Saturday, September 21, 2013
Automatic tool changing on a 3D printer
hackaday.com: [Luis] has a pretty interesting project on his hands. He’s using a delta 3D printer to plate a few edibles – yogurt, chocolate, and other thick liquids. Because he intends to use actual plates as the build surface, calibration is key.
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6 comments:
This is a great stride in the field of 3D Printing. Being able to change the tool you are using to print automatically opens up the possibility of a lot of cool things including multiple color printing and multiple material printing. Looking at the pictures and the video, the printer itself is very similar to one built by someone I know in Pittsburgh. His can have the tools swapped out manually to alternate between 3D printing and drawing. If it could change out tools, his could print an object and then paint or color it or something even cooler. The possibilities are endless.
This may seem like a simple step, but like Joe said, this opens up hundreds and thousands of more possibilities. A person could print out whatever object, leave it running overnight, and come back the next day with your finished product waiting for you. In terms of theater, a designer could design a complex prop or piece of a scene and then have it printed and painted to the exact specifications wanted. And all of that could be done when everybody is asleep!
This is remarkable! The fact that the machine can swap out tools is one thing, but I find it more interesting that Luis has found a way to sense the surface of an object and map it on his computer and then instant form the print to it. This opens up a world of possibilities due to the fact that now a 3D printed object can be printed on any surface (provided that the filament will stick of course). And now with the tool swapping, I believe we're getting closer to seeing a 3D printer reproduce a new 3D printer entirely from scratch.
This is really cool, but I don’t think it has any real practical application for entertainment use. We rarely have the need to print objects on a variety of different surfaces unattended. Even if we did, most “production-quality” machines have their own homing and calibrating probe.
If this tool changing technology could be modified to pick up and calibrate a rotary head, a 3D Printer could be turned into a small mill. That would make this home-brew project something worthy of real development and prototyping.
Pretty significant advancement. The ability to switch tools not only gives the printer the ability to probe and build, but also to build with multiple materials. Plastics could be molded throughout ceramics and metals to create tools of a new generation.
It may be old technology but I have never seen a 3d printer with an axis of movement like that. I don't know if it has any practical application but it certainly looks cool. The ability to change print heads however seems like it could be a very useful and time saving technology, and also seems like it would allow for more accurate printing because it can calibrate itself.
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