meeting-04

Meeting 04 - Saturday, August 4th. 1PM-4PM. Radius Apartments (Mike's building) rooftop common area: 400 Boren Ave N, Seattle, WA 98109 (South Lake Union) Map

In this (final) meeting, we will complete the electrical components of our printer. We're likely to use up all three hours calibrating our printers.

Parts

• Power supply! 30 amps will be enough for a heated bed, plus dual extrusion (print two colors) if you decide to upgrade later. Ebay
• Filament. Take your pick from zyltech on Ebay or on Amazon. Get your color of choice, and anything with a decent rating will do. Don't get a specialty wood, metal, or fibre filament. It's important to get 1.75mm PLA. Get a full kilogram. Polylactic Acid (PLA) is plant-based, it has a fairly low melting temperature, and it doesn't shrink much as it cools.
• Control board! The RepRap Arduino Mega Pololu Shield (RAMPS) controller is based on an Arduino Mega 2560, with a 3D printer controlling "shield". Basically, we load a program onto the Arduino that has all of the logic of controlling the printer, and the Arduino talks to a second card which has all of the hardware for interfacing with the motors and heating elements. ebay
• LCD Controller. This LCD display includes an SD card reader and a wheel/button that lets you control the printer without attacking your computer. ebay Or if you wanted to be really cool, you could spring for this high(er) definition LCD: ebay
• Hot end. This is the part that we heat up and push plastic through. There are several manufacturers of hot ends, but most of them make clones of E3D. The V6 is E3D's flagship hot end, and so most manufacturers clone that version. Consequently, most printers are designed to accomodate a "V6 style" hotend. As simple as they are, hotends are somewhat prone to failure, and so it's worth it to spend a few extra dollars to get a decent one. For our printer, we will also need a "Bowden" style setup, which refers to separating the hotend of the extruder from the motor that is pushing filament through it. I'd suggest buying from Zyltech. ebay
• Cold end. The "cold end" of the extruder is the part that pushes the plastic filament into the hot end. Here is a suitable one: ebay. Either the "right" or "left" direction is fine.
• Build plate. The printer has to print "on" to a surface. Although it's not strictly necessary, an ideal build plate is heated to help keep the print warm through the duration of the entire print: this helps keep it from warping. Delta printers use round build plates. I would recommend buying this one: people have knocked off stars for various reasons, none of which actually matter too much for our printer.