Open Source Ecology filament maker, 14 Oct 2021

Previous Meeting

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From YouTube: OSE Filament Maker

Description

Design Concept - start at https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Ww7rGXRWMifXcbiGd9x_fzQ4G7xQtU524IafKsVfY1g/edit#slide=id.gf5f419b281_0_134 and go to https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1F4LZFKCFIFw_m8OfAT-dEG5bFMD_k1iCFXevlUVlWsI/edit#slide=id.gf8bf21b54f_0_14. Development template at https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/OSE_Filament_Extruder_v21.10

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A

Let's go to the filament maker first, since uh don't have the cat here, but we do have this. I just put this up 2110, so 21 is the year 21, like we do the version by year.

A

Just a little note on this nomenclature stuff, it's there's the 50 gbcs machines and they all follow this taxonomy and and the way like I'm, I'm able to basically find anything on a wiki over the last decade or two like in a second. uh But I do keep a particular way to organize. I think it makes sense it's based on regular taxonomy and product development plus nomenclature of what all the steps of product development are. So if you understand that nomenclature, you can pretty much say.

A

Okay, here's the obviously filament maker cat, but you also have to version like the versioning part, is what makes things blow up a lot of times like first time we started the wiki. It was awesome great. We built the track, you know brick press this and that everything got seated and then, when it came time to the second iteration, pretty much everything blew up on the wiki, because it's like. Okay, where do I put it? Is it do I continue the old version etc?

A

And it's like, of course you can use github. The wiki is convenient for a little lower entry level than github. um You can readily set up the wiki, where you're just putting all the content on github 2 and then just downloading the whole git clone thing.

A

You can do that readily from the wiki so that you can pretty much transfer all this. That way hasn't been done, but uh the wiki does have its own versioning system, like all the files you upload new files, even the pictures like if you want to see how a particular design evolves while we upload the cad as soon as possible, but then we also upload little thumbnails and galleries like.

A

Here's a non-existent library but, for example, in this this this thing there's you know little pictures and part libraries like that where uh like, for example, if you click on this, you can actually see the history of that of how that evolved. So in this you have file history, you know so it's actually very convenient. You can study how the design evolved and, for example, here. Okay, that's the start. We started with the shafts. I just did this and I uploaded the next version, etc. uh But there are.

A

There is a bit of internal versioning happening on the wiki itself, so it's useful to to understand it, and here just with the fulfillment maker, uh just this thing like the 2110, you know for the neck, you know I will. I will know that okay in the year 21 in october, it helps me to organize and then there's people's logs where, like, if ken's working on stuff, I know he was here this year. I just look at ken log and find all the stuff he did.

A

So it's like there's a way to track a whole team of people like up, probably up to like 100 or so people like, if you want to absolutely completely collaborate like within one person's capacity, is, I think, pretty much tracking kind of the number of people you can. You can remember in your head, which is dunbar's number, which is like about 100 or 200 and then, but like all the different projects that are going on between all the people. That's all trackable!

A

If you, if you kind of follow this technique, takes a little bit of time to study it, but once you get it, you can completely collaborate on a large scale across time and when we say across time we're not just saying for this summer. It's like this is gonna, be we can look at this back in the decade and still make contributions to it or fork it or make new improvements and make different versions and stuff like that.

A

It does happen already like the universal rotor, for example, pulling up stuff from 2010, and you know stuff like that. So um there's there's some sense to it, but okay, so with the filament maker. um Let's take a look at the concept and then go to. uh I actually didn't upload the the cat yet well. The wiki was crashing on me, so the concept okay, so that's kind of like the latest, simple, the osc, simple extruder, where before we had this kind of stuff, so this is our working dock on the large 3d printer.

A

This one. You see right here, all right, that's the one we took apart. It works, but it's it's not a robust thing. It's it's our first version. That's the lyman filament maker. We actually got hugh lyman to build it for us and he shipped it over. But that's got a small half inch nozzle half inch of tube. It works only with very finely controlled pellets. This is not like for trash printing.

A

So it's a small nice nice iteration. We pulled a few spools of filament out of that and uh called it a day and then just looking at the whole design.

A

The next iteration on this is just use our universal controller here, we're using there's a heater band and there's a temperature controller. Well cool those are extra parts we can. We might as well do it out out of our own universal controller, since we already have that you know you've got all those components are hidden behind or the power supply and power elements and this and that it's all hidden back there, but we already have all of that in the universal controller so might as well use that all we need to do is control temperature.

