muttstang

Now if I could only find someone who can play decent.....

Here's the resulting guitar. still have to finish up the model of the trimmer... Took some nicer pictures today. That figure really pops at the right angles!

Is there anything in there for different nozzle sizes? I haven't been able to find it and I have a larger opening in my nozzle. (sounds like a bit of a personal problem there..)

Some clear shellac on the back to seal it up. Now to fill the pores!!

Just have to finish putting the hardware in it I in the model

Second coat was a bit darker than I envisioned but I like it. Should have made the green dye a bit thinner.

I'm re-working a guitar that I built a couple of years ago. I have glue'd a really nice piece of flame maple veneer to it using a vacuum bag that I made from scrap at our engineered films division and I have put binding on it in order to hide that it is a veneer top and to protect the edge. I decided to print some of the tooling for doing this. I made 2 dremel attachments. One of them for cutting the binding channel on the edge of the guitar and another for trimming some ABS strips into thin pieces for additional decorative strips on the edge of the binding (called purfing). I have not taken pictures of the attachments themselves but I do have screenshots along with solidworks models of the parts/assemblies. Printing the parts probably saved me from buying around $150 worth of tooling to do this. Here is a cross section of the binding trimmer with the dremel router bit highlighted blue. The binding passes through the little slot to the left of the bit where I trim it a bit at a time by adjusting a screw. A spring loaded piece maintains pressure to keep the binding piece against the adjustment guide. And an isometric view. The top piece attaches to the dremel and is clamped in place. I have an extra part in there because it is based on my binding channel cutter where I added another threaded portion for depth adjustment once the tool was attached to the dremel. And for fun, here's the guitar in process. It has the first coat of dye that will get sanded back to leave the dye in the deeper figure then I'll put a lighter green/blue dye on to get a nice color combo and really make the figure pop.

It is probably not strong enough to handle anything but the easiest materials to cut. If you wanted to cut some visualization type prototypes from foam block that might work.

I've been using the airhockey puck slurry method for a while now with good success. I have a bulb eyedropper that I use to drop some acetone on the plate, and then swirl it around with an ABS puck. Easy and it works well.

I made a bunch of small clamps for laminating the sides on a guitar case.

the bearings for the carriage would have to have the splined shafts on one side as well. They would transfer through a gear set within the carriage. Maybe too much added complexity and it might be simpler to go with a small stepper on the print head with a gear reduction.

My thought is more that the rods that the print head slides on would be splined shafts and they would rotate to drive an extruder mounted in the print head. You don't have a seperate component going into the print head to provide rotary motion. It is part of the bearing/rod system. The thomson version is probably a lot more spendy, but there are others out there that might not be to bad. It would add to the cost but it would put the extruder in the head without the added mass of a motor. You could put one on the X and one on the Y and rotate them independently in the event of dual extrusion. http://www.thomsonlinear.com/website/com/eng/products/ball_screws_and_lead_screws/ball_splines.php or http://www.nbcorporation.com/product/lineup/ballspline/ball_spline.html

Have you guys ever considered showing off your stuff at Solidworks World? There are many many professionals there who would likely be interested in another 3d printing option. That's where I picked up an UP! plus and got into 3d printing.

Oh, I know about the flex drive. my thought is something a lot different

the splined shafts tend to be spendy, though if a decent sized manufacturer is making a run of 3d printers, they probably can get a good discount. the build it yourself types will have to scavange ebay a bit more to get the same thing. Or use square shafts and needle bearings like the original poster in your link.