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Are there many assembly type 3D printers? I am wondering if anyone here knows of any 3D printers that work by assembling models from parts instead of extruding or setting material. The closest I have found is the pixelstone but it appears to only be a prototype and I haven't seen or heard of any progress on it in over a year. There is a similar house printer fastbrick but it is also just a prototype. There is research papers on rapid prototyping with lego blocks and software for this (brickify), but these don't have machine assembly. And there are 3D printers that can do conductive filament in the model but none of these seem to do pick and place as well and they still need a human to add the electronics or to change the tool head. (firepick) So are there any 3D printers that work like pick and place machines and just stick blocks together?

Yes and no: Yes, there are machines, that assemble things from parts. For example, SMT placement equipment & pick-and-place-machines. Almost all electronics are made this way. In fact, a lot of items are made by using Pick-and-Place machines in the final assembly. On the other hand: No, there is no 3D-printer, that works by just being a P&P machine: it simply is not inside the specifications of additive manufacturing to be just an assembly machine. That is an assembly or pick and place machine, no matter if they call it printing. It is not. However, I have seen a recent makerfaire video and a talk that was showing a prototype of an E3D toolhead swapper, which - in its idea - would allow to combine a 3D printer with a P&P machine. Their idea is to fully automate the manufacturing process, including adding non-printed parts with grabbers or the like.

I've prototyped a design that used beads similar to these http://www.infostir.com/images/plastic-beads-350.jpg on a rod with a heated tip and then you just press them off into the design. But it wasn't too strong and had some pretty specific requirements of the model. Labelled it a failure.

How does acetone "rejuvenate" PEI? The Prusa3d knowledge base mentions that acetone will "rejuvenate" PEI in addition to cleaning oil and grease from the surface. About once a week, or when prints stop sticking, use ACETONE to clean the bed. It removes grease better than IPA or Windex. It also rejuvenates the print surface. However, if you use acetone every day, PEI will become brittle and start cracking. From a chemical or physical perspective, how does acetone affect the PEI surface?

Rejuvenate is probably a bit of an exaggerated term. The number one adhesion suppressor is grease. The stuff that comes off of the fingers used to handle the sheet. Even if you are careful and only handle the sides, the grease will be carried to the center of the plate next time its cleaned with less aggressive solvents. Isopropyl alchohol does break down grease but not to the extent that acetone does. Acetone also attacks plastic particles that accumulate on the print surface over time. PEI is resistant to a wide array of chemicals[1] including acetone but it can become brittle if exposed to it too much especially when hot so acetone is not recommended for daily cleaning. [1] Ultem Product Broshure table 4-3

Acetone is smelly nasty stuff. Here's a sample recommendation for PEI maintenance from one of a few (million?) 3d printing help sites. Use isopropyl alcohol, methyl alcohol, soap, Heptane, Hexane, or Naphtha. Avoid ketones (such as MEK) or strong bases (such as sodium hydroxide).

Ender 3 is capable of food safe printing? I've been looking into the viability of manufacturing a replacement part for a kitchen blender that has a broken part. I found this page that talks about what makes a print food safe. One of the items mentioned was: ... a brass extruder may contain lead, and lead contamination can cause some nasty health problems. ... I own an Ender 3, and I haven't replaced the nozzle yet. How can I tell if my printer is capable of creating food safe prints in its current state?