A

Two in our next duration, we'll do like uh four bands on a tube on a barrel. We'll do so. We can actually use the two out the heat sensors on the on the ramps board. There's the extruder heater and the a bed heater. We can simply go with those in the menu. We can say: okay set the temperature of this one to this and the next one to whatever, like 230, to melt whatever plastic. So you can have two zones left readily.

B

A

Does transition.

B

So it's got a bit more friction at the top.

A

B

A

Possibly to where you're, more or less preheating, but under the glass transition temperature and then you're going into the hot zone, where you already got enough energy in there, but you're just taking it to the to the top to the melt, or maybe we just set both of them like most, you know, like kind of load them quite a bit together, maybe make the first one a little lower than the second one, or I mean we have to kind of figure. This kind of parameters out would there be any reason to actually.

B

Put like a little fan, or something at the top of it, to keep it from the top of the tube to stop it actually just heating the tube all the way up and.

A

Making, oh that's all the way, that's possible and we'll see, I think, that's kind of thing you want to look at once. You get the actual output yeah, because the ideal thing is you turn this thing. On heat it and literally by the force of gravity, you should be starting to extrude just ooze out. So when you turn on the motor, you get more pressure and you get the finely controlled filament here.

A

The idea is to have interchangeable nozzles that you can do whatever filament kind of size you want for prototyping like say you want to run it faster or slower. You might find that a particular nozzle size works just the best for getting you the most consistency, but the way to think about it is the motor is not really doing the driving here.

A

It's the heat, that's that's melting it and making it happen uh in the precious plastic. So this is kind of uh precious plastic are the other guys that have a pretty good version of it, and you can study that it's a good study because we're pretty much doing what they are uh so precious plastic understanding.

A

If I understand correctly that that, but does the liquefying by pressure in the sense of this screw, but we're not doing that.

B

A

Heat does the work, so not the pressure yeah and we have gravity working for us. So in our configuration nobody does that doing uh going vertically down uh if you're horizontal, you obviously need I mean you need the force of the screw to press it, but here then we get away with using less energy and uh smaller motors. So I think that's. That is a good idea.

A

Just let the nature let physical factors work for you, because then you have this even evenly heated thing, whereas, like if you're heating, a tube I mean well gravity, makes it fall down towards the bottom part of the screw when you're screwing it.

A

So it's less, I would say it's probably less, even if you're going horizontal, unless you got nice tight, fill, uh but just just like loading it all down by gravity to the tip like you're, closing off all the air gaps, so you're, not relying so much on the on the screw to to get that controlled motion, you're you're letting gravity do it, which is to me. That sounds pretty good. It worked well last time and um for.

A

You can adjust it through temperatures and if we control the motor speed right now we're just turning on the motor. There is no speed control on the motor, but there's temperature and nozzle size that will control how much you're actually getting for the thickness and also there's cooling fans we can add after the filament escapes and that can also control uh some parameters like how fast, well, what kind of thickness you actually extrude at before it cools like so there's a little control through that, but mainly through the temperature and the orifice size.

A

Obviously, if you know the smaller hole, you have the less diameter you're going to push through the larger, the larger it's going to be, and the thing that's a critical thing is we don't really care if we're off that magic 2.85?

A

What we care about like we don't care about a specific number. We care about consistency. Why is that so say? We got a big run of film and we ran it overnight and everything just came out to be exactly 2.7.

A

We got 10 spools of that we ran. You know we had a had a production run. Well, so what put it into cura? There's settings for filament diameter that already adjusted perfectly so as long as you're within the nozzle thickness of your printer, which is three millimeters you're good to go.

A

You want it to be as close to 2.85 or three 2.85, which is under three. So if you have over three like you're gonna get a jam, so there you're a little under three. Typically, that's what you want, so you can feed through.

A

Actually, uh so the only disadvantage of having off the 2.85 is that you feel less of the neck and if you're too thin like, for example, running 1.85 in a 3 millimeter nozzle system and a 3 millimeter heater tube thing, you can it's easier to get jams, because, if you're retracting and and going forward, you can get this back up, because you want this whole plunger of filament filling up the whole circumference of what you have.

