i just got the book printing in plastic so i could make a home made 3d printer using the ehiteant plans has anybody else built one of thease and does it work well? thanks steve
I couldnt tell you how much it would cost as im not sure how much material and time it would take me to either print the parts or make the printer. I currently have some others projects going and dont think i would have time to do this. I was asked by another member to possibly be a technical editor for a book he has coming out and would like to dedicate as much time as possible to this. Sorry about that. My advice would be to check out ebay or reprap forums as there is always people with parts or willing to print parts for others.
I assume you mean Whiteant design. This design is typically used as a cnc machine but dont know why it couldnt be used for 3d printing. As ive never used or built one i couldnt tell you if and how well it performs.
thanks i've seen it used as a 3d printer on you tube in thre book they show it as well. if used as a printer would nema 17 motors work, or should i just use the nema 223 that they recomend? steve
I would say go with the Nema 23 as this is what is stated in the build instructions. You might be able to get away with a higher torque 17 but I'm sure this was tested when they were designing the Whiteant printer/cnc machine. What board and drivers do they you using? Make sure your drivers can supply the right voltage to the motors or the Nema 23 will essentially be a Nema 17.
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.
