Real Driver Park

With machines and materials to test and experiment with, what better way than getting the kids involved and printing some useful and interesting objects for some spooky Halloween fun.

Custom head band for Halloween Cosplay - 

I always print out a few new things for Halloween, but this year in particular it seems to be getting more popular to design and 3D print objects for a custom twist on the celebrations.

My daughter also needed something a little different for a play. After some discussion we decided that a fascinator headband was just the thing to add to her costume. Looking on the usual 3D model repositories we could not see many at all, headbands and a few hair grips, but nothing that stood out as a useful starting point.

But what is a fascinator? Traditionally these are swirls and coils to bob about and look 'fascinating' upon ones head. It didn't take long for us to think about tentacles, and so the 'tentacle fascinator' was created with the help of Meshmixer to mash up our simple Alice band and some chopped tentacles from the rather great Octopus tentacle ipad stand by Colin Payson -



We easily set out the shape of an Alice band in Sketchup, deciding to lay it flat for easy 3D printing, and thermo-form in hot water later after printing. Thermo-forming in hot water is a very easy way to transform flat prints into more elaborate shapes that your 3D printer would find very tricky to make.


This was quite a large object, so printing it flat and reforming it with hot water (PLA) or if you print in other plastic's you may need to use a heat-gun.



My daughter was thrilled with this new hair-band 'fascinator', and as you will see with most things on this post, I now need to print another one (2 daughters...)

I have published this model up on Youmagine here if you want to use or print it out.



Recycled PET plastic's for a glowing pumpkin parade - 

My recent experiments with Refil (Recycled plastic for 3D Printing) resulted in many wonderful translucent PET pumpkins.

These pumpkins designed by Jeremy Gillick (get them here) are quick to print as a single walled object Add light and they come to life.


Refil 90% recycled PET material for 3D printing.



Flexible printing - it's even more scary!

I was also testing out the nice new Hephestos 2 3D Printer from BQ during October (blog post soon) - This machine is the most ideal printer for flexible materials I have ever used. In fact for me it's the perfect dedicated FilaFlex printer.

You can use Ninjaflex or Semiflex or almost any other rubber, urethane, elastomer you like. They all print perfectly due to the fantastic fully supported metal extruder design.








My Daughter had the fantastic idea of adding some clear FilaFlex filament to the spiders, they are now hanging all around the house.


We also printed a lot of Faberdashery Glo-bobs in various FilaFlex colours. These are wonderful little models that are designed to slide onto a bangle glowstick, the eyes glow and kids totally love to wear them.

We do need some Glow-in-the-dark Flexible filament for next year (hint, hint) ;)

Gory and Scary Accessories - 




We also printed some of the great movable 'skeletonz' (Files here) by Murray Clark on the BCN3D Sigma - they all printed perfectly in Colorfabb GlowFill (glow-in-the-dark) PLA filament - no supports required.



Not quite so scary, but a wonderful design and easy to print, the Great Pumpkin by Perry Engel is another nice 3D model - these were printed in Colorfabb Orange PLA.


Halloween cookies - 

We printed these cookie cutters out last year, they have already been used many times, and still provide a lot of making fun for kids (and Adults).


These were designed by Oogime and can be found here.



My spider print comes out every year. Printed with Faberdashery Glowbug (glow-in-the-dark) filament and a sprinkle of glitter onto the glass build surface before printing.


Related news... (Dragons).
Glow in the Dark Treasure Dragon by Andreas Boelher - Dual extruder printed on BCN3D Sigma.

The grand #DragonOff is almost at an end for this year (it will be back!) - You still have until 23:59 on Oct31st to enter. And if you have no idea what #DragonOff is - check out the hash tag on Twitter or G+



We are having some fun by exploring some extremes of desktop 3D printing. How small, detailed, BIG, coloured or modified can you print a Dragon. The queen of Dragons Louise Driggers @Loubie3D is the ultimate judge of Dragon Master worthiness. You can win lots of cool stuff from E3D and Colorfabb.

What started as a friendly challenge, has exploded into a worldwide show of 3D printing excellence. Thank you to all who entered or showed support. I'll have a dedicated Blog post about DragonOff in November after the winners are announced.


I must also mention the great 10 Halloween makes blog post by Faberdashery, well worth a read, it's what got us all inspired for ghoulish adventures into 3D printing this year. - Thank you Faberdashery!


We are all set, you still have time to 3D print Halloween - I hope you find time to have some fun.

Thanks for reading, until next time, stay spooky.

Rich.

This year the Open-Source and maker Community Hub, centered around RepRap 3D Printing has a great line-up of companies and individuals you would be very foolish to miss.

First if you have not already registered for the show, you can get a free badge and entry into the show by signing up here, it's well worth pre-registering as it avoids the queue at the NEC.