A

But at the level like say we get perfection at 2.7, uh millimeters uh or for some reason we have this sweet spot where we're just getting to. You know just a nominal number 2.7 as our as our for some reason. We get that with this kind of uh material, then we can say: okay.

A

We said that in cura for one cool we're pretty close to 2.85, but then also we can say, okay well, if we find that we're building housing and now we've got this whole cluster of printers, and we got everything at two points: 2.7 we'll just make our nozzles or make our uh extruders 2.7 or you know a little smaller, because we can do that. We we can take an existing uh nozzle.

A

You can take, for example, a 1.85 millimeter, nozzle drill it out with a 1.7 or 1.8 millimeter drill bit. That's completely doable, that's a pretty easy thing, so we kind of have the control like we don't need to be like. Oh, we need to be 2.85 sharp on this we're cool, but we want to be consistent, but also with the consistency. How much consistency do you need right? So what does consistency mean that?

A

Well, it means that, for example, if you have 20 infill, if you're expecting to be running at 2.85, millimeter diameter and you actually have 2.95 well, that's only a few percent off where you're going to get the only way it's going to be visible is on the edges. You might see like little extra unevenness because you got more, but on the inside it's actually going to help you you're pressing, more you've got 20 percent infill and you're actually getting more filament in there and you don't see it and it's actually stronger.

A

So you don't really care, especially if it's big parts where such a small percentage like say on on your wall, module that you're actually printing, you don't care like think about dimensional lumber two by fours. It can be off like a whole bunch like more than that little five or ten percent that we're talking about right here. So I mean we've had uh like. If you guys remember, we had the two by twelves that were all uh not 11.25 but 11.5 in one batch.

A

You know so uh we're allowed a little bit of this leeway here so because we're trying to go from for a complete trash like the drugs of civilization. Here we're going to burn it down and melt it down and rebuild it into uh usable material.

A

At that point, you want to have max control over all the variables and you want to be able to deal with inconsistency or or the irregularities that we're going to go into because we're dealing with all kinds of filaments, and if you want this filament maker to be used for just about everything, you'll have to accept a lot of variables, such as like what I mentioned. The 2.7 diameter, for maybe polycarbonate, does that to us, but abs turns out to work well at 2.8.

A

For some reason, it's all like the flow characteristics and all this is this whole science of materials. Where there's infinite number of plastics, I mean that's, that's a start, so um we're allowing for this kind of uh we're designing for a system. That's robust that can handle all this kind of stuff, including like how we're shredding like we can shred. We can put screens into our shredder to make very small fill small particle size or larger, depending how we need it.

A

But if you want to study what's already out there, there is good work, uh for example, uh so filament well extruder extruder um to see what they do and then build upon it. So.

A

Like this in this extruder here so.

A

um Yeah take a look at the site. It's it's pretty good, like this. This shredder here um basic pro. Let's look at the pro machines here, so what they're doing here so here in there.

A

Let's see, let's go to this one here, the extrusion pro.

A

Full instructions- that's pretty good, but what you see there they've got this big motor with a huge gear down there, because they're actually using it for injection molding. uh That's not what we're doing. We've got a much smaller motor.

A

They still got like they got like six heat bands and looks like they got three zones of temperature control. Two or three I forget, but they can do things like this. They can actually pack a tube with plastic because that's got so much force. They actually have a real screw there like a precision.

A

Well, just a formal extruder screw we're just using an auger bit all we're doing in our case is we just need to help that plastic move a little bit as long as we can do that consistently we're good, so we're not doing what they're doing here just for reference. So what are we doing um so? So this is the concept. It's this big hopper, a motor coupler uh heater barrel band heaters band heaters band heaters like four of them, uh since we have a one inch pipe and what what's the length of that drill bit.

A

18 total, with like 12 of uh flutes. Oh.

B

Well, the yeah, it's 12 and a half, I think, of actual drill bit and then the shank is.

A

Another six or seven, okay, so something that looks like this here we've got also the nozzle, where you have the ability to screw in different nozzles of different sizes. We've got a few, so that would be basically like. Take your one inch pipe um thread. It down, not thread it down, but put in a fitting that has a half inch so do a a one inch to half inch and then screw in your nozzles that you can drill out to whatever size you need.

A

We've got a few different nozzles here already from the previous work, and then we can just try some fans so like in cad. This is what it actually I just decided. Yes, I couldn't upload it, but it's it's all uploaded. Basically, I thought about okay.

