Monday, May 11, 2009

Working on extruder

Finally started working on the extruder, after a whole lot of school trouble. Seems they cant give me a normal break anymore...

I have finished several parts, but the first part is the most tricky one... You need to do something (usually takes 15-30 min), then wait 12 hours for the stuff to dry, 10 min. in an oven and then the whole thing repeats itself again for another 3-4 times. Never noticed that I needed a hacksaw too... Since I hate cutting things off, I am hoping for the best.

At this moment I am at the part where the coil is wrapped around the extruder and the total time is 24 hours waiting. Hope they give me a break in school too so I can work on the reprap.

At least I found out its not something you can do in school during school hours with a bunch of screaming kids. You need a lot of patience and skilled fingers, but its an ideal project for when you have to write your thesis about it.

2 comments:

  1. Just as a note: You can wait for 24 h OR put it 10 min in the oven. (I made that nozzle in about 1h) :-)

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  2. once the coil is wound, you can put some current through the coil to warm it up - it will get hot very quickly. I've made several nozzles, and I usually use the coil to cook the fire cement for an hour. This makes it a lot quicker to make.

    Also, if you need to, you can break apart fire cement with pliers or gentle hammering and I have been able to retrieve the thermistor and wire from old extruders.

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