Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Started working on ABS extruder

Today I started working on an ABS extruder head.  I used a pinch roller design similar to the one used by RepRap here.  Instead of 3D printing the body, I cut one from plywood on the ShopBot.  Here's a picture of the cad drawing:


I'll try to take a picture of the real thing sometime soon.

I ended up knurling the stepper motor shaft on the lathe, managed to get the rollers assembled.  Using a NEMA 17 motor at 50% current, I managed to get about 60 in/min filament feed rate.  Right now the motor stalls before the ABS filament slips which I guess is good.  We'll have to see if it can generate enough force to drive the hot part of the extruder.

I also ordered a bunch of other parts for the rest of the extruder today.  Those should be here in a few days...

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About Me

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I'm a graduate student in Information Ecology at the MIT Media Lab interested in the creation of low cost machines that enable personal digital fabrication.