Making thumb screws and progress.

The required chemicals has arrived.

Right two bottles is silicone for the VAT-bottom and the right bottle is the light sensitive resin to make models from.

Chemicals

The VAT was coated today. Now it has to cure for 48hours on a flat surface. If everything goes straight I can try first printing at the end of the week :-)

Coated VAT, Hard to see but the bottom has a very thin layer of silicone.

For holding the VAT to the sliding table I was in need for two thumbscrews. The local hardware store didn't have any in the right size! What to do then?

Simple design was done in Sketchup and then 3D-printed.

Thumbscrew 

And the result:

Thumbscrew

The lower case is finished and the projector mounted on a baseplate. The projector will be moved up and down depending on some of the printing parameters. Position will be locked by placing dowels in the rails. A screw for moving was considered, maybe in the next version

Status

For testing measurements I made the build platform from MDF a cheap material to use for testing how all the parts fit together. A new made of plexiglas is on the workbench ready to replace the MDF-version. 

What remains now? The easy part, namely wiring the electronics, configuration of software and testing operation without photosensitive resin.

Yesterday a new garden door came and the carpenter will mount tomorrow.

New door

This is the old garden-door. Hopefully the new door will bring a little more light into our dining room.

Old door

Have fun 

Niels

SLA printer progress

A little progress on the SLA 3d-printer. I didn't get much time in the workshop during the Easterholidays :-)

First was testing the slide mechanism. Since this photo wast taken I replaced the wooden rails with rails made from plastic because of lower friction.

Test of slidemechanism

Then the upper case was assembled and rails for z-movement (up-down) mounted.

Top case

To get measurements for the lower case that contains the projector a mockup was setup on the dining table.

TestMockup

From other side

In normal use of the projector is meant for projecting a large image on a wall or screen and that gives a too large image so something must be done. Either modify the projector so it can focus at the close distance that requires opening the projector and removing stops in the lens. I didn't like to do that. So instead I chose to try using my set of close-up lenses.

Close-up lens

An (cheap) adapter between the internal thread of the projector lens and the external thread of the close-up lenses is on the way from Ebay. The blue masking tape was just to hold the lens for test.

Back to the drawing board designing the lower box.

Have fun
Niels