Lost Wax and other updates

A silicon bronze cast of Yoda from Star Wars

Hi there again guys,

Even though I posted something yesterday, I thought I should post again to make it up to you guys. I wanted to talk about some new developments in technology and I'll attach a copy of my updated bill of materials right HERE.

And my source for the following info HERE, which is similar, but I'll try to make it simpler than the article.


So, my Dad pointed me in the direction for this piece. He shared a method for casting metal parts out of the plastic printed ones, which would significantly increase the cost of the printer, but make it more durable. I personally prefer the printed parts for the printer, because you can print an infinite amount of them as long as you have plastic, but having a metal structured part like the one above would be pretty awesome. The detail is stunning as well. Under a microscope, you can see where the strings from the printer were laid down. Here's how it works.


First, you take your printed parts and string them up on a tree-like structure made of wax. Wax can be melted easily, making it easy to remove. Then you want to take your investment, or the ceramic mix that, when fired, will create a mold. Then, the wax inside is melted, leaving only the cast behind. After that, the molten metal in poured into the cast, the cast is retrieved from within the metal, and the parts are cut off of the 'tree' and then you have your parts. You might wonder how you print the parts out of wax in the first place. There is the option of vaporizing the plastic with an extremely powerful heat source, but there's now a company that makes spools of wax filament for 3D printers specifically for lost wax castings. You can find the link Here.

I'm pretty sure that's about it, so I hope you guys have a great day!

Alright!

From left to right: M3 Nylock, M4 Mudguard Washers, M4 Washers, M8
Hex Nuts (The box in the middle has two types of parts in it)

Hi there!


This is my first post in quite a while, and I am sorry for that. There's not really been a ton to write about lately. We ordered some more parts; washers, nuts, screws, that kind of thing.

Anyways, we got M8 washers as well. 208 of the required 104. Double what we need isn't that bad of a number.

But, we only got parts in yesterday, and late at night too. I finished taking inventory today and we got 96 M3 Nylocs, which is interesting, because we only need 13... Strange, but at least we have extra. We also noticed that we ordered 100, but only got 96, so we did some investigating.

Also, another interesting thing that I learned about companies that ship in bulk is that if you order, say 200 of them, you'll only get 192 because they sort the parts by weight, and each part is a different, however similar, weight. The more parts you get, the more inaccurate your number is. I noticed that the number tends to be around a 1:25 ratio, or one part missing for every 25 parts ordered. Lesson here is ALWAYS order extra. People aren't perfect, and we were nearly short a piece because of it. It's a good thing we had extra.

Also, in other news, I got a cool backdrop to take photos on. You can probably see this in the photo up above, but it's a black tri-fold board, the kind that you might use for a science project, and two pieces of Bristol board. It works quite well, and I would recommend it because even after I finish this project, I'll be able to use it. It's handy to have around. The reason that picture isn't the greatest ever is that where I was taking the photo really doesn't have enough light. That has a big impact on taking photos. Many photographers have this issue too.


Anyways, I think that just about sums it up for this blog post. I guess we'll see if any more parts arrive. Until then, though, thanks for reading and have a good week too!

Hmm... Seems Strange

Okay, so if you're the kind of person who looks for anything suspicious than you might have already seen this. ALL of the dates on my blog posts before this one are the SAME. That's because I'm not supposed to have the blog open to the public, so now I've changed the public blog to the school blog and put my public blog on my personal email. Confusing, but that's what's going on. I did a little bit of work and now I'm allowed to have it open. I'll still continue to write posts on that, but this will be the main feed and all of the posts that go up on the school blog will be visible to the people here. Also, I'm working on getting the blog back to what it looked like before. Bear with me people. We're in for a long ride.

The Threaded Rod

The Threaded Rod Next to a 15cm Ruler

Guess what came in the mail today?

Threaded rod, as you could probably tell from the title and the picture. There's a total of 18 pieces, all of various sizes that you will be able to see in the chart below. They're at the very bottom of the new and improved chart of received items.

These rods did come from India, but they're more well traveled than you might think. Take a look at the tracking sheet. Keep in mind that I don't live in India so the chart goes from the bottom up. Inconvenient, I know, but better than turning it all around.

