Engineering

So I'm trying to home-brew an all-metal hotend. My first attempt is not doing great so I'm looking for input from people who have some experience with them.

Basically, I've taken a SS M6 screw, drilled it through at 2mm, turned off the head, then cut a reduced OD (4mm) between the heatsink block and the heater block. I put thermal compound on the heat sink as well.

Results so far are great flow with ABS at 250C until the first retraction, then clog. I can force it to extrude by hand but the next time it retracts, I get a clog again.

Should I reduce the OD of my heatbreak to 3mm for greater isolation, or am I missing something basic?

Thanks,

I'm fairly new to 3D printing, but have become obsessed. I've used Tinker Cad to design and print a few things, but it seems to have some limitations. I'd like to invest some time learning a better program but I'm not sure which one to start into. I spent a bit of time with Blender tutorials, but it dosnen't seem like its really meant for this purpose. Could anyone give me advice on which program would work well. I don't mind investing time in learning, but I don't want to waste a bunch on time on a program only to find out it isn't the one that's really best for 3D printer design work. What do you guys use?

Hi :),
I'm curious if it's possible to print directly on a metal Mesh with PLA.
I like to build a analysis screen (picture attached).

I want to reuse several Screens from old Notebooks.
Now I need a holder for it.

I have started several times in designing them in Tinkercad and Fusion, but I am not pleased, since I need to do them splitable and scalable.
They need to be split, because i only have 300x300x400 printvolume and already 15" doesnt fit.
Zhey need to be scalable, since they have different sizes.

Or the design has to that clever that it only catches the corners and ties them in the middle. The i need to attach a raspi and am done.

Does someone know if there already exist such a design and can point me at it?

Or sth similiar, since i didnt find any useful and convertible stuff.

Thanks

I was a kid back in 80s when our RC trucks servo motor busted and I opened it to examine what was broken. Then I realized that this was an interesting piece that converts electricity to movement. And I thought back then that how would it fit in a robot arm and in what ways to move it. Then I learned to program with different programming languages, but using a 386 PC there was problems to program a serial port to send a steady PWM signal to the servo. I left the ideas to grow and learned to make electrical soldering boards in school.

As older I tried it again with a BeagleBoard, but the idea was not in it's prime back then and I left it. At the same time I thought about this new technology that Torsten Reil had developed, using AI network to control single joints of a biped movement. I wrote to Torsten and suggested to make an Open sourced platform from their technology back in 2006, but there was no answer then. Then I decided to start making my own testing platform, first the idea was to make a simple role playing game like older Elder Scrolls games and to create character movements with AI. That was a tougher job to create and the project got halted. And the character had some simple movements and weapons like spear. Here's an example https://code.google.com/archive/p/gaima/

From there I thought that what would it be like to combine the technology that's used in computer games to robotics. Not meaning that robotics would have same features as computer games but thinking the ways how animation moves characters in 3d space.

So the newest project came with these ideas and is resulted in a new movement library. It's a library where you can store movements and modify and share them. With different configurations you can play the same movement with servos or different kind of serial connected actuators. The movement data itself is licensed with LGPL and there's a premium controller in beta test that offers a movement storage and playback inside from the Raspberry Pi device.

You can attach movements to Thingiverse objects where you can show the models and the configuration of the servos. Here's an example thing to move.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3335286

Hope to hear feedback from you soon and what you think!