3d printers... anybody used one?

Glaucus said:
No, that's just one more reason why the ammunition needs to be illegal too.
Click to expand...

lol!!! good luck with that... the technology for gunpowder and homemade ammunition are the secrets of fire and the earth as well... take away the lead and you'll find yourself getting shot with broken glass, scraps of metal or rocks...from old world blunderbusses if need be, and while not as accurate as modern weaponry, history has shown their effectiveness in repelling invaders and providing food, and killing in general... you can ban all the shiny stuff you want... it wont put a dent in any of this violence, but you will see a manifestation of worsened results as cruder methods are employed.
 
Build Volume: 10x10x8 inches (254x203x203 mm) of course the downside is i'll be waiting until august for it...
Click to expand...
Wow... that IS an immense build volume. Looks like a goliath of a machine. I can't believe the parts for it are only $599. If they manage to pull it off, that is great price for a machine capable of building something that huge. Of course, with the cost of materials, it might reach a point where it'd be of questionable savings to design and build a part that large vs. just ordering it and even paying for the express shipping. :/ Of course, that's looking at the practical side of things, which is never any fun. Looking at what kinds of crazy new toys I could print with the thing is much more entertaining. Maybe I could even set up shop and sell some niche items to help pay for the rest of the printing hobby. :D
 
ilwrath said:
Of course, that's looking at the practical side of things, which is never any fun. Looking at what kinds of crazy new toys I could print with the thing is much more entertaining.
Click to expand...

oh it got worse for me than figuring the margins of cost between making and paying to have done... ... i been looking at these things for a few months now and am just enamored by the possibilities having viewed thousands of projects from current owners. and thats the problem... i realize how much cool junk i already want to print and my mind goes immediately to feeding the beast... i spent the better part of yesterday looking at 5 ton filament extrusion systems and plastic shredder/granulators and thinking "well... the manufactured filament is 30- 45 per kg roll, i can have all the plastic i want for free... hmm....id have all i need and could sell the rest... i could make the machinery cost back in a couple months with a strong marketing approach...sure.. its a hundred grand and it wont fit in my garage... but itd be cool..." . i ended up looking at some tabletop models that make a foot a minute...home built for under 200... might be more practical... :rolleyes:

http://www.soliforum.com/topic/557/filament-extruder-convert-pellets-to-filament/

Photo%20Nov%2028%2C%2011%2054%2013%20PM.jpg
 
robert l. bentham said:
the technology for gunpowder and homemade ammunition are the secrets of fire and the earth as well... take away the lead and you'll find yourself getting shot with broken glass, scraps of metal or rocks...from old world blunderbusses if need be, and while not as accurate as modern weaponry, history has shown their effectiveness in repelling invaders and providing food, and killing in general..
Click to expand...

example: a blackpower muzzleloader


No licence required
 
i spent the better part of yesterday looking at 5 ton filament extrusion systems and plastic shredder/granulators and thinking "well... the manufactured filament is 30- 45 per kg roll, i can have all the plastic i want for free... hmm....id have all i need and could sell the rest...
Click to expand...
Heh... Interesting idea... But not exactly all the plastic for free. Where would you get that quantity of sorted recyclable plastic? Are there suppliers that deal with the stuff? I wonder what kind of regs you'd run into processing it... Great, now you got me thinking about, too. :P
 
ilwrath said:
Heh... Interesting idea... But not exactly all the plastic for free. Where would you get that quantity of sorted recyclable plastic? Are there suppliers that deal with the stuff? I wonder what kind of regs you'd run into processing it... Great, now you got me thinking about, too. :p
Click to expand...

