Huge 3D printer project

[Ron Kulas]

Its going to take about a few weeks to assemble this huge 3D printer for the company I work for. Its larger in size than 2 washing machines (proving Americans will use any unit of measure other than the metric system) A ton of boxes of tiny parts (structural parts,nuts, bolts, wiring, circuit boards, stepper motors, etc) After two days of assembling it, Im not even half done. When finished it will be about 65" x 40" x 48" tall and will be able to 3D print parts as big as 47" x 24" x 24". I love my job. This will eventually be used to print large scale prototypes for diagnostic imaging/medical devices but first (after I finish building it), I get to play around printing non-essential stuff to master the tool, its features and software.


This 3D printer is for my employer (a diagnostic imaging/medical devices company) but I have 7 smaller 3D printers at home for my own use as I am a additive manufacturing/techy geek.



Thankfully the maker provides great instructions including the written word, video, 3D rotating imagery.

[Ron Kulas]

Ive finished building this huge 3D printer. Ive made several modifications/improvements and then , thanks to a co-worker we added a live streaming web cam so I can monitor really large print jobs remotely. This printer will make parts that are 4 ft x 2 ft x 2 ft.

[Ron Kulas]

I needed to do a test print on this new 3D printer. I wanted to test about 6 diff. things so I selected this as the test model. Then after it finished, I threw some paint on it. It will hang on the wall next to the printer.

[Ron Kulas]

More fun with 3D printing. Yesterday I fooled around with converting 2D photos into 3D printed parts. Here are the first parts I printed. I need to work on improving the quality. One of the photos is of my WI buck from 2019.

[Ron Kulas]

Playing around with turning photos into 3D printed parts.



Then with a light held behind it.



How about a valentines gift in the form of a night light??

Start with a photo







Then add light behind the 3D printed part.

[Ron Kulas]

Today I designed and printed a spool dust cover for the new printer. Then I added a softer "mud flap" because this printer has the enclosure with swinging doors and the doors will hit the mud flap as a soft stop without damaging either the spool dust cover of the clear doors. The yellow tool hanging from a string above the spool is an SD card puller I designed and printed since there is so little of the SD card sticking out of the control box that I cant pinch the card to pull it out.

Then I added a piece of open cell foam that I slit that swipes/wipes the dust from the filament before it enters the guide tube. This printer is not in a clean environment.

Then I added a large maple top work bench for post processing printed parts. Just about ready to start making large 3D printed parts.

[Ron Kulas]

This huge Modix printer is in the engineering lab about 7 miles from my house. I installed a live feed web cam but the lights in the lab auto-power down at 8:00pm and dont come back on until they are manually switched on when entering the lab. If Im doing a multi day print job that I want to monitor remotely, Im unable to see anything when the shop goes dark. Tomorrow, Im going to fix that. I picked up 5 meters of bright white LED's that I will attach to the inside of the enclosure to light my way.

[Ron Kulas]

Today I installed the LED light strip so I can view the live feed web cam after the lights in the lab power down. I made an aluminum strip to hold the lights. I ran the LED's around the web cam and along the top of the printer.



And when turned on.



When the lab goes dark, the web can would show very little and to make it worse, the cam could not focus.

Here is cell phone photo of my laptop screen of the live feed with the LED lights off.



And here it is with the LED lights on.