Where to begin... I work in the Aerospace industry designing and building spacecraft components, but have always wanted to get into the automotive aftermarket industry. This year I pledged to design and build 5 various automotive products and to achieve that, I needed rapid prototypes to develop them. I decided that constantly outsourcing SLS/SLA prints would get expensive. One day I stumbled upon the Makerbot 3D printer and instantly invested in one. Through trial and error I learned how to use it. It has since become an extremely powerful tool. To have a machine that can almost replicate anything opens up your world to many new ideas....or err distractions.
I decided to go after a record and increase the z-axis travel of the bot, as can be seen here:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3533 http://wiki.makerbot.com/hall-of-fameIt brought the record to Chicago with the Willis tower.
I then wanted to expand the capabilities to use multi materials with the my Pfiercestruder design:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3635And now I want to tackle the hardest endeavor, to complete the circle. Laser cutter makes Makerbot, Makerbot makes laser cutter, laser cutter makes more Makerbots.
Not to mention having a laser cutter at less than $1000 would be an extremely valuable tool and possibly a revenue generator.
So it begins, I found buildlog and someone graciously blazed the trail and designed an open source laser cutter. Score! Now all I had to do was build it, as I started going through the BOM and drawings I noticed I could print many of these parts out myself with my bot. So, I got right to modeling and printed two tube clamps. They came out great, even the holes.
As I continued through everything I made a spreadsheet, like most engineers do. I decided that 40-60% of the machine could be printed. Originally I was even going to print out my own Misumi type beams, but that would take an extremely long time and came up with the idea to do a threaded rod structure, which presents some design challenges but cuts the price of the frame from $200 to about $60.
All the timing belt pulleys, plates, connecting ends, tensioners can be printed... in theory.
Here is a screen shot of the cutter so far, some things are still a work in progress and things have been omitted for simplification. Sorry it's not bigger, I'll have to take new screenshots. The design has changed a little since this was taken too.
- Official Image