Open Source Microfactory Boot Camp 2019

About

In 2019 we are offering an experimental, public-interest design, STEM boot camp Summer Camp that combines both well-prepared builds and time for experimenting with design and prototyping. The first 3 days cover building 3D printers and learning to design objects using open source FreeCAD software. The remaining part of the Summer Camp involves experimentation with a wide variety of mechanics, materials, and electronics topics. Participants have a chance to build a 3D printer on the first day to take home with them - and to use this printer in prototyping throughout the week. The goal of the week is to equip participants with a wide array of skills that allow replication of the experiments as needed.

On day 1 - we build the OSE D3D 3D printer - a 3D printer that is intended for unleashing industrial productivity on a small scale. We feature silent operation, the Titan Aero extruder with Volcano nozzle for printing deposition rates up to 5 lb per day, and a PEI, insulated heat bed that heats faster and uses less energy than any other comparable 3D printer.(*show data on heat time and graphs of bed energy use). We are using our scalable Universal Axis motion system, which means that you will learn how to build larger machines using the same basic building blocks. The design is fully open source and intended for widespread replication.

On day 2 - we will teach you the basics of design in FreeCAD using a simple but powerful workflow that allows you to design just about anything - and can be taught in one hour of time. We will spend the day practicing CAD design skills, and we will teach you how to use the OSE Part Library to design variations of the 3D printer of any size or shape.

On day 3 - the scalability magic of the Universal Axis comes to life as we built a 1 cubic meter and a 6 foot tall 3D printer to print furniture and plastic lumber using the SuperVolcano Nozzle with a deposition rate of 20 lb/day.

Days 4-7 Include:

We will build open source 3D printed electric motors, 3D printed planetary geardowns, build Arduino-based motor controllers to run the motors that we built, make our own circuit boards using a laser printer, build our own Arduino-controlled power supplies to power both our 3D printers and electric motors, and even make our own Arduinos from $1 microcontroller chips.

We will culminate with the ability to convert our 3D prints to metal parts made from zinc-aluminum alloy - by using lost plastic casting where 3D printed molds are used to make parts as precise as 3D printed parts. Wee will build a small electric furnace for melting the Zinc-Aluminum alloy. We will have the opportunity to mill the zinc-aluminum using our open source D3D CNC Circuit Mill to make 3D printer extruders.

Day 8-9 We are also dedicating 2 extra days to applying all of our learnings to build a 3D printed cordless drill from scratch - using 3D printed motors, geardowns, and built-from-scratch electronics. We will build stackable battery packs from lithium ion 18650 Cells. We do not guarantee that we will have a professional grade cordless drill - but we do guarantee that we will have a fascinating first prototype where all of us collaborate on making the drill work by applying all the skills that we learned - while using 100% open source design and build toolchains.

The focus is around gaining decent understanding of the tools and techniques necessary to build small mechatronic devices - such as 3D printers or cordless drills as the cases in point - with fully open source tool chains. This includes developing open source stepper motors, electronics, extruders, heating elements, drive systems, and geardowns that can be applied to building many other types of products. We focus around the 3D printer as a universal prototyping tool, and teach Open Source Product Development techniques that we have been developing at OSE to leverage open collaboration for open source product design.

We are preparing to deploy an Incentive Design Challenge in 2020 - a global collaborative development challenge aimed at producing a professional grade cordless drill. We are planning on leveraging a significant reward ($100k+) to engage wide participation - but the rules are different. We will reward collaboration - where building upon other contributors' work is required to solve a challenge greater than any single person could do. We are focusing not only on the design of the cordless drill - but also the design of an enterprise infrastructure such that these open source drills can begin filling the shelves of local hardware stores. If this works out, we will have demonstrated the true power of open collaborative development for economically significant results - using fully open source toolchains.

Time and Place

• July 1 - July 9 - 9 day total.

