DonsDeals Blog: Fabbers@UW Printing a Boat Made of Milk Jugs for Denny's Seafair Milk Carton Derby, July 14, 2012

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Saturday, July 14, 2012

Fabbers@UW Printing a Boat Made of Milk Jugs for Denny's Seafair Milk Carton Derby, July 14, 2012

Fabbers@UW: Seafair Milk Carton Derby Entry

Friday, July 13, 2012

Seafair Milk Carton Derby

We did it! We printed a full-sized boat on Big Red and it floats! With our trusty President at the helm, we can't lose tomorrow. Congratulations to you all for your hard work. We really couldn't have done it without you. A special thanks to: Matt, Adam, Brandon B, Brandon P, Mark H, and Morgan for sucking it up and printing every night this week from 9pm until 6am. WOOF thanks you guys for your hard hard work.

WOOF would also like to thank Scrapblasters for their assistance in reducing our milk jugs to something that we could actually get down a hopper.
They do fantastic work, check them out: http://scrapblasters.com/

Tomorrow, we show them all.

Read More...
http://fabbersuw.blogspot.com/2012/07/seafair-milk-jug-boat-derby.html

Denny's Seafair Milk Carton Derby Date(s): Saturday, July 14, 2012
Location: Green Lake
Time: 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

We've Begun

Following the success of Monday night's test print we only had one course of action: begin printing the boat. First we had to prepare for the print. We finalized boat dimensions, modeled the part in SolidWorks, countersunk hundreds of holes in the pegboard, and set up the build surface. We also decided to add a rheostat inline with the drill motor. This would give us the ability to control our extruder without reaching into the machine as it operated. Compared to our track record of hitting every wall imaginable it was a relatively uneventful afternoon.

Our freshly printed base with out test piece to show scale

During the mid-evening we generated stl files and sliced them. Because we were only going to get one shot at the print we needed to make sure the g-code was what it needed to be. After a dry run for final confirmation we broke for dinner. With our bellies filled we fastened the pegboard down and built a rheostat. We were ready to go.

Weeks ago we began joking about how our print would be super long, take a crew of people to make sure all was going well, and likely require working through the night. That joke is no longer a joke; it has become reality. Four of us operated the machine. We began printing at 11:00 pm and didn't finish the first layer until 3:15 am.

Adam, Matt, and Brandon stationed at their
posts making this whole thing work

Our process took a short while to evolve, but we found a great way to make the print turn out beautifully. We ran the printer at 30% speed. Adam sat at the end of the machine and controlled the rheostat so that too much HDPE was not extruded during turns. Brandon stood near the windows to replenish the hopper, screw down the pegboard if it began to buckle, and any other task that needed to be done. Matt and myself sat on either side of the printer and were responsible for "clean up". When the extruder would lay a bead next to a cooled bead it would not fuse to the old one. In more technical terms: the fresh bead did not have enough thermal energy to melt the cooled adjacent one so would not fuse. To overcome this we supplied energy with a heat gun to bring the old bead up to a fuseable temperature. The finished pattern looks great.

Read More...
http://fabbersuw.blogspot.com/2012/07/weve-begun.html

Friday, June 29, 2012

Printing 3D HDPE

We did it! Today Big Red printed multiple layers in HDPE. Great job everyone, you guys have worked so hard. However, we still have obstacles to over come.

In the mean time, for all of you who had to miss it, below are two videos and some pictures of the day's events.