause mode.
ps. will you join our workshop @Hyperwerk week 7th of march??
@Jon, Thats exactly what we have build and will blog about it when I have a bit more results.
Hi.
ReplyDeleteI m from Turkey. I study at Karabük University in Turkey. I want to do this project. I have to do this project for my homework. Could you send this device's software? Could you send a system installation diagram? Can you send the scheme of the project?
Best Regards
Have a nice day
http://www.keep-art.co.uk/Self_build.html