A

There you go, do a polycarbonate front screen, so you see how much stuff you've got inside. You've got a wood backing board. You've got two by sixes. You got metal plates on top and bottom. So sorry, I can't rotate that it's 2d, but on the bottom, where the tube attaches. That's the that's only sensitive part where you're hot there.

A

So you want to have a metal plate and there's actually a combo fan so yeah. We could probably use a fan under that bottom plate which we would make like eighth inch or quarter inch. Steel and the rest of this here is that's 2x6 lumber for the hopper you've got a coupler connecting the motor that we have and um what I would do actually for the end of the drill bit. Maybe dull it up a little bit and let it rest at the bottom or something like that so and it doesn't spin too fast.

A

um It will have resistance where the when you're going against the plastic will tend to push the bit up.

A

So, uh depending on how strong that coupler feels to us, we might put in an extra bearing here in collar, if there's a shaft space on the actual shank, which we could do, for example, is that a hex check throughout or is it round that.

B

Not the entire way, but the main part.

A

Of it is yeah, there's a part, that's hex which, where you question okay, how do I get a hex, bearing of that particular size? Well, we could do is, for example, take a. We do have one inch hex bearings: we can 3d print an insert to grab the shank and actually put a set screw in there to do something like a collar which prevents the shaft.

A

It basically holds it from axial thrust, meaning pressing against the shaft of the motor or going down too much and wearing out your tube at the bottom or something so we could try holding it, but I mean initially, we can probably run it uh the way they have it in the lyman version of this. They had it.

A

A

um There was a little like if, when you opened it up, there was a little thrust. Washer there, where uh the actual shank of the auger was held in place, it was prevented from going into the motor. There was a little bearing. So that is a good idea by all means. We probably I would maybe just start it see how it runs with. We do have nice couplers for the motor, which is already half inch shank. So it's that's a pretty good connection. I'm not sure we're going to need more thrust.

A

Bearings on that um here. I think for the precious plastic version. um First, they use well. They have a an aluminum coupler with very small set screws. I'm not sure we're going to need it with what we have. We do have a nice coupler for this particular shaft, we're going to weld up. Basically, uh we have a it's actually a 12 millimeter coupler on the motor. The motor is 12 millimeters and we're going to hex. How do you do it?

A

Well, a coupler welded to a hex socket bit, which we actually we tested, that we have a bunch of bits that fit that. So you can get a nice welded coupler! That's like the most critical part like. Can you drive this shaft uh without nothing.

B

So we're welding the the socket um piece onto the.

A

Yeah yeah, we are so um socket so motor coupler to.

B

A

I mean it's a simple thing, so you take so if you google online, like what are we talking about a socket like.

A

Just take take a side like one of these socket.

A

Yeah, just these things images online: let's, let's grab that grab an image so we're gonna. Take you know one.

A

Like a little thing like this, we're actually gonna take one. That's got a thin upper part like more like uh one that in practice looks more like these, where they have a thin part and a thicker part, so the thin part is gonna. Go on to let's, let's uh take a little screenshot it.

A

It's gonna, be like one of these here, uh maybe like. I could take this one, something like this.

A

So what are we doing there? um It's gonna go to here.

B

B

A

B

Looking at pressing down a two by six with a hole in it like that, doesn't look like potentially a very strong structure.

A

You've got a bunch of screws in the back uh yeah. That's uh if you look at uh just kind.

B

Of wondering, if, if that bottom plate, where the drill that actually goes through is steel kind of order.

A

You can, but it's just much more, it's more work. You can minimize that hole size. All you need to do is make sure that stuff falls in there.

A

I wouldn't make too big a deal from that, if there's a solid board on the back and then you're covering the front. So what is what is? What are you resisting here, you're resisting the the torque of the motor against the resistance of the plastic where, as we said like, if you get the temperature to do the work for you, of course, there shouldn't be a lot pretty much what you have so effectively. What are you holding that with you've got about 10 inches of plate.

A

At a 2x4 where it's got you're screwed in from the back with like a three inch screw, so you got a few screws uh back there. Yeah.

B

You can actually the rib um in the thin part of the two by four that it's all basically through that.

A

That ceases to be the case if the the plate that we have here, I just drew like polycarbonate, because I could actually wanted to see like okay, how much yeah fill level it's.

