On 6/11/2011 7:17 PM, Colin K wrote: > The big thing stopping me from jumping in was the sense that you were lucky > if you got a part one out of three runs on one of these things. It seems > like the past year or two, things have improved a lot in terms of the > extruder designs becoming somewhat reliable. I think their biggest problem > these days is the motion control side. A few people have used EMC to run > their RepRaps and seem to have gotten better results. > > This is just my .02c. Curious what others think. I had a similar feeling, Colin, especially since, before I retired, I I had seem some commercial 3d-printed metal parts that a machinist-friend in another group had designed in SolidWorks. They were intended for a precision laboratory apparatus where the cost to produce them in-house would have been extravagant for the tolerances required on complex surfaces and the number of parts required.
Recently, however, I have been watching my 4 grandkids play with all manner of things and I have come to the conclusion that it's time to build a rapid-prototyping machine, even if I end up with parts having the form, fit and finish tolerances typical of the RepRap-class of machines. These kids are getting to the age that they can design clever things on-screen (heck, my 8-year grandson revealed to me today that he is running the flight simulator in Google Earth 8 during downtime at school. I didn't even know GE8 contained a flight simulator!). Having a rapid prototyping machine on hand would mean they could immediately realize their designs. Even later, when and if they learn to use my bench-top machine tools, RP machines make many jobs easy that are just plain hard with drills, mills and lathes. My past experiences tell me that quick feedback is the best way to foster improvements in design (and in thinking) and, to me, that's the whole point of RP machines. I'd like to have that kind of capability for myself too, so I can prototype parts for robots. In many cases, extruded ABS or even PLA will do just fine even for the actual part. I can always follow up with traditional milled and turned parts when strength and/or finish requirements are stringent. Regards, Kent ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ EditLive Enterprise is the world's most technically advanced content authoring tool. Experience the power of Track Changes, Inline Image Editing and ensure content is compliant with Accessibility Checking. http://p.sf.net/sfu/ephox-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
