Hello everyone,
With the start of Fall semester this Monday, we are busy at the Wayne makerspace to be ready for the upcoming engineering classes. Dusty is assisting Professor Gold with student teaching the Tools for Engineering class. He is fervently at work, designing a moving piston system. Designing a complex system requires a fair amount of math knowledge, computation of angles, movement ranges, etc.:
In a couple of days’ time, he designed a working piston in CAD. Not only that, but he also learned how to make assemblies, which combines multiple parts to form a working, moving part, right on the screen.
Check out the video of his working piston!
https://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=yeJ9pYVorqs
Thanks to our 16-hour workshop offered early this summer, I was able to glean enough information to create my very first CAD object! It’s nothing fancy, but still quite an accomplishment. It’s a 4×6 photo stand. To create something in CAD, you draw and combine basic shapes to create new shapes. In the examples below, a rectangle made the top stand while a trimmed circle created the “arc” stands below it.
Dusty embellished my design with three dimensional text that pushes through the curved surface:
A major accomplishment earlier this week was the second run of our filament maker. A month ago, Will tore apart and rebuilt the extruder, as the original build (by me) was not precise. By allowing a 4-5mm gap between the motor and auger, it dramatically changed the torque direction. Now the extruder does not tear itself apart from the pressure. We also mounted the extruder vertically, eliminating filament kinking as it cools. Now we can reliably make our own filament at 1/4 cost of buying it, using low-cost pellets. We hope to make totally free filament by recycling soon, too.
Last but not least, we received a request for table centerpieces. Pam chose a number of attractive flower designs from Thingiverse, easily printable on our 3D printers:
Stay tuned for an exciting start of semester at the Wayne makerspace!
Tom
Did you know that Amazon has a 3D printing service? You can customize objects to your liking, which are printed and mailed to you.
http://www.gizmag.com/amazon-3d-printed-products-store/33151
In the world of architecture, New York is about to receive the first entirely 3D printed home, including a printed swimming pool, four bedrooms, 2,400 square feet of living space, and more:
http://3dprint.com/12034/3d-printed-house-pool-ny/