B

A

Yeah, it's not too heavy but like if we question that you can put a bar across that and that completely stabilizes. But if you look at the numbers of the motor, what kind of forces are you resisting here?

A

My estimate would be like 10 pounds, so you look at this is where calculations come in, but you look at the specs of the motor which are um do you want to look at that number or not? Really right now.

A

Do we want to look at the specs of the motor to see what force we have to resist from the rotation.

B

A

It's under lyman, filament maker we've got all these specs like.

A

Let's see for more.

A

Yeah, let's see there's uh so fidgets is that's where that motor. Well, let's look at the dom of the filament maker.

A

That that link is in here.

A

Let's go to the bom.

A

B

Do we see a motor here.

B

A

I know this is at fidgets dot com.

B

A

B

Are these parts kind of you're dealing with the motor and stuff you can find it all over north america or.

A

Something or worldwide yeah I mean you'll, have well as far as this is fidgets, for example company in america, but you'll have something equivalent. You can use the nema 23 motor, but look at this 173 kilogram centimeter is the torque. So the question is: how much force are you putting against that two by four? Now that's about two by six: that's back there!

A

um It's that the screws are attached at five inches or 12.5 centimeters.

A

So radial distance, therefore the torque the force at that point is this number divided by 12.5.

A

So you go like 173 divided by 12.

A

You got 14 kilograms at the motor. At that attachment point I mean that's, that's nothing. You've got um but think about it as you've got attachment screws there at least four screws. I mean that's absolute minimum each screw holds 300 pounds as the rating of a of a standard deck screw uh in terms of clamp force. It's like just a single screw will hold this down by a factor of ten.

A

B

Wood breaking as long as that rib, where the hole is cut out when you're saying screwing in from the back side, you probably need to scream from the front side.

A

Yeah, but we already have the board that you're, attaching this whole assembly to you're, also transferring the force to the entire back.

B

Yeah, I'm not concerned about that yeah.

A

But I'm saying it's connected to that. That's why you're, if you analyze all the forces here that is also holding everything together so.

B

But if there's a screw coming in from the back side, we also need to probably just do in the front side of that. U, because the tendency of where that's gonna break is in the grain line of um that, like the top of the horseshoe.

A

Yeah we can make those those flanges there I made like a minimum of like two inches or so, which is not a lot, um but you got steel at the bottom. The steel is attached to.

A

If we're like, if there's a concern on that, you can do actually like a vert like you, can slap a 2x4 across this and that or like just vertically here to completely get the tie in between the top plate and the bottom plate in the case that there's some weaknesses in the screws getting screwed in through the back of this board, which would be like 5, 8 inch or three quarter inch plywood or something like ex that exterior plywood we had so. No, I I mean you'll see it.

A

The thing won't move it's going to be pretty solid.

B

Yeah, I was just thinking, that's the point where maybe oh.

A

Yeah and this one yeah, this is like I'm yeah. This is like first super quick prototype to get everything functional, highly functional. um So not I mean in a formal version I would not use wood. I would uh because there's heater elements here: that's fire risk, so the eventual version.

A

Use metal um yeah.

A

More metal, uh proper timing, wood is actually quite convenient like for things like this. You want to do that um so then, um so this has got. If you notice on that. Well, we can link to the motor.

B

That's gonna be.

A

That, okay, um simple idea, so that's that's pretty much the extruder and what's the idea there you've got this big hot, like okay, so just to analyze. Like I looked at this okay cool, you got your little funnel there for the hopper. I was like okay. I still need a hopper here. Why don't we just add a backboard to it? Hang everything on it. Make that backboard part of the hopper.

A

You know just trying to say I kind of have this design here, but I just went forward, and this is what I came up with uh last night. Oh there's. A little fan fan elements at the bottom there. So if the filament is extreme from the bottom, you can cool it, or maybe we don't need the cooling. Maybe you actually want that little bit more of elongation there uh that will probably control a little bit on your filament diameter.

A

I mean this is all a bunch of playing with actual materials to see what what the specific parameters are.

A

Those fans could be turned on by our universal controller, but here we can have two zones of heating out of the box.

A

I do believe the marlin is set up for three temperature inputs, so we could get stock marlin to do up to three zones. If you you'd have to change some lines and configuration and configuration files, um would it work.

