I am new the the site and am having troubles locating the information I am looking for so I this is not the correct forum, please direct me to the correct one, thanks.
I am looking to build my own DIY 3D printer so I can print guitar bodies so I am looking for design plans with an large print bed or if I could find someone who could assist me in expanding the RepRapPro designs.
I am new the the site and am having troubles locating the information I am looking for so I this is not the correct forum, please direct me to the correct one, thanks.
I am looking to build my own DIY 3D printer so I can print guitar bodies so I am looking for design plans with an large print bed or if I could find someone who could assist me in expanding the RepRapPro designs.
My school owns a dimension 1200es sst and it can't print a guitar bodies and this thing cost 32000gbp so you better think wisely and 1 reel of stratasys abs costs £300 and these things have about 1.9 kg abs in since it's "professional quality" that's BS btw
Im not sure how big a guitar body is but for larger print areas I would go with a delta design rather than a cartesian. I personally like the Rostock http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:17175. Im not saying you cant build a large cartesian style printer but if thats the route you want to take then i would build it with extruded tube(like mendelmax uses) not the threaded rod. I would say that some of the concerns for a large print area are going to be warpping of the part, time to print as the extruder is limited to its feed rate and bed leveling. Hope this gets you started. If you have any more questions don't hesitate to ask.
Olaf Diegel has done some amazing work with 3D printed guitar bodies using only the basic Cubify 3D printer, which is fairly limited in total build volume overall. You should be fine using almost any standard 3D printer, although you can find many examples of oversized systems built out from standard parts. Many of the 80/20 extruded aluminum frame designs (MendelMax, RostockMax, etc) can be extended using off the shelf alternatives without too much difficulty from unsupported spans of metal. The current top of the line for total build volume would be Objet's 1000-series PolyJet or VoxelJet's amazing systems that can tractor material along an internal tunnel as more is added at the front, so you could potentially create granular bound objects larger than the printer itself as long as there is a support for the outfeed. But, do not let build volume alone restrict you - you can piece many larger composites together from sliced sub-components, which helps to deal with issues such as build plate levelling and thermal contraction warping that plague larger prints.
Billy, most people recycle their older printers into new larger frameworks, but I suspect that you probably have a hackerspace/makerspace in your area that will have one or more 3D printers. By joining one of those, they will have workshops showing hos to use the printers and how to get the best prints from them and you can use them yourself for a basic membership fee at many locations. If you just want to 3D print small objects, you can also have them created through one of the many services (Ponoko, Shapeways, iMaterialise, etc) using some pretty exotic materials and using high-end additive manufacturing systems. Those can often generate your designs with greater detail than home systems can provide, and allow metals and ceramics as well as basic plastics. They do cost more per material than a print itself, but then there is the lack of a printer's cost and maintenance/upkeep/fiddling so there are always tradeoffs.
@Daniel, I was very skeptical about "professional quality filament" myself for a long time but have come to realize that there is a definite level of simplicity that comes with the more-expensive materials. I don't mind fighting with mily-oval filament or filament varying in width or density along its length, but for my teachers, they find systems like Stratasys and 3DS' Cubify to be easier to just get to printing and not have to worry as much about layer adhesion and print quality when they just need to print 20+ of the same object(s) for a class. I like the amazing variety of options that are available via generic resellers (in the US: Octave, SainSmart, Taulman, etc) but unless you need Nylon or Polycarbonate or something interesting, the quality of commercially produced ABS/PLA filament from the manufacturer (Makerbot, Ultimaker, Up!, Cubify, etc) can make the basic tasks simpler for users who aren't into tuning and tinkering. This comes at a higher cost, but $25/2.2kg or $40/2.2kg is fairly insignificant in comparison to the cost of your time in reprints and clogged nozzles. I have found metal fines from machining the extruder embedded in lengths of generic filament before that required some interesting efforts to clean out a .3mm nozzle that would cause many to turn away from the potential in their 3D printers. Better to let them have a good experience for an extra $15 USD per spool in many cases.
@Billy, it looks like a couple people in Kokomo,In are looking for a group to get something started (http://forums.hackaday.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=59 at HackaDay). The closest I see is in Bloomington (http://craftswap.meetup.com/cities/us/in/bloomington/) 2-3 hours from you, but it might be worth travelling there if they hold a Mini Maker Faire to make some contacts. Another group to look for would be your local HAM Radio crowd, when they get together they often discuss people in the area setting up hackerspaces/makerspaces and also the local universities are likely to have student groups doing the same type of work and they often have equipment available. You can also start collecting the parts (stepper motors from old inkjet printers, Arduinos from almost anywhere, etc) and then just build one for yourself. The layout is fairly simple and Quentin's design looks like it could be managed for a couple hundred USD if you avoid buying retail off-the-shelf alternatives. That saves time, but costs more. If you can find a teacher that's working on practical robotics classes or taking part in programs like the SeaPerch effort, they will also likely be interested in building a RepRap or Fab@Home variation for their classes. Working with a project like that could give you experience with the tech and access to the printer under development.
Yes at my school we are going to wait till the next time we get our budget and we are going to sell it I might try and buy it if you can lend me about £17000 but we are going to get 3 or 4 maker bots 3 solid oodles and 6makiboxs or we could just sell a reeL of filament to buy a maki box. But then we are going to get a fortus machine hopefully or an objet
