Sunday, May 13, 2007
PLA Filament works
Back at the start of the year, plastics suppliers Claraint were kind enough to donate 10kg of polylactic acid (PLA) granules to the RepRap Project. Alan from Imagin Plastics - a welding rod and extrusion specialist in Henderson, New Zealand - then ran these granules through an extruder to produce 800m of 3mm diameter filament which I picked up on Friday. It was dried overnight at 60C and then extruded using a 180C die and 170C feed. Here's there wondrous extrusion machine:
And here's the batch of filament I picked up. It's actually quite transparent.
By running an unmodified Mk2 extruder at 155C and increasing the pressure on the filament - it's much harder than CAPA - I managed to run it well enough to produce this shotglass:
This material definitiely has some artistic possibilities.
Further experimentation is needed, but it does look like it will be possible to make watertight containers with a reasonable degree of strength from PLA in a Darwin. A straight-through extruder would probably have an easier time feeding filament, as the stuff is rather stiff.
Vik :v)
And here's the batch of filament I picked up. It's actually quite transparent.
By running an unmodified Mk2 extruder at 155C and increasing the pressure on the filament - it's much harder than CAPA - I managed to run it well enough to produce this shotglass:
This material definitiely has some artistic possibilities.
Further experimentation is needed, but it does look like it will be possible to make watertight containers with a reasonable degree of strength from PLA in a Darwin. A straight-through extruder would probably have an easier time feeding filament, as the stuff is rather stiff.
Vik :v)
Labels: clariant, extrusion, filament, henderson, imagin plastics, pla, polylactic acid, reprap, zaphod
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Time-lapse video of test hexagon.
A few people have asked me if I would make a short time-lapse movie of something being RepRapped. So, thank you for the inspiration. I finally got round to it on the second attempt, after earlier borrowing a higher quality camera that unfortunately lacked macro focus:
The object is a standard 20mm (approx) test hexagon, 5mm (quite accurate) thick, extruded from CAPA. There are approximately 2.5 seconds per frame. I used a Linux script of my own devising and a Logitech 320x240 webcam clamped to the base board, which I will document and GPL if anyone is interested. Donations of higher quality equipment greatfully accepted!
Here's what that lot looks like:
Vik :v)
The object is a standard 20mm (approx) test hexagon, 5mm (quite accurate) thick, extruded from CAPA. There are approximately 2.5 seconds per frame. I used a Linux script of my own devising and a Logitech 320x240 webcam clamped to the base board, which I will document and GPL if anyone is interested. Donations of higher quality equipment greatfully accepted!
Here's what that lot looks like:
Vik :v)
Labels: capa, extrusion, fast, hexagon, polymorph, reprap, sped up, test, time lapse, video, zaphod