Food packaging needs to comply with regulations. One certification agency informing about these (and their service to certify for them) is TÜV Süd, another is SAI global. A summary of the GFSI can be found here. Inform yourself about the standards you wish to apply! The stack can not give legally binding answers. No The Ender 3 is not approved to produce food products (and not usable for them out of the box) for lack of certification. In the design it comes from the box, you need to replace a lot of parts for food rated ones: The whole print head/bed need to be swapped out for food rated parts due to the exact composition being not known. They might contain banned materials. As a result: You'll need an all-metal hot end that can be taken apart for cleaning up to the standards if needed. You'll need a food rated PTFE tube. You'll need a stainless steel nozzle that complies with food grade manufacturing demands. The extruder gear should be stainless steel as well. You'll need to add some part to prevent filament shreds/flakes from the extruder to enter the print area as they might act as contaminants or carry germs. Similar measures have to be taken for the wheels on the hot end carriage, as it might shred. As you include a volume of air into the print, you are likely to be demanded to print under a protective atmosphere to make sure no germs are inside the print. We do not know the composition of the build platform, so you'd need to replace the back surface with something that is food rated. You'll need to post-process your prints as smooth as possible, especially because of the small edges at the layer boundaries, which can and will act as spots where germs can grow. This can be achieved with a material that is smoothable in some way. Alternatively, a sealing lacquer/coating that is food safe might help here. Remember, safety first: Printed plastics that are rated for food are not necessarily food safe because of the quality or blend of the material. PLA and ABS can be made food safe, but that is usually pure material. We usually don't know what kinds of fillers or coloring is in our filament. The heating process might destroy the colors or fillers, which in turn might make it unsafe. Indirect manufacturing If you are stone set you want/need, you can use indirect manufacturing: you don't print the actual object, you print a mold that makes the actual object. Clay and other ceramics can be made food safe very easily and they can be shaped with plastic molds. Boxing There is also another way to facilitate food safety in a 3D printed container, and that is checking where the food will actually make contact. For a lunch box, that is the inside. We could line this inside with a food safe surface, for example placing a steel cup in our plastic cup-holder. Accessories like a cup holder or a decorative container for the actual food container do not need to adhere to the food packaging regulations themselves. Exposure time I know this is all looking at industrial food rated production. The Primer given in the question does include a point about time the product gets into contact with the food - if there is just a short exposure, you might get away with it, but it doesn't make it certified food safe. Another good read in this regard is this short discussion about the Pros and Cons.

Parts printed in pla are food safe, as pla is usually made from corn starch. However, most 3d printed parts would not be food safe for they have many crevices where bacteria can grow. Also, if you printed with materials other than pla with that nozzle, traces of the material (which would make it into the print.

Filament moving around and not sticking to bed I have only just set up my Anet A6 today. I am trying to print a calibration box, but the print is moving around the bed while trying to print. Any ideas how to fix this? The documentation is very vague. Basically I am very new to 3D printing. I purchased an Anet A6 and have set it up stock. I am trying to just print the box directly from the demo models on the SD card. I'm using the standard filament that comes with the printer. I'm not sure what type it is. All settings are default.

If the printed material moves with the nozzle, you might have several problems at hand, e.g.: adhesion, nozzle to bed distance and overall level. Nozzle to bed distance needs to be the thickness of a plain A4 or Letter paper. This needs to be at the same distance (when pulling the sheet of paper you need to feel a little drag) at the complete area of the bed. This is sometimes difficult as not all beds are perfectly flat from itself. Finally, you need to pull some tricks out of your sleeve to get the filament to adhere to the bed. Many example can be found, popular ones are using blue tape, glass bed, glue stick, PVA based spray (e.g. strong hairspray or dedicated spray cans like 3DLAC or Dimafix, etc.), or a combination of these. You just need to experiment some more what works best for you, but it is good to start with a correctly levelled bed with the proper nozzle gap. Sometimes, increasing the bed and filament temperature with 5 °C for the first layer also helps.

Chances are, you're not levelled close enough. try levelling your bed when it's heated around 60C (or as high as you can get if your machine's FW won't let it go that high) with a piece of standard printer paper. you should get a bit of resistance, and play around with the paper for a bit, find a happy medium. Try spreading glue stick on your bed, or spray it with hairspray. If you have BuildTak or some form of PEI, wipe it with some 99% rubbing alcohol. Lastly, find a fairly simple model on thingiverse.com or myminifactory.com, and slice it using either Raft or Skirt as build plate adhesion. I prefer a skirt because you can actively be checking how your bed levelling is, and adjust it. And make sure your first layer flow or extrusion multiplier is slightly higher is about 110-120%. This can get you good sticking almost every time.

Installing bowden tube into E3D V6 I'm struggling with an upgrade I made to my Creality CR-10. I upgraded the extruder to an E3D V6 hotend. The extruder mount and cooling fans are installed and working, however, I'm doing something wrong with installing the bowden tube into the hotend. Inevitably after I print a few layers, the extruder jambs and the issue is always the same: the bowden tube has backed itself out a few tenths of a millimeter, and the filament has mushroomed into the vacant space and hardened so that the filament cannot go forward or backwards. I've tried several things to fix the issue including: Trying various pneumatic fittings from various suppliers Recutting the end of the bowden tube to attempt to make it more flush Replacing the bowden tube Three different E3D heat-breaks from different supplier Various ways of inserting the bowden tube including: pushing it after the fitting was screwed in, pushing it into a fitting that was back out a couple turns and then screwing the fitting in The only thing that has (partially) worked was when I would ductape and hot-glue the bowden tube into the fitting so it couldn't back out. However, since I'm still tweaking things, I inevitably have to disassemble things and I'm back to square one. I'm trying to figure out what mistake I am making to keep causing this issue. As an example, originally I used the pneumatic fittings wrong and thought I was supposed to pull the plastic part out to release the tube, rather than simply pushing it in to release the tube. (Needless to say, I wrecked a lot of fittings that way.) What else might I be doing wrong to keep causing this issue? What are other culprits to this issue happening repeatedly? Are there firmware settings that may help (or be aggravating the issue)?