Delivered - Signed for by : DAN	ONTARIO SERVICE AREA
With delivery courier	ONTARIO SERVICE AREA, ON - CANADA
Service Area
Delivery attempted; recipient not home	ONTARIO SERVICE AREA, ON - CANADA
With delivery courier	ONTARIO SERVICE AREA, ON - CANADA
Service Area
Scheduled for delivery	ONTARIO SERVICE AREA, ON - CANADA
With delivery courier	ONTARIO SERVICE AREA, ON - CANADA
Arrived at Delivery Facility in ONTARIO SERVICE AREA - CANADA	ONTARIO SERVICE AREA, ON - CANADA
Service Area
Departed Facility in ONTARIO SERVICE AREA - CANADA	ONTARIO SERVICE AREA, ON - CANADA
Processed at ONTARIO SERVICE AREA - CANADA	ONTARIO SERVICE AREA, ON - CANADA
Clearance processing complete at ONTARIO SERVICE AREA - CANADA	ONTARIO SERVICE AREA, ON - CANADA
Clearance event	ONTARIO SERVICE AREA, ON - CANADA
Processed for clearance at ONTARIO SERVICE AREA - CANADA	ONTARIO SERVICE AREA, ON - CANADA
Arrived at Sort Facility ONTARIO SERVICE AREA - CANADA	ONTARIO SERVICE AREA, ON - CANADA
Customs status updated	ONTARIO SERVICE AREA, ON - CANADA
Departed Facility in CINCINNATI HUB - USA	CINCINNATI HUB, OH - USA
Processed at CINCINNATI HUB - USA	CINCINNATI HUB, OH - USA
Clearance processing complete at CINCINNATI HUB - USA	CINCINNATI HUB, OH - USA
Customs status updated	CINCINNATI HUB, OH - USA
Arrived at Sort Facility CINCINNATI HUB - USA	CINCINNATI HUB, OH - USA
Service Area
Departed Facility in EAST MIDLANDS - UK	EAST MIDLANDS - UK
Transferred through EAST MIDLANDS - UK	EAST MIDLANDS - UK
Departed Facility in BRUSSELS - BELGIUM	BRUSSELS - BELGIUM
Transferred through BRUSSELS - BELGIUM	BRUSSELS - BELGIUM
Service Area
Departed Facility in LEIPZIG - GERMANY	LEIPZIG - GERMANY
Customs status updated	CINCINNATI HUB, OH - USA
Departed Facility in DELHI (NEW DELHI) - INDIA	DELHI (NEW DELHI) - INDIA
Processed at DELHI (NEW DELHI) - INDIA	DELHI (NEW DELHI) - INDIA
Arrived at Sort Facility DELHI (NEW DELHI) - INDIA	DELHI (NEW DELHI) - INDIA
Departed Facility in MUMBAI (BOMBAY) - INDIA	MUMBAI (BOMBAY) - INDIA
Processed at MUMBAI (BOMBAY) - INDIA	MUMBAI (BOMBAY) - INDIA
Service Area
Shipment picked up	MUMBAI (BOMBAY) - INDIA

First Mumbai, India. Then Delhi, India. After that, the rod got it's customs papers for Cincinnati, USA. Then off to Leipzig, Germany. That was Sunday.

On Monday, the package arrived in Brussels, Belgium. Then the East Midlands, UK. And Monday ends.

On Tuesday, the package finally arrives in Cincinnati where it's customs status changes to Ontario, Canada, finally shipping to Canada Post. From there, it's in the care of Canada Post for two days until we finally received it on Thursday. 

That's a pretty well traveled package if I do say so myself. More traveled than me, and I'm a person.

If you take a minute and think how much shipping and transportation that went through, as well as all of the fuel use and staff wages, the amount of resources used to get 18 pieces of rod, that came in a little cardboard box so skinny you could hardly see it, you begin to realize just how much of an impact shipping a box of, say, McDonald's frozen beef patties across Canada has. You can probably tell I'm really hungry right now, but that's besides the point. The point is that this project takes a massive amount of resources not because of the fact that you need a lot of parts. The main resource cost will not come from the metal or the plastic that is used to build said printer, but the transportation costs. All the fuel, all the wages, all the infrastructure. Ports, boats, all built because of demand for trade and transportation. And we're all a big part of that. 

That's a valuable lesson, is it not?

