The RotoZip bit was insufficient: too slow and it burns the wood, too fast and it breaks. I’ve ordered some endmills from Enco, which I’m much more optimisitc about.
The gear below was cut out of 1/4″ plywood, with and endmill too shallow to do the MDF. The partial gear in the background is made of [...]
If you cut MDF too slowly, it will burn. Patrick recommends a speed of between 50 and 80 inches per minute, depending on the quality of the lead screw. The chapter on milling, in my upcoming book on Personal Fabrication for Make, will include a chart of suitable spindle and travel speeds for [...]
I went to Lowes and Harbor Freight over the weekend and bought a few router bits. The best of the collection is the Bosch 1/4″ x 1″ Downspiral Straight Bit ($17.97). It’s long enough that, with multiple passes, it could reach a depth of 1.5″. I also bought a RotoZip chuck adapter, [...]
I was looking at Fab@Home’s extruder design, and it inspired me to build this cookie dough extruder:
This uses the same motor as the standard reprap extruder and can be controlled by the Reprap Extruder Controller board. It works empty, but I haven’t tried it with dough yet.
I’ve spent the last couple weeks putting together a Repstrap 3d printer, based on the McWire cartesian robot. Today I ran my first test of the extruder, with polymorph plastic. At first, the plastic jammed in the drive assembly, just above the PTFE barrel. I think I either something is a [...]
What you need, when you need it
September 6, 2010