actually me and another guy had a plastic recycling place off the interstate for about five years... we ran two single head extruders and made plastic lumber for most of the time... all of the plastic was from the local community...1500... and it fed both machines with piles left over each day almost two stories... so, twenty foot deep... we also recycled tires and turned them into floor mats for humans and cattle (for the trailers)... i dunno... once you tell people youll take plastic theyll bring you tons of it... and 90 % it is rinsed clean of both residual chemicals but the paper labels too... run it through a granulator... thro in some colorant and bam... our molds were two by four and two by six quarter wall square metal tubes... we made lumber (from trash plastic) in ten foot to twelve foot lengths... one of our more popular products was a a four by four inch plastic lumber beam which we sold to farmers for calf pen bases and skid plates for the prefab garage/storage shed industry... they dont rot as quickly...so i actually have some knowledge about the plastics business as well as state and fed regs on recycling... i didn't just look at a 100,000 dollar extruder... like you did... :D i love ya buddy... what printer you thinking about getting? i'll make u some plastic...;) heh heh
 
actually me and another guy had a plastic recycling place off the interstate for about five years... we ran two single head extruders and made plastic lumber for most of the time...
Click to expand...
Ah, well, that's a piece of the puzzle I didn't know. :D

all of the plastic was from the local community...1500... and it fed both machines with piles left over each day almost two stories... so, twenty foot deep... [...] once you tell people youll take plastic theyll bring you tons of it... and 90 % it is rinsed clean of both residual chemicals but the paper labels too...
Click to expand...
Wow... Really? I would have figured it would take working with a smallish city (maybe an order of magnitude bigger) recycling program to gather enough plastic to feed a couple beasts like that. Guess it shows how much waste us Americans produce... So, by that measure, you'd say a few neighbors handing you freebies could feed that small table-top 1ft/min deal pretty easy, eh?

so i actually have some knowledge about the plastics business as well as state and fed regs on recycling... i didn't just look at a 100,000 dollar extruder... like you did... :D
Click to expand...
:D Naw... I, personally, wasn't thinking about a $100,000 beast. At least not thinking about it past noting the minefield of issues and stuff you already have experience with. But I did ponder what would happen if I went with providing my own plastic on a scale greater than my neighbors could supply...

i love ya buddy... what printer you thinking about getting? i'll make u some plastic...;) heh heh
Click to expand...
Not totally sure, yet... If I get one soon, I'll start pretty small... Like the size of that Portabee. My garage doesn't have room for anything much bigger. The first printer is going to be a learning experience. But I'm looking at possibly moving later this year... And so after I get some experience with the small printer, and get settled in the new digs, I'll reassess the size of what I really want to make, and how much I want to market stuff.

But when I get a printer, ya can bet I'll post it here. And probably take ya up on that offer of plastics, at least to start. ;)
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
What know ye of PP (#5)?
Click to expand...

what is it you would like to know/... i know a lot of generic stuff... pretty high tensile strength... basically recycled bags (of higher strength like you find bulk chicken breasts and vegetables in) ... makes a great and consistant fishing line...got the BPA and whole toxic fumes thing going on with it too... they make ventilators for most of that and what they dont they burn off...i dont know what to say other than wear an OSHA approved face mask with appropriate filters...i smelt metal in my driveway...i have what sounds like a jet engine (venturi blast furnace) on my property on a main street (two blocks from their sacred mausoleum of little boy sexcapades) .... the smelting/melting of plastics is hazardous... i was/am/are aware of that...first time i smelled burning plastic i knew it was unhealthy... believe me ...i researched this... precautions were taken... a good deal of it mandated by the state im glad to say.... and it was ran as a business...
 
who knew Robert was......Plastic Man!!

plastic_man.jpg
 
robert l. bentham said:
what is it you would like to know/... i know a lot of generic stuff... pretty high tensile strength... basically recycled bags (of higher strength like you find bulk chicken breasts and vegetables in) ... makes a great and consistant fishing line...
Click to expand...