The show is on for two days starting September 30th at 9:30AM - to 17:00PM

The Main Open-Source RepRap Community Hub all of Stand J42 


If you want to meet up with me or anyone else please come to the show and visit J42 and the surrounding stands, it always great to see people from the maker community, talk about projects, ideas and generally discuss 3D printing in all it's glory and spectacular failures.


Shouting out a few companies close and around the community hub, sorry if I missed you off this post, (Just too many awesome companies to mention everyone) I do plan to visit every single exhibitor at the show to see what's new and interesting.


E3D (BigBox and LittleBox) - will be on stand J41 with what they tell me is the all new and improved BigBox 3D Printer design - looking forward to seeing the changes and print quality. Obviously all the great E3D hot-ends and materials will be on display and to buy during the show.

RepRapWorld is opposite the Community Hub, On stand J39 - Designers of the Megatronics electronics, and many other very cool things for RepRap 3D Printers - do give them a visit.
BCN3D Technologies is next on Stand J37 - you really do not want to miss the fantastic Sigma dual 3D Printer, it's just about the most impressive dual carriage printing FDM machine for the price you will see at the show.


Recreus and the Amazing FilaFlex materials are on H47 - I have been using a lot of FilaFlex recently, it's really great TPU material for 3D Printing. Steve wood of Gyrobot will also be demonstrating a rather fantastic program for auto-generation of custom Filaflex insoles. That's well worth a visit.



MatterHackers are at H42
InnoFil3D - H40
Rigid Ink - H38
We Do 3D Printing J35
Floreon J34
BQ - G42

Kuehling & Kuehling H32 - Probably one of the most business-ready capable FDM based 3D printers in recent years.

Mass Portal G30 - I was blown away in Berlin by this little Delta printer - it manages some of the finest looking prints I have ever seen.

Filament Print - H41
Cinter - G40
3D Print UK - G36
STRUCTUR 3D Printing - H36


Look out for many others scattered around the show -


The 3D Printing Association - G51

3DFilaprint - C39 - Selling all manner of materials for 3D printers.

BuildTak - B22 - build platform sheets that really work well.

ColorFabb B36 - Some of the finest 3D printing filaments available.

German RepRap - E35

Hawk 3D Proto - H14

Markforged -G39

Mcor Technologies D14

Ultimaker J24

And so many more....


I am looking forward to see the Formlabs FORM 2 3D Printer - recently launched. Still quite a lot of money, but they are setting the bar for Desktop SLA based Resin printing in my opinion.
Formlabs are on D44

Another interesting development in the SLA market will be Photocentricgroup, launching a new LCD based SLA printer (low cost) and offering both daylight and UV based resin formulations.

I'm imagining their LCD based printed just uses daylight resins, but I will find out more and update on this and anything else I discover.




Hope you can visit us at the Community Hub, looking forward to another two days of highly interesting discussions with all of you.



I'll have more updates (and Intro video) on the new OpenSLA project too. Please join and contribute to the Google+ Community over here.


Thanks for reading, until next time.

Rich.

A few months back I asked the question on G+, Would anyone like to discuss Pellet / Granular extruders? I ask because I have been working on various designs for quite some time with success and also plenty of failures , it's not easy, it needs collaboration and I would like to see it stay open-source and accessible to all at a very low (no) cost. 




Using all sorts of different materials for 3D printing is good news, it helps people find more uses for the technology and further's the progress of design, manufacturing and innovation.

Since designing various Universal Paste Extruders, it's been a real pleasure to see so many people use, re-design and further extend paste and food printing in so many different ways.

Using pellets and other granular materials for 3D printing are a next evolutionary step in both simplicity and flexibility.

It has plenty of challenges...


I have been working on and off for a while to design and test other types of extruders for granular materials for 3D printing, my focus was initially using Sugar with great success but this year I have also moved onto plastic pellets (resin's) that are normally used for injection molding or to make the 'standard' filament's we already use in home 3D printers.


This whole area needs more development and a focus from the open-source RepRap community, makers and developers to refine a system to use all sorts of different granules and materials for 3D printing.

This Blog post is an introduction / development update of where I'm at, and at least a way to form some prior art statements about ideas and directions for this sort of extruder development in 3D printing.


The point of this blog post it launch this as an open-source community project. The files have been uploaded to Youmagine here, if enough people take an interest and can assist with further development it could be a good idea to have a section on the RepRap Forum or Google+ Group for Pellet extrusion development.

I started out with a focus on sugar - the main idea being to use it as a support material as it can be washed away. PLA sticks really well to sugar (and sugar like materials)

Isomalt is a really nice sugar often used for sugar-craft and as a sugar substitute, it has a nice advantage of being less likely to burn or go brown than normal cane sugar.

