Team Meetings
Meeting with Adam
- Update
- Is there a large desire to go directly from pellets to a printed part?
- General advantages of extruding with pellets:
- Lower cost of operation
- Mixing and matching pellets for new blends
- Instead of a polyjet, what about a polyblend?
- Advantages of directly extruding pellets
- Improved material properties
- Making our own filament:
- Can interface with any printer
- Lighter print head (bowden is lighter than direct drive because the extruder motor is on the frame)
- Controlling the diameter can be difficult
- Last team to use pellets to filament made a module 6 feet long, system was really big a. PID loop b. Temp, thickness, c. Existing pid controller, have tuning option d. Prof. Sestito was brainstorming with Adam! Take machine that did spooling and do a PID controller, rejected because CS heavy
Adam is interested in simulating being a manager.
Assume user is competent enough to build the Ender 3 from the instructions.
- Unknown bracket geometry of Ender series is holding up the purchase of the printer
- Logarithmic spiral geometry, google conversations
- Research tree
- Daniel talked with his dad, learned they use name brand pellets
- Mikey playing golf, get samples?
- Call creality to figure out
- Purchase by october 1
- Sent email to creality asking about brackets
Pellet Printer Team and Customer Meeting. Attendance: Mikey, Blake, Ethan, Timothy, Kay, Daniel, Adam.
- Adam showed us the previous senior design group’s filament making machine
- We had considered turning pellets into filament as a solution to our project so he said he’d bring it.
- Gave Adam a recap of our project progress
- Logarithmic screw that allows for retractions.
- Off-the-shelf hotend that we found that might fit a screw inside.
- Could also modify a more basic nipple.
- 3D printer farm that Adam has found.
- Adam is getting us connections.
- TH3D studios founded by Tim Hoogland
- Casey Kerrigan’s pellet printer
- Adam suggests that we reach out to her, we aren’t a competitor after all.
- RobotDigg logarithmic screws are fairly cheap and were used by the previous senior design project that melted pellets.
- We are allowed to machine things, but ideally we would use easier materials to get.
Team meeting
- Blake:
- Mikey: Free pellets? Reaches out, put in contact with Mark, gave insight, company, interest form, free pellets, order some pellets ourselves
- Tim:
- Ethan: Printer Level, Benchy attempt, sent connect invitations to Dr. Kerrigan and expert
- Kay: Custom J-head possibility
- Daniel:
- End of October
- Have a plan to get a prototype by the end of November.
- What will the prototype tell us? If screw geometry works
- What will calculations tell us? Cost, power to melt, torque
- Dr. Kerrigan design recommendations from patent
- Blake
- Daniel
- 10 quizzes
- Next Tuesday: Hazard analysis (Tim and Ethan are writing, Blake and Kay are reviewing)
- Pick method
- Figure out sizing
- Amazon barrel and screw, just use small pellets
- Custom J-head with custom screw
- Custom J-head with COTS screw
- Custom J-head with drill bit
- COTS from Harfington, parker hannefin, misumi, ect.
- All custom machined parts (like mahor v4)
- Buy white PLA 4-5 mm
- Buy white PETG 4-5 mm
- RoboDigg Bit and Barrel
- Coffee Grinder
- Buy white PLA 1-2 mm (CANNOT FIND)
- Buy PLA Filament
- Ethan puts together buy form for Tina
- Modify robodigg screw to have 6mm diameter (look at Kerrigan patent for best diameter)
- Buy screw
- Daniel Test Plans from SDRD
- Record steps we have taken so far (Mikey)
- Contact Kerrigan’s Shoe company (Tim)
- Kay Follow up with Nick to modify head
- Follow up with Campbell for auger bit
- Follow up with Adam for auger bit
- Aluminum bit for custom machining (for now)
- Ethan worst case scenario analysis for melting plastic, also find torque maybe