Just wondered what it's like working with the stuff because around here it was, for a long time, one of the plastics that was not accepted for recycling - so I have a bunch I saved for experiments and never ended up doing the experiments. I was just wondering what it was like as a material to work with and what sorts of issues there were with variability in melting point, mixing, problems with impurities like the printing on containers ... etc.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
Just wondered what it's like working with the stuff because around here it was, for a long time, one of the plastics that was not accepted for recycling - so I have a bunch I saved for experiments and never ended up doing the experiments. I was just wondering what it was like as a material to work with and what sorts of issues there were with variability in melting point, mixing, problems with impurities like the printing on containers ... etc.
Click to expand...

well youre always gonna run into oil based impurities on any decent recyclable... its always an issue... and as you start selectively refining it it gets even worse because of the concentration of toxic, caustic and otherwise nasty shtuff thats on it... usually detergents and oil and stuff... you can... if its the baggie type plastic use a regular kind of low grade osha approved fume respirator when doing it tho... safety first always... mostly its heating it beyond the melting points... you have about 30 to 40 degrees of tolerance from your abs plastics and plas.... u want it to just pre liquid for molding but not beyond... you need to preheat the molds to resist warping from cooling... heat induced backflush from inadequate escape holes for over pressure... i dunno... its a friggin glorious mess when you get it working right...
 
robert l. bentham said:
actually me and another guy had a plastic recycling place off the interstate for about five years... we ran two single head extruders and made plastic lumber for most of the time... all of the plastic was from the local community...1500... and it fed both machines with piles left over each day almost two stories... so, twenty foot deep... we also recycled tires and turned them into floor mats for humans and cattle (for the trailers)... i dunno... once you tell people youll take plastic theyll bring you tons of it... and 90 % it is rinsed clean of both residual chemicals but the paper labels too... run it through a granulator... thro in some colorant and bam... our molds were two by four and two by six quarter wall square metal tubes... we made lumber (from trash plastic) in ten foot to twelve foot lengths... one of our more popular products was a a four by four inch plastic lumber beam which we sold to farmers for calf pen bases and skid plates for the prefab garage/storage shed industry... they dont rot as quickly...so i actually have some knowledge about the plastics business as well as state and fed regs on recycling... i didn't just look at a 100,000 dollar extruder... like you did... :D i love ya buddy... what printer you thinking about getting? i'll make u some plastic...;) heh heh
Click to expand...


Well I build an plastic oven big enough to heat 4f x 8ft plastic sheets, and a thermoforming table to mould up to 4f x 4f sheets about 15 years ago ...

used virgin acrylic, if too much recycled content it didn't stretch as evenly, was using 1/4 acrylic sheet clear or 1/8 translucent white acrylic (2067)

made the molds

designed and accumulated parts to build a 4f x 8f combination pressure/vacuum forming table

and have been thinking, a 3d printer would be really useful at 4fx4fx4f ... ;)

Not to build the entire part from scratch, but to repair a worn surface by plating a new wear surface on the existing part using metal ion plasma plating
 
metalman said:
Well I build an plastic oven big enough to heat 4f x 8ft plastic sheets, and a thermoforming table to mould up to 4f x 4f sheets about 15 years ago ...

used virgin acrylic, if too much recycled content it didn't stretch as evenly, was using 1/4 acrylic sheet clear or 1/8 translucent white acrylic (2067)

made the molds

designed and accumulated parts to build a 4f x 8f combination pressure/vacuum forming table

and have been thinking, a 3d printer would be really useful at 4fx4fx4f ... ;)

Not to build the entire part from scratch, but to repair a worn surface by plating a new wear surface on the existing part using metal ion plasma plating
Click to expand...

do you still have use of it?
 
20130218


cell phone photos on my phone suck... but this is the offending piece of plastic i need to replace to make my candy machine beautiful again...
 
flame polishing?
you can use a propane torch, practice on some scrap first
use even, uniform strokes just like automotive spray painting


flame polishing will also re-fuze any micro cracks after routing the edges

if using acetylene torch like shown here, use a 000 tip
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top