hackaday.com: Visiting the Midwest RepRap Festival, you will, of course, find a ton of 3D printed baubles and trinkets. A slightly more interesting find at this year’s MRRF was a lot of resin cast parts from [Mark VanDiepenbos]. He’s the guy behind the RotoMAAK, a spinny, ‘this was in the movie Contact‘-like device designed for spin casting with resins. At the festival, he’s showing off his latest project, 3D printed resin molds.
8 comments:
These 3D printed resin molds are a simple but cleaver use of the laser cutter. You could make a mold of practically anything and easily turn it out into multiples in minutes. Technology in 3D printing is advancing quickly and new products and usages are becoming invented almost weekly. I feel as if only a couple years ago I first heard of a 3D printer which could produce toys from a factory in your own home, but now this technology is viewed as the norm in some cases. This is a very practical use for the 3D printer in my opinion and I'm excited to see where its going to go in the future.
The RotoMAAK is a really cool device and a great companion to a 3D printer. What I really like about the RotoMAAK is how simple it is and how fast it can make copies. Often times I hear people say that 3D printing is a bad way to make things because it takes a very long time to make each part. Resin molds seem to fix this problem without making it harder or slower to make the first copy. I don't know much about the type of molding that the RotoMAAK does, but I suspect that there is a similar method of making molds with out the automated machine. I would like to learn more about that so that I could see if this device is actually useful or if it is just the type of molding that is helpful.
So this is a really clever idea, and I wonder why people weren't doing it before. Molding and casting a 3D part makes a lot of sense (when the rp part isn't what you need). When I was at Harvest, we printed a lot of parts, especially in the first 4 years or so, but we made a lot of duplicates. I wonder if the parts (gripper covers, back plates, etc.) would've been just as effective if they had been cast instead of printed for each robot. I do see one problem with this which is it takes a few man hours to make casting feasible, whereas the printer, if there isn't a large cue for things, is very much start and leave overnight. That being said, I think casting will become more commonplace.
This is pretty neat, using 3d printing to make molds seems like a no-brainer in hindsight but this is something that I don't see that many people doing much of it today. Beyond this, though, I think by far the coolest part of this article is the laser cut rotocaster. Most rotocasting machines that are built today are made of welded or bolted together metal, making them cost and tool inaccessible to many people. Laser cut parts, however, are easy to make even without a laser out of cheap materials, so I am excited to see if this idea causes a spike in rotocasting in the making community.
Not knowing much about either of these processes really, it is cool to think about the applications of these machines in the theatrical world. Like Joe said, one would assume that 3D printing would be a pretty standard thing for mold making but I guess that is not the case. I do know that most 3D printing does take a while and I can see why that could of course adversely effect the mold making process. Compared to other processes though, I would like to think that making casts out of this material would still save some time and money.
Yet another example of how technology can improve existing technology. I am always fascinated by the growing capabilities of the technology we have in our world. I do not know very much about 3D printing but I imagine this process can greatly improve the mold making world.
This is such a simple idea but its also a very good one. It seems so strange that I haven't heard about it before. This would allow you to replicate something with a 3D printer but have it be made out of whatever material you would like. If you 3D print the negative then you have many more possibilities for the positive. I wonder how easy it is to take a 3d scan of an object and make it into a negative?
I find the RotoMAAK to be amazing. Just the mechanics of it are ingenious to me. The single band that rotates the middle axis is a great, simple solution. It completely boggles my mind and I hope that I can repurpose it for some other application one day. In regards to the function of the machine, the act of taking industrial equipment down to a consumer level grade has begun taking a sudden rise. I absolutely love that this is a trend and can't wait to see what comes next.
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