Some Miscellania

.

My PLA arrived last night. A beautiful 5 lb. roll of green filament. As a welcome surprise the folks at Ultimachine sent me two small sample rolls as well, one clear and one grey. I will use those for setting up the extruder and calibrating the machine.

.

I spent some time over the last couple of days on my next project, the powder printer. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I think that the laser cut bin setup created by Peter Jansen will make an excellent foundation to build on, although I will have to scale it up. I also reviewed all the blog entries that Alvaro Fogasa made on his work (good thing that I made a full copy since he has since lost everything in a computer crash).

.

I downloaded the latest version of sketchup which I will use to create models of all the parts. I plan on using modified versions of the Mendel parts wherever possible. That way I can create them on the Mendel and others will be able to pick up on the design. Luckily someone has already posted a sketchup file of all the Mendel RP parts so I have a great starting point.

.

The Mendel Y-axis carriage should work fine as the basis for the X-carriage for the printer. The repurposed printer carriage from a Lexmark Z12 printer will be mounted on it to privide the Y-axis movement with the printhead. I will redesign the mendel Y-carriage bearing mounts and use 5/16 barstock for the rails, just as the Mendel does.

.

I plan on mounting the whole shebang in a stock kitchen cabinet from Home Despot with locking wheels on the bottom so I can move it around. he storage space this will provide can be used for powder, bottles of binder, brushes, dust masks and all the other paraphenalia of printing.