B

Just to stack two heaters into one connector.

A

Two heaters into one connector, yeah sure, if you run them in parallel, you just drawing double the current. These are only like 100 or 200 watt bands, so they're not like a kilowatt or something like that. Each they're pretty benign like a couple of hundred watts. So we have like 800 watts of heating power for comparison. Your extruder does 40 watts.

A

So here we got like way more power than our extruder and we already know that extruder can get you extrusion.

A

uh We normally go with 1.2 millimeter filament, and if we go slower, you could probably extrude yeah nozzle like even larger um nozzle diameters, so 400.

B

A

Or like 800 watts, that's like plenty of power to the point where we're just melting. The thing I mean I'd be curious to see if, when you're, just melting it and you've got this vertical configuration. Is that enough? I mean there's that gravity of all that mass. Like you see the extruder on our printers oozing like it does. When you stop, I mean this might not even need to run the motor or something we'll see. um I mean think about it. If you had a large, I mean there's different configurations you can think about.

A

You can think about it in the regime. I'm gonna push it as hard as possible through a smaller nozzle. When a filament comes out, it actually expands a little bit. So actually, when you're one 2.8, you probably are doing, I think the way it works. You got a slightly smaller nozzle diameter.

A

I'm not I'm not sure I I can't remember, but you can do the regime where you're trying to press hard and once it expands once it goes out the nozzle this um the filament maker nozzle, it will actually expand because pressure has been reduced, so it it's got built up pressure pressure reduced after you escaped your filament is likely to expand.

A

Then you can think about the other regime where we're like not pushing with the motor at all. We put a larger nozzle like three millimeters or four millimeter nozzle, easy to drill out with a drill bit and just let it feed by gravity and then when it goes through, it might kind of uh lengthen out by gravity, because it's hot, because it's so hot, so it could be different regimes that that could work and maybe like we discovered that we actually want to do an even longer nozzle with more heating and actually no motor drive.

A

Perhaps I don't know I mean that's a possibility, because um that may work for some things. I don't know, but uh typically you want some pressure behind behind your filament, but note that the heat will do all the work.

B

Your filament, if it's different plastics, going in you kind of want to mix it up.

A

But the older is going to be oh yeah, that's there you go, I mean for the application, where you're actually mixing a whole bunch of different stuff. Yes, otherwise you'll not be homogeneous.

A

uh There's details on the nozzle here in a precious plastic version. They actually have a little screen to keep out well actually to even out the pressure, because they're used to uh sending a lot of pressure through their system, so they actually have a screen with little holes. They just insert a little plate at the end I mean we're not gonna do that, but they do have a nice feature, which is just um it evens out the pressure at the end of the tube.

A

So if you're, injecting they'll, probably get you a nice like say, injecting into some shape, it'll even out the pressure to get you a better pressure profile, as opposed to like one part, pushing more than another, it's for an uneven fill here. They do have like you can hardly see it, but there is a tiny little screw.

A

You can see that little screw there, they threaded a hole and put in a screw there, so it can actually close down the aperture. If you want lower flow, we can try that um yeah, it's just a screw you're just blocking the entrance, the exit, if you want more or less flow, so you just have another level of control there. I'm not sure. If we need that in the first round that we do, uh maybe we can put on a nozzle that has that built in so we can screw in different things to that.

A

So we can. I mean we can do this kind of stuff. They have that in their official precious plastic release.

A

So it's just a thing to think about, but that's pretty much it the biggest thing being um coupling I mean the biggest challenge is couple that motor effectively and there you go. You have to watch where the like the length of the the actual heat tube.

A

You don't want the the uh the auger to end up too far away from the end, if you're relying on it for pressure, so you want it to be, like I don't know like a half an inch or quarter inch from the very end, so it's actually pressing effectively, as opposed to like ending up somewhere halfway in the tube and you're pressing hard. But then you got all that friction afterwards, if you're in a regime where you won't want to do a lot of pressing yeah.

A

So just a small note, we talked about putting some little angled lip pieces inside the reservoir to make sure that there's no material collection.

B

A

Mean what you're saving there is you're saving yourself? You got.