You may need to secure the pneumatic coupling in the closed position with a small plastic clip (which should be supplied with the hot end). You can print your own, providing that your printer will work for long enough (a paper clip might do the trick): Thingiverse: Bowden Tube Clip v3 Addendum: Some pneumatic couplers are sprung, so that you have to depress the coupling ring in order to release the tubing. In this case, no clip is usually required. Other pneumatic couplers (such as the one on an E3D V6) are unsprung. This makes it easier to secure and release the tube using the supplied clip. The disadvantage is that you may lose the clip. Sprung couplers sometimes lose their springiness, in which case a clip can be used to secure them in the closed position It's "swings and roundabouts", really. You can to choose between the awkwardness of sprung couplers, or the risk of losing a clip. Either way, print some spare clips. You may need them one day.

This sounds more like a problem with heat creep. When you installed the new hotend, did you reuse the old cooling solution? You might need more heatblock insulation and / or cooling power.

Material for autoclave-able part I’m designing a part that will need to be autoclaved—it will be under steam at 121°C for about 15 min per job and I will want it to be able to go through the autoclave repeatedly. I ran a test PLA part through the autoclave and it warped noticeably; based on their glass transition temperatures, ABS (105ºC) and PETG (80ºC) would probably also not hold up. For a consumer-grade FDM printer, what filament materials that could be used for parts that could be autoclaved?

It might seem that common 3D printer materials such as PLA and ABS should be capable of being autoclaved—unfortunately. However, although their melting temperatures are higher than autoclave temperature (typically 121ºC), their glass transition temperatures are below that limit so they can warp or undergo creep deformation. Sterilization of numerous plastics is described here, with PLA, ABS, and PET all being described as "poor" for autoclaving. For each "good" material on that list, I looked for filament by Googling and consulting material guides from Prusa and Matter Hackers. Polypropylene (PP) or acetal (POM, also known as Delrin) are the best choices. Filament is available for PEEK, PEI (ULTEM), FEP, PPSU, and PPS but these filaments are expensive (>$100/kg) and require high extruder temperatures (>300ºC). In contrast, PP is about $50/kg and uses an extruder temperature of 254ºC; POM is similarly priced and uses an extruder temperature of 210ºC. Nylon (depending on the exact type) and HT-PLA may also be worth considering. "High temperature" filaments are not worthwhile for this application. Again, they're expensive and, more significantly, do not work well with consumer-grade 3D printers. For example, the upper limit for a Prusa i3 MK3s is about 280ºC—the thermistor only is good up to that temperature. Higher temperatures would require swapping out sensors and modifying firmware and building an enclosure. It's been done. Printers designed for high-temperature filaments easily cost thousands of dollars. This question was previously asked on Reddit a few times but this analysis is more comprehensive.

You need to order the part printed by an SLA machine in PA, preferably with 10 % mineral or glass content. The heat deflection temperature is suitably high for any autoclaving you'll do, and the material will resist most every that your lab and throw at it. I also went down this road with a part for my own lab and found no reasonable solution from a consumer level FDM printer.

Ender 3 v2 won't read or recognize any SD cards I've just received my Ender 3v2 and tried multiple SD cards, all have been formatted to FAT32 with no luck. Under the Print selection, all I get is the back button. I looked and I have the V4.2.2 and the firmware is up to date, Showing 1.0.2 unless this is not right and this is why I'm having this issue. Even when plugging directly into the computer, nothing is showing up.

