kushal

Thanks for pointing it out! I will incorporate that Good question! Its USD, and I will add that to the form. Thank you very much for pointing it out!

Hi folks, Kushal from LayerInk here - my team and me are developing a filament extruder for home use. This extruder was born out of our own need to conveniently produce filament on-demand in quantities, various colors and compositions (ABS, PLA, Woodfill, etc.) as needed for our 3D Printing service bureau (www.insta3dprinting.com). When we looked at the market we found that there weren’t any that offered a really good solution without making it inconvenient. So, we researched plastic processing technology, studied industrial extruders and worked with advanced fabrication tools to replicate Industrial plastic extrusion screws instead of using an off the shelf auger bit. These screws produce a better quality melt because they rely on mechanical shearing of the polymer to generate the heat needed to melt the polymer as against relying completely on external heat. We are also working on an integrated product design, with automatic spooling, dimensional control and automatic control. So far we have tested the extruder with multiple materials including PLA, ABS, Wood composite, etc. and going forward we will test with Nylon, Flexible, Copper, Bronze and Brass filled filament and other ‘specialty filaments’. Currently, we have prototypes up and running and are working on testing our extruded filament as well as packaging all the various modules into a sleek, tasteful and ergonomic exterior shell. Please help us build a product that we hope will add to your 3D Printing experience. Below is a link to a brief survey that we promise will not take more than 5 minutes of your time. We kindly request that you submit just one response to this survey so that we have good data that will aid us in making this Filament Extruder a reality. All responses are confidential. http://goo.gl/forms/gbPrdhjWm4 If you want to contribute more in any capacity, feel free to respond below or email me at kushal (at) layerink.com Thank you for your time. Much appreciated! Happy 3D Printing J Best, Kushal

Hey guys Its been a while since I finished building my Ultimaker and as such have not been very active with any form of 3D Printing since :( @Darius C Few suggestions with your BOM: I think the sheets sizes for the Plywood are off the mark. The 6mm sheet is far bigger and you really need just a small 4mm sheet. In fact the 6mm sheet is almost six times the size of the 4 mm sheet! You require 2 6mm rods each of 268mm length. I'm pretty sure that you get the leadscrew nut from McMaster although if i'm not mistaken they are on the higher side. Also dont buy the 19V, 60W heater from DFRobot, I feel it is wrongly specified as it performed poorly. Use a 12V, 40W instead or buy the heater from elsewhere. Other than that, its a really good BOM and I think you've brought down the cost considerably. However the cost can be brought down further by machining a lot of the parts that you are buying, such as the AL hot end heat sink, bushings, etc. Would love to see your printer when you complete and if its possible incorporate some of the improvements i had suggested earlier like the all metal hot end, Mk7 or Mk8 extruder, perhaps the smoothieboard platform. Its a good idea to innovate rather than replicate the Ultimaker. Anyway all the best with your build!! @Matthias H Sure thing buddy. I will be glad to help you out although it may not be prompt as I am terribly busy with my job commitments! Cheers

The cost of building the machine will vary based on a number of factors, mainly choice in materials and location. Having access to a machine shop and scrap material will greatly reduce your costs. A muber of parts can be machine. Also the axes shafts can be made out if stainless steel or just hardened steel rather than chrome steel. In total the entire 'adventure' cost me 900 euros. However some of these costs went into buying parts that were wrong, failed or broke. After deducting these expenses, it cost 700 euros. However please note that parts which were locally sourced were considerably cheap compared to international rates and also labour is ver cheap so machining and laser cutting was very very cheap. Laser cutting cost less than 20 euros. Harware like nuts and bolts was also cheap. Having the experience of building one ultimaker i would estimate that it would cost me 500 euros to make a second. However this involves using components different from the uktimaker, like all metal hot ends, different electronics platform, perhaps the smoothiebiard. Usinh thermistor instead of a thermocouple also cuts cost. An mk7 or mk8 drive gear and extruder has very few parts and will further reduce cost. Hope this helps!

Thanks calinb! The heat sinks are on only as a precaution. We haven't had significant heat from the motors. I have seen snowygrouch's design for the direct drive. Its an excellent idea from an engineering point of view, but i guess from a product design perspective it makes sense to keep everything enclosed within one frameworks as far as possible. Its one of those form vs function dilemma's! also we are printing only with PLA at the moment (well not yet printing!). The tent idea is an interesting solution to printing ABS! I don't have an infrared thermometer to actually verify the temperatures. When i tested the thermocouple standalone it seemed to work pretty well and was quite sensitive. A lot of the measurement depends on the amplifier circuit you are using. We used the AD595AQ. Currently we are using a thermistor as we seemed to have shorted the AD595 IC ! The thermocouple doesn't quite fit in the AL block we have. We got this block from gadgets3D as a part of the UM hot end bundle that they sell. The TC housing doesn't go all the way into the block, because it is longer. But this is a minor problem and it wouldn't effect the reading?! or you could just cut the housing sheath to the right length. It is verry rugged though! The heater comes with ample cabling! It is a 19V 60W heater. It takes quite some time to get up to temperature on our setup. This is beacuse we are running at 12V, which effectively reduces the power to about 24W. Also the diameter of the heater core is less than the bore in the AL heater block. Hence there is a bit off play. This can be worked around by using some silver foil or a thermal adhesive for a permanent and effective solution.

@Daid: thank you! We fed the PLA from the other side hoping that the natural stiffness of the filament due to it being fed from the wrong side will help in counteracting the hysteresis in the extrusion process?! Do you think it will make a difference? @Calum: thanks for the advice! We will definitely work on making a sleeve! Maybe we can print it?! Or use an elastic material that will also make the tuning easier?

Here are some pictures of our Ultimaker: Any suggestions/feedback would be greatly appreciated. Again we would like to thank the ultimaker community for they're active support. Without referring to innumerable posts on the forum we would'nt have come thus far! If all goes good, we should be able to have our first print within a couple of days!! Will post the results. Cheers Kushal

Hi For those who are interested, attached is the BOM we used to build our ultimaker. Will post pictures soon! Hopefully make our first print tomorrow :-P . For any queries, please feel free to contact kushalfernandes@homail.com namith_1990@hotmail.com Regards Kushal