3D printing in clay: metal extruder parts

  

Taek and I have been talking about an all metal extruder chamber and auger for his 3D printer that he prints clay with. Before Christmas I offered to cast the auger in metal as he's been having trouble with the clay destroying the printed part. I cast the auger in bronze for him and while I was at it, I offered to cast the outer extruder in aluminum. The extruder body is pushing the limits of the flask size that we have so I told him that there was no guarantee that we would get a good pour. The bronze auger came out great. We ended up with porosity in the tip of the aluminum extruder body but I was able to tig weld the the extruder so Taek could run some tests. The bronze auger worked really well according to Taek. After further discussion, Taek is looking into the use of a drill bit for the auger and using an anti backlash coupler to mate the Nema 17. I told him we should just machine the extruder body for ease of repeatability as well as testing different metal sleeves for running against the auger. I have some measurements and should be able to bang one of these out for him on my lathe in the coming weeks. In the mean time, he's working on a 6ft tall printer. It should be impressive!

spa device

I finally took some decent images of the SPA Device that Bryan, Chad, Emily, Aaron, Mike, Cherise, and Jon made as a part of our DCRL summer work a few summers ago. Maybe this will help some of us who are putting their portfolios together.

machines that make: 3D printer build

The students in my "Machines That Make" course have been plugging away on building their 3D printers. They are doing well and I'm hoping to get these completed when we get back from Spring Break. They printed all of the parts on our Makerbots and my old Prusa Mendel and we cut the main frame from Lexan on the CNC router. They gave been taking care of the hardware and assembly the last couple of class periods.

mike e./dcrl uwm research report

Michael Erspamer was featured in the UWM Research Report as a result of the work that was completed in the DCRL last summer. Mike was a member of my DCRL R&D team that worked on wheelchairs and the SPA device. He's pictured with my Rep Rap Prusa on the left hand side of the second picture. Nice job, Mike!

dcrl upgrades

We're getting ready for the NCECA Ceramic conference that is being hosted in Milwaukee. We've been cleaning the lab and getting things ready to show during a bus tour event. My SURF students have been working hard on getting things ready for the event. I hung some track lighting over our lab sign last week, and John and I rebuilt our old display cases two weeks ago. I embedded steel square rod in the seams between the bricks of the wall, so we could hang posters using rare earth magnets. We have some more work to do, but things are coming along nicely.

motion tracking

I visited some labs that belong to researchers in Health Sciences Industrial Engineering at UWM last Friday. One of the labs had a full motion capture setup with force sensors in the floor. They showed some of the research that they have been doing with children who use walkers and crutches. They measure the force that these various devices put on joints and record the movement of a patient as they walk across the floor. They are also capturing slipping and falls as they relate to climbing a ladder and heal contact slips. They mentioned that the software they use is quite expensive as it is the same software used by special effects companies. One of the other labs that I visited had a portable motion tracking setup that looked good for portability. I took some pics of various posters and items that were located in or around the labs. It was an interesting visit.