This is COOL

This is COOL

Camera and Projector Set Up With Model

Image Recognition Software

Model Inside of Software

There's a new software on the street that lets you project an image with a projector onto a model and take a photo, and get a 3D model of the object. And it's name is The Projector-Camera Calibration / 3D Scanning Software. It's a big name, I know. That's really the only name I could find. It was designed by a group of students at the Brown University School of Engineering. The software uses structured light 3D scanning, which seems like a pretty hefty concept but it's not. Let me explain.

So you have a projector casting perfectly straight and parallel bars of light onto an object. What happens when a bar of light is put onto an object that isn't flat? You get distortion. Distortion that can be measured by? A camera. Then the software takes the imgae, looks for these bars of light and uses them to compile a whole bunch of really tiny geometrical shapes that ultimately make the model. Pretty cool, huh? You can get the backside by flipping the model around. Then, the software allows you to stitch the two images together. The more you repeat this process and the more images you take from different angles, the more accurate your image is.

So guess who has all of the stuff to do this? This guy! I definitely want to try this at some point. It's not 100 percent related to my project, but why not? It's about 3D printing. So, if I ever get around to doing that, I'll have to write a blog post about it. So keep posted. It'll be done by me eventually.

By the way, happy New Year! This will probably be the first blog post for my class of 2016, so...

That's that! Thanks for reading.

Parts

Parts ready to be sorted and inventoried

Okay, so this is more of an extremely large list of parts that I've recieved and may have been a little bit preoccupied and not bothered to post anything. So, this is all of that stuff:

I.D, stands for Inner Diameter

O.D. stands for Outer Diameter

Keep in mind that the number of pieces that we have is NOT the number required. It is the same as or higher than the number required.

And That's That!

My Trip To the Innisfil Library

First off, Happy New Year everybody! Yes, I'm working on New Year's Eve because I'm not doing anything else today.

So, a few days ago I took a trip down to the MakerSpace in Innisfil to meet Alan, one of the people who works there helping people print off their own designs, troubleshoot ideas, or cut something out on their ABSOLUTELY AMAZING LASER CUTTER! Anyways, he was nice enough to take some time to talk to me about my project and possibly supporting my project. He also invited me to next year's maker fest, which you can look at here. I'll probably be at the 2016 makerfest, but that's a ways away for now. I hope to have the printer finished by the time the festival rolls around.

During a talk with him, I realized that one of the extruders that I wanted to try was completely useless and should be abandoned immediately. For those of you who don't know what an extruder is, it's basically the piece of the printer that takes the plastic from a giant spool, melts it, and lays it down on the print bed. It's got a few different parts, and so you can see what one looks like I'll put a picture of one in the blog as well.

Anyways, thanks to that conversation, it saved me a TON of plastic and time, so that's good.

I'd like to extend my thanks again to Alan and the Innisfil library for their time, and if you get the opportunity then you should go and check it out. It's a pretty cool facility with a lot of pretty cool people. Music recording stuff, private study rooms, makerspace equipped with a laser cutter and two 3D printers. So go do that. Seriously. It's a cool place.

Alan and I at the HackLab

An Extruder

Merry Chrismas

'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring - not even a mouse.... but the 3D printer was grinding and noisy. . . It could be heard all through the house!   

2015 - Christmas with the 3D printer

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and happy New Year!

Small Update

Small update, I don't actually have to write a blog right now, so..

I've started ordering parts in hope of starting assembly over the christmas break. I've ordered bar stock, washers, screws and nuts. Just so you know.

Well...

Parts with a raft
(Not from my Project)

Well, here it is folks. We have received help in the form of a 3D printer. That has to go back on Monday. We used to have 48 hours of print time left and now we have 36 left. That's convenient. However, due to the fact that the 3D printer is a MakerBot Replicator Mini, it prints with a thing called a raft. And it has a fairly small print bed. You can see the raft in the picture. It's a layer of plastic. Sorry that the image is in a terrible resolution. Anyways, that adds the extra step of peeling a layer of plastic from EVERY SINGLE PIECE! Don't get me wrong, I am glad for the help. I did, however try to disable this with an extremely long process that I'm sure nobody wants to hear about, but that caused the parts to go absolutely crazy instead of behaving like they're supposed too. Which sucks. Alot. So, I'm back to printing with this silly rafty thingy instead of the other printer, the Dremel3D printer which I'm still using but due to availability, I'm still fighting with print ability.