Schedule

• Day 1 - Build your own 3D printer - the latest version of D3D v19.02 with the Titan Aero high performance extruder and Volcano nozzle that can handle faster print rates with 0.25 mm up to 1.2 mm nozzles. V19.02 is easier to build and align, removing the need for welding if you don't have a welder or don't want to mess with JB-Weld epoxy. Choose from 6", 8", and 12" print bed versions. Cost is $799, $899, and $1299 if you want to take the 3D printer home with you.
• Day 2 - Learn to use your 3D Printer and to design objects using open source CAD. This will be the foundation for doing useful design in the remaining days of the Boot Camp. We will teach you how to use FreeCAD to do simple and complex design so you can create and modify 3D printing files using a completely open source toolchain. We will teach you a basic, but powerful workflow that can be learned in 1 hour of hands-on practice - so that you can add effective CAD design to your skill set as one of the core outcomes of the Boot Camp. To test the accuracy of your printer, we will 3D print calipers that have up to 50 micron accuracy. We will teach you how to switch to different nozzles for printing - depending on if you want high detail or fast prints. We will teach you how to design printable objects, and how to prepare them for successful printing.
• Day 3 - Large 3D Printer. Today we will build 2 large printers - one that has a 1 meter bed, and another that is a 6' tall 3D printer. To do this, we will use the 1" size Universal Axis in the larger printer. We will print with large printing nozzles of 80W - which can print up to 20lb of plastic per day. This means that 3D printing of large objects such as furniture or building materials such as plastic lumber now becomes feasible. If there is the interest and energy, we can use our D3D CNC Circuit Mill to mill an extruder from scratch - see Open Source Rubber Optimized Extruder.
• Day 4 - 3D Printed Motors - 1. Halbach Array motor with William. 2. Axial flux motor of 73% efficiency. We will build a simple electronic controller for speed control using a 555 timer chip. 3. Motor Stack - because our motor has a shaft that sticks out from the front and back - we can connect multiple motors together for higher power. How is that for scalability? 4. If there is interest and enough people - we will build a 3D Printed Stepper Motor.
• Day 5 - geardowns. Planetary, split ring planetary, and stacked geardowns to connect our new motor to drive a Precious Plastic Shredder. Planetary geardown for a Nema 17 motor. Large geardowns. We will experiment with how to make efficient geardowns for attaining high torque using 3D printed parts, and will measure the practical limits that can be achieved. Split ring planetary geardown with a Nema 17 Motor for 100x higher torque. People have used planetary geardowns for 600 lb winches - so there is room for exploration.
• Day 6-7- We will explore open source product development by collaborating on an a 3D printed, cordless drill. We allocate multiple 3D printers for real-time, on-demand prototyping without long wait periods for parts. We will design and build various geardowns, battery packs, and simple 3D printed circuits (component holder structures for soldered components), and put together a functional cordless drill. Here we let the creativity of the group take over - for applying CAD design rapid prototyping. We will provide crash course tutorials on cordless drill design, electric motor design, battery pack design, and controls, building of 3D printed planetary gears, and other topics relevant to making a cordless drill. We will aim for building a 3D printed cordless drill motor, but will have off-the-shelf electric motors to experiment with as well.

• Day 5 - It's time to turn our 3D prints to metal. We will experiment with lost plastic casting using PolyCast. We will encapsulate 3D prints using plaster of paris and greensand - and make metal objects from Zinc Aluminum alloys. We will brew our own zinc aluminum alloy from zinc, aluminum, and a little bit of copper using a small furnace.
• Circuits for controlling motors
• Day 3 - Build a Filaments Maker - OSE is about industrial productivity on a small scale - meaning that we want to print useful, lerger-scale objects in addition to small 3D prints. For OSE, that means printing plastic lumber, rubber tires for vehicles, glazing panels for greenhouses, chairs and furniture, and much more. For that - 3D printing fiament costs become prohibitive, as commercial 3D printing filament costs are $10/lb - which makes printing of any sizeable objects cost-prohibitive. This is where the open source filament maker comes in, where we can produce 3D printing filament from waste plastic. We will build 1-4 filament makers (depending on how many people register for the course) from easy to source, off-the-shelf parts - and start making our own filament on Day 3. Thus, if we use scrap plastic - our filament cost drops 100x from $10lb, to about $0.10 per lb. 3D printing costs another 10 cents/lb in electricity. But don't take our word for it - we will take data using an improved and insulated version of our 3D printer - with super fast printing nozzles - to reduce printing costs to well bolow the above figures. We will break up into 2 groups, with one group working on the Filament Maker, and another on the plastic shredder - using the newly built 3D printers to produce parts on demand as a swarming print cluster.

