Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Finally some pictures of the printer!!!

Here's a few pics of the 3D printer...


This is an overall picture of the printer.
This is a close up of one of the drive motors and shows the wiring.
Here you can see the other axis and the hot air nozzle.
This is the car jack that supports the adjustable platform.
This is the Freeduino board and breadbord with driver chip.



The X and Y axis are made out of scanners. I cut it apart leaving only the drive motor/belt and the shaft the carriage rides on. I picked this type of scanner because the motors are unipolar, making them much easier to drive! If this is going to be your first project with stepper motors I strongly suggest you stay away from bipolar motors, as the circuitry is complicated to say the least.

The hot air nozzle is the guts from a cheap $5 wal-mart soldering iron. I put a 1/2" copper pipe cap over the end after drilling a small hole in it. You will want to experiment with different hole sizes to see which one works best for you based on airflow (I tried a few before finding one that worked right but that's ok beacuse they're only about $0.50). For the air I used a standard aquarium pump, also from wal-mart. I connected one end of the tube to the pump and just stuck the other end in the tube of the soldering iron (so that the air blows past the heating element). I covered the soldering iron tube in aluminum foil and then sealed it up with electrical tape. It works pretty well.

The car jack is used to raise the bottom up and down easily. I got it from Checker for $20, which I think is a pretty good deal. I drilled holes in the top and bottom plates and screwed it down to the base board and bolted it to the movable platform.

The controller I'm using is a Freeduino, which is the same thing as an Arduino Diecimila. The driver chip to provide power to the motors is a ULN2803A. I'm still working out software for the microcontroller and the computer.

It's almost finished, the only thing left is a liner for the inside of the box to hold the sugar and a place for the sugar to go when I scrape it off the top. I'll post more pics when I finish it and get the software working.