My Random Piece Of Writing

Why not put in a steam engine? It's Related To My Project.

Well, I haven't made any progress other than trying to continue securing help to get pieces printed, so I figured I would put in a small piece of writing for no real reason other than the fact that it's related. So here it is.

A 3D printer in the home is an almost unimaginable feat for most people, including myself, but what if it wasn’t? Introducing the Mendel. Made by a small company called Reprap, it costs almost $1500 to make. I’m looking to lower that cost to less than $1000 and make the printer easier to assemble and use. This will target entrepreneurs looking to kick-start a manufacturing business, and will also be of interest to residential users looking for a hobby, similar to myself. This project marks the start of something bigger for me, allowing me to see that I can build machines that could change the world.

Having the ability to design something that can replicate itself is amazing! Why was I inspired to do this project instead of some other one, like designing a toy or a car for the marketplace? That's because I am passionate about engineering; the art of taking knowledge of mathematics and science and using them to invent, design and build many amazing things. One great example of such ingenuity is the steam engine, a driving factor in the industrial revolution and a key player in the evolution of technology. What's the next step in our technological evolution? Robots? Flying cars? My belief is that our next major step forward in our path of technology is a 3D printer which is able to do something so large scale such as to print houses out of mud, or do something so delicate as printing a human organ, single cells at a time. Having an understanding of the technology that may one day become a part of our society in more ways than one would be extremely important in my lifetime, which is why I wish to pursue this project. Through this project I hope to gain an understanding of what may one day make most of the world, and maybe even the people, around us.

Help Has Fallen From The Sky

Help has fallen from the sky. I'm talking to someone who might be able to give me access to more printers so that I can increase my productivity. I am happy, none the less, although help is not sealed down as of yet. I was hoping to print all of the pieces on the same 3D printer to prove that you can replicate a 3D printer using a 3D printer, to prove that printer-ception is possible. By the way, I've made a little bit of progress in between blogs and I've printed a part or two. I think that I'm going to wrap up this blog early so that I can add in a time log down below so you guys can see the total amount of time spent on this project.

Time Printing: 24hrs

Troubleshooting print time issues: 2hrs

Assembly: 0hrs

Transportation of parts: 8hrs

Time for parts to ship: 0hrs

Bill of materials: 2hrs

Time spent blogging: 5hrs

What I’m Aiming To Build

That's it. That's what I have to build. It's going to take a while, but that's it. I need parts. There's something like a thousand parts total. But there's only 150 parts that I need to print. I still need to do 96. It's a problem. December 18 is the beginning of Christmas break, and that's the deadline for at least 90 percent of the parts. This is a PAIN. I waaaaay underestimated the number of parts that I needed to print. "What needs to happen?" I hear you saying. Well, the fact is I need help with this. I've started a log of time in case the project fails. If it does, I'll be prepared. Hopefully, I'll get the help that I need with my project, or maybe Christmas break will be the end. Who knows? Maybe I will finish this printer. I want to finish it. I just don't know.

The Second Post That Says The Same Thing As The Last

I still haven't made any progress to print parts. Our library got a new fancy 3D scanner and because of it everyone wants to print off their head. I'm going to have to wait for the hype around the scanner to die down. I'm seriously worried though. If I'm not allowed to print off more parts soon, I'm going to fail my project. This is a serious setback. It's also causing a whole bunch of stress, and I'm going to lose funding if I don't have the rest of the parts printed by Christmas break. That means the project won't be funded and I won't be able to buy any of the motors that I need to do the project. These are dire straits folks. I can't risk any other issues, or else this 'journey' will come to an end. I hope to finish more parts by next week though. I can't bear the thought of failing just because of people printing off heads.

Parts SUCK!

Currently, I am attempting to print of all the parts I need. Printing off parts from a 3D printer takes a LONG time. FOUR HOURS a piece. I've finished 10 parts out of over 50. I don't have access to the 3D printer every day, which is also a huge pain. I also can't print on weekends or overnight. Hopefully I will be able to make at least 5 more parts by next week. I won't have any funding until I finish printing off all the printed parts, which means no actual printer assembly until after Christmas break. I'm hoping to have the parts done before Christmas and I also hope to have the printer finished before the end of the year. However, with continual delays, I most likely will not finish the printer by the end of the year. Sadly. It sucks. I know. However, hopefully productivity will spike after I get the parts printed.