It worked surprisingly well when you get a good temperature (around ~155 Degrees C) you can get a flow of Isomalt sugar from the nozzle.



I tried a number of different 200mm long x 6mm wood Auger bits from DeWalt and Black & Decker, most were almost identical and operated the same.

A 6mm wood Auger bit fitted perfectly and with only a slight modification I had the basic outline of a granular extruder without using any custom parts other than being 3D printed.


A little bit of cutting and polish and you have a granular feed system.


I found it better to cut off the end of the drill, but position in the J-head does need to be quite specific, you will need to experiment for the best melt and flow.

I drilled out the end nozzle to be 0.65mm. No other modifications to the J-head are required.

Different J-head's can work, I experimented with both MK4 and MK3 - The MK3 worked better.

The second design used a NEMA17 with a Planetary gear box fitted. This can generate a lot more force but requires a very large number of motor steps (20,000/mm) so bear that in mind.

Rotational speed and torque are both important, so I would recommend starting and experimenting with the Non-Planetary version first.

3D Print the parts - I printed all of them in ABS. (and also experimented with metal coatings - more on that later)


Most of the fittings are M4, they should be easy to understand from the models and images here, but you need to assemble in the correct sequence for everything to be tightly clamped together.


Bearings are standard 606 style for the Gear and Drill bit.


M3 fixings for the motor and gears.


The mounting method uses my standard universal quick-fit carriage mount.

Quick-Fit carriage - Many versions available for different machines - allows the use of many different extruder types - all my designs use this method.


Auger should be fixed firmly and be straight down the middle of the j-head - make sure your bearings are fitted tightly - they should be a tight fit and may require some pressure and slight heating of the plastic to get a firm fit.


You will need to experiment with the placement of the Auger depending on the style / type of your J-head.

Make sure to secure the J-head well and remember you will need to cool the J-head body with a fan just in the same way you would when using PLA filament.

Important bit - The design of this pellet/granular trap (shown above) is really important for good operation. I experimented with many different versions / designs and I'm sure it can still be greatly improved.

You should end up with something like the above that you can experiment with. Note all the different colour parts, I had quite a few versions of the design before this one.


Then you need some pellets or granular materials to melt. is a typical selection above and below. Some are round, some sharp shards and most are in cut round pellet form.


I finally managed to source a lot of different materials, but at the start I cut up normal filament into small pellets - crazy I know, but at least it allowed some testing as I could not find many places last year that would sell me small batches of different plastic pellets.

Top shows Woodfill pellets and right shows PET

A friend kindly send me a large selection of recycled material for testing, but as can be seen above (left) they are quite large and irregular sized shards, so as much as I want to use recycled plastic, for this extruder it's not going to be possible because of the screw size. I will be using them for other interesting things - more on that soon :)

And if you look closely at the above image you will see 1.75mm and 2.85mm pellets, so I'm reasonably sure these are actually from filament cut up - maybe a good way to recycle any out of tolerance spools, but regardless it's good to know they are small pellets - ideal for this type of extruder.


The ColorFabb PLA pellets are not the same, they are 'pearls', and unfortunately don't quite work in this size of extruder. I bought a lot of these not knowing the size, so check before buying pellets from wherever you manage to source them. - I will find use for them :)


You can even get Woodfill - but, have not tested it yet.


Fill hopper, make sure you have a fan on constantly cooling the thermal break on the J-head and lower half of the extruder body. Experiment with temperature and speed of stepper motor drive.

You can use the standard extruder retraction to stop or limit the flow ! but you may need to slow it down to under 15mm/sec.

Experiment and play, and please let me know how you get on.

One really important thing - Make sure you run the Auger motor in reverse! - that's anti-clockwise as you want to push down the pellets into the hot-end and not drill them out.


I ran out of time with this project in the summer (2014) due to other projects and shows, so the files being released still need work and refinement to get to a working solution that can process many different types of material in pellet form. I have still yet to try the Colorfabb Woodfill pellets as I didn't want to block the second extruder after already blocking the first one with 'A-PET' material.

This is a very exciting project, do let me know what you think about it, all and any feedback is good. And if you decide to make one or want to evolve the design, please feel free and spread the word.

Thanks for reading, have fun, experiment and play. Also please do let me know how you get on.

My 3D Printing work (and video's) are released under Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License.

But - All my images, photographs and words published anywhere are covered under International Copyright law, so please do ask me for permission and remember to state where they came from - me, Richard Horne. - (AKA RichRap)

Sorry to have to put this up, but I see a lot of my images and words being used without my permission for commercial activity, by people who want to make money, that's fine but do ask my permission first and be open about what you want to do with them. I'm cool about most things.