Wednesday, November 19, 2014

3D Printer

I've been working with the Velleman K8200 3D Printer.  This surprisingly affordable kit has been a really exciting project for me.  Some of my friends, and I went to a Maker's Fair at Tanner Electronics last fall.  One of my friends is a Mechanical Designer, and this Velleman kit was irresistible.
Now we have the kit assembled, and are working out the functional idiosyncrasies.  The motor stop switches needed to be adjusted.  The table needed to be leveled.  We needed to check out all the electrical connectivity, and functionality.  And now I think we are ready to print some parts.
This 3D Printer comes with all the basic parts you need to make it work.  But there are other things to be added to it that you can print, like a control board cover.  Then, also, there are even more things other people have designed, and made open source, like an extruder head light, and even enclosure pieces like the corners.  This is a wholly open source kit, even the source code for the Arduino processor board is customizable.  This is truly a miracle in rapid prototyping.