Format for 32 with MBR for ender 3d I had similar issue. Check Reddit

Format for 32 with MBR for ender 3d I had similar issue. Check Reddit

Why would one choose 12 V from 24 V, from a safety standpoint? I have seen many people saying on this site and many other 3D printing websites that 24 V systems are safer, compared to 12 V systems. By safer, I am talking in terms of fires or other electrical and component failures. Why would a 24 V system cause less danger? I would think that 12 V would be safer because it is very common (automotive) and many parts have been around for a while that use it. Although there are an increasingly amount of boards that support 24 V, many don't or need fuses or other parts that do support 24 V. Also, many parts that I have used are rated for 12 - 24 V. A 12 V power supply can go a bit over fairly comfortably. A 24 V power supply can't without partially going over the rating. If I had to build a printer designed with safety as a main priority, what voltage would be best?

The most important "safety" advantage when using 24V (compared to 12V) is that to get the same power, you only need half the current. A 192W heated bed would need 16A at 12V, but only 8A at 24V. Since one of the most common safety issues is underrated screw terminals being used for the heated bed (just search for "3d printer fire"; you'll find quite a few pictures of charred plastic around screw terminals). For example, the screw terminals on RAMPs board are only rated for up to 12A. That would be okay at 24V, but well over the limit at 12V. Since the wire gauge is dependent on current, you can also use somewhat thinner wires with a 24V system (or equivalently: wires that would melt in a 12V setup won't in a 24V setup). The power dissipated in a wire scales quadratically with current, so the same wire being used in a 24V setup would only waste a quarter of the heat of that wire in a 12V setup. There is also less strain on switching devices (such as MOSFETs or relays). The same applies here: power loss is quadratic with current.

From a pure safety standpoint there is nothing about a 24v system that is distrinctly more safe than a 12v system. I see you added comments about something involving wire sizes. This is not really a factor.. I would say not knowing what wire size to use is a whole other issue. There is nothing stopping you from putting on larger wires. The following websites verify the fact that a 24v needs smaller wires. Though again the system it self is not safer because the wires required are smaller. JamesTown SDC minimum wire gauge to distance chart I will also note the size difference is negligible anyways. It is not a major difference. Now one exception to this. If you had a 24v and a 12v compatible board. I would pick a 24v. The reason is not that the wire sizes needed are different. But for the reduced danger of the CONNECTOR that the wires attach to. I see quite often in the flashforge owner group boards that have caught fire due to a cheap connector that can not handle the load for the printer.

Best gear STL to print with ABS I spent the last days trying to make the best gears I could but they are not "smooth" nor good. I searched at thingverse with "gear" but I see no set of gears. I would like someone to point me a good set of gears (with 5, 10, 15... teeth for example) so I can use this STL file with Google Sketchup. Do you guys know any good matching gears that I could print? I will be using this gear in a fast spinning matching so it would be nice these gears to be well designed to support some fast moving. Also, I think in my case I would like to use gears with this shape (the white gear). Any idea why is this gear design better than the usual?

This type of gear is known as a "herringbone" gear. A traditional straight-cut gear is strong, but can cause more vibration as each tooth engages and disengages. A helical gear (slanted tooth) reduces that vibration as the tooth engagement is more uniform. However the angle of the teeth causes a sideways force that may be undesired. A herringbone tooth design effectively cancels the sideways forces but gets the uniform tooth engagement. A search for "herringbone" on Thingiverse comes up with many gears of this type. Regarding the quality, if you are not happy with the results of your own design, that's OK - gears are shockingly complex, and people make careers of gear design! However, if you have a good CAD model that just isn't printing well, it's not likely a bad STL. An STL from a different source is likely to have similar quality with the same slicer/printer setup. You might be able to improve print quality of your design by changing settings on your slicer or adjusting your printer. I'd suggest asking a question with your current setup and specific print quality issues.

As for high speed gear ideas why don't you design your own if there aren't any good ones. I will admit sometimes there will be surprising lack of content in some areas and I dont know what you expect, sometimes you do have to do some things your self to bridge the gaps. Maybe try looking into automobile transmission or even jet engines which use two shafts for high speed compressor and low speed fans. Jet engines spin pretty fast over 35k RPM. They may end up using a planetary gear I would think, the forces are well balanced. But you haven't said the purpose of this gear, is it power transmission on separate parallel axis? Speed reduction/change? In engineering, structurally things which use pointy edges can perform poorly under stress, the stress is highly focused geometrically. Instead if manufacturing constraints and design volume allows it, rounded, chamfered, or filleted edges reduce high stress points. Also adding material distributes loads where possible. Smaller teeth may increase vibration frequency but reduce amplitude. Ideally you would want to minimize the relative velocities of the contacting surfaces to reduce waisted force from friction converting to heat. Also heat can reduce strength and increase wear, decreasing life span of the gear.