Machine photos

Hi All.

I've been getting requests for photos of my machines as kits and for my assembled machines. I took out an assembled machine I was building to increase my own production rate and took a few photos with an iphone, apologies for the extreme blurryness, sadly these were the most clear of the photos. The extruder hadn't yet been attached so I could show it in detail.

 A fully assembled prusa reprap machine except for the extruder. All parts are PLA, it uses the older X-Z assembly since I find this to be easier to print and better appearing than the newer design.

And again from the side, the high powered motors used in the X and Y are visible, as well as the medium torque steppers used for the Z axis.

As can be seen here, I used Ultimachine RAMPS kits. These are supplied unassembled, along with an Arduini Mega and 4 polulu drivers. Why not make my own electronics? Because this is easier for the time being and ultimachine and RAMPS comes highly respected in the community for quality

The hot end is a PTFE barrel that is tapped which a brass heated barrel screws into. The nozzle size is .5mm, which produces a very fine filament that I have used with layers in the .25 to .4mm range. Heating is applied using woven fibreglass Nichrome wire and fire cement.

The extruder used a high torque stepper motor in a wades style design.

The gears are lasercut MDF. This is the only part of the machine which is lasercut, mainly because it is easier to do this than worry about printed gears, since this needs a very high amount of quality and is a common point of difficulty in construction and operation. With Lasercut gears they are perfect every time and problems are avoided.