Possible Extended Session

• Extra Credit - Optional Day 8-9 - Design and Build of a Rubber Optimized Extruder. Using lost plastic casting and milling with OSE's D3D CNC circuit mill - we will then build our new design. This will allow us to print large rubber objects with high feed rate.

Experiments

• 3D printed geardowns
• 3D Printer linear bearings with metal balls
• 3D printed electric motor
• heating elements for heat beds, filament makers, and an Electric Kiln for Metal Melting
• MIG Casting into greensand for small, precise metal parts such as couplers.
• Building a 1 meter print bed 3D printer. Stationary bed with 4 Z axes raising the XY gantry
• Building a 1" universal axis with router
• Building a 2" universal axis - applying the lessons from geardown design. Making our own bushings from ZA alloy for the 2" universal axis
• Results - Lower cost Simple 3D Printer

Other Possibilities

• Build a filament maker for producing 3D printing filament from scrap plastic. We will teach you how to design a practical filament maker so that you can take every-day plastics from the waste stream and turn them into useful 3D printing filament. After a design session - you will learn how to actually build a working filament maker. We will build a filament maker similar to the Precious Plastic design - but redesigned for a simpler build that can be done easily as a group in One Day. As such, we will break into 2 groups and build 2 filament makers. After going through this process, you will know a filament maker inside out. We are also offering kits for the filament maker so you can Build Yourself, after this workshop.
• Making filament and composing filament formulas - We will use the newly-built filament maker to produce 3D printing plastic from scrap PLA, ABS, PET, and PVC - and mix these with each other as well as sand, sawdust, and other materials to produce composite filaments. The process starts with grinding, for which we need to use grinders.
• Playing with Geardowns and Building a Plastic Shredder - Give me a lever long enough... and I shall move the world. - Archimedes. We will 3D print planetary gears and apply them to building a heavy duty shredder.
• Building an open source, 3D Printed Cordless Drill - we will 3D print electric motors, use the CNC Circuit Mill to mill circuits and aluminum, and experiment with Desktop Metal Casting to make metal parts from low melting Zinc Aluminum alloys that melt in a pot right on your stovetop at only 420C. We will also make simple circuits using 3D printed circuit making techniques. Combined with the planetary geardown and a battery pack based on common 18650 cells - we will spend 2 days designing and building a functional cordless drill starting from waste plastic, aluminum, and post-1982 pennies.

Cost

• $99 - live remote participation. Join us on our new 1 Gbit fiber connection - participate remotely, and ask us questions during the presentation sessions. We will record 2 presentations each day, and leave the video link live throughout the rest of the builds. We can now broadcast to the world - no more agony of a 4 Mbit internet line!
• $699 for the week immersion, but you don't take a 3D printer home with you
• $1399 full week experience, plus take a 8" bed printer home with you
• $899 3D printer kit only. Includes access to the live remote presentation.

Extras:

• Want to take a kit for the Plastic Extruder?
• Want to take a kit for the Plastic Shredder home with you?
• Want to take a kit for the CNC Circuit Mill home with you?
• Need to print larger, more functional items? Participate in the Boot Camp - and take a 3D printer with a 12" heated bed home with you - $1599.

• Need to go industrial? We are offering the first ever public production run of the D3D Mega - with a 3' by 3' print bed, and Super Volcano nozzle - that can print up to 20 lbs of plastic per day! Now you can start printing furniture and construction materials. First time special offer of $_______ (including heated bed) - this is our largest printer option, with heated bed, depending on options. We are offering this build after the Boot Camp - as 3 extra days of build. Now this can get expensive fast if you are buying commercial filament - so that is where you want to start thinking about making your own 3D printing filament to print products with feedstocks from the waste stream.

Registration

• $99
• $699
• $1399
• Donate for extras

Links

• Summer School