A

Personally, I wouldn't bother for the reason that you're saving yourself this volume, this volume compared to the entire volume of the hopper, is pretty much insignificant. But if you want that kind of tight control for like switching between materials- yes, that's a good idea. You'll get cleaner, but the assumption here is like I would just open up the front and just clean it out, um because you probably want to clean this out. Sometimes anyway, I like the idea of the transparent face, so you can clean things out readily like as opposed to this thing.

A

How do you? How do you open that up? You pretty much have to take it off and like do it upside down? You can't really access the stuff, that's in a hopper, so I mean this. This simple kind of design here, that's designed for transparency. That's it's going to be very handy because we're going to be messing with all kinds of mixtures and cleaning, this thing out, modifying it and so forth.

A

So um it's a good deal there just put a few screws here and have that accessible or put like a little door in there little latch or something. If you want to do like a little smaller door that you take off, so you don't have to take off the entire thing.

B

And I guess there's really not going to be a lot of force.

A

That's just the weight of the plastic there's you know.

A

So how are we gonna wire this up? What do you do? um You got these heater bands, they're 120, just simple, off-the-shelf: heater bands accessible anywhere.

B

Is there a concern that material gets between the pipe wall.

A

And the screw I mean so.

B

A

If you don't have heat yeah, I mean this thing will basically be a solid thing that you don't want to turn this on without heat. It would be good to have some kind of a heat. Lockout uh yeah like burn out the motor or like first thing is the shaft could even break because that motor is relatively.

A

I mean 14 nah that probably won't matter. I'm gonna break it, but I mean it's stronger than you can hold with your hand but yeah. I don't think it's gonna break that, but then again like the like, if you dr drive it like the far end, if there was like a little bit of plastic left and you have all that length, that's open and you've got those thin flutes at the end.

A

I could possibly break that like at the tip there, not, I wouldn't say it would break at the shaft there, but those flutes are pretty like they get pretty narrow there as far as the meat of metal. That's in there.

A

16 kilos at one centimeter yeah: it's not a lot.

A

Well, no no hold on hold on that's, that's called no, actually we're gonna. Let's revisit that, so we said: uh let's write that down so about so we did that calculation, uh no 10x, that why?

A

Because you're talking about a one-inch radius, not at not a uh one centimeter radius, not a 12 centimeter radius, 12 centimeters is where the screws are attached. One centimeter is where the shaft is pushing attachment. Point is going to have the farther out. You are the less you have to hold that thing. That's why like augers have wide hand handles so I'm saying like when we did that calculation before we're. Looking at this point.

A

There that's attachment of the screws now we're looking at the point, much closer.

A

We're looking there at that radius, that's 10x force more than 10x, so we're talking once again, 168 kilos, yeah you'll easily break that yeah at one centimeter. What's the specs of that motor? Look back at the specs.

B

A

168 kilos, 170 kilos at one centimeter, yeah you'll break that thing pretty quick, but.

B

Tear apart the machine, but I don't think that's where you got it, we.

A

Have a solid coupler: that's.

B

A

It won't tear apart machine because we said it's where you're holding it and you got like 16 kilos to hold at the attachment points. And that's where.

B

That metal bottom plate meeting the side walls going up into a top plate that the motion is connecting to um that's where the force actually would be, but we're never going to have that anyway, because you would turn it on and heat it up properly.

A

Yeah extra credit for that assignment, for you later on, freecad, fba analysis, freecad, fda analysis, freecad has finite element, analysis where you can simulate the forces. It's got advanced engineering capacity. You can actually put that in and say play. This is the force we're applying at that point. How is that gonna deform the entire thing based on known material properties? That's all doable um extra credit. I haven't, I've never played with it. I I'm waiting for somebody to teach us to do that like because you there's a learning curve to that.

A

I want a good tutorial on it. There's some pretty good tutorials on it already, although you can do very basic things pretty quickly. No, it's not a big deal. It's like an hour or two learning um with our universal controller.

B

Yeah and uh you know the way, we're using it on the 3d printers. You can't move your extruder before you eat.

A

So we look into uh right. You'd have to go into the code for that so, but well, but we're not doing that.

B

But what I'm saying is that it's already configured for that, so in other words, uh if we used it the same way, then you have to heat first before you can actually move your motor.

A

Yeah but the motor were not we weren't controlling through the controller we were just gonna, do like hit the fan on, and that would control the turn on of the motor.

A

So we're not using stepper motors like yeah, the stepper motors would be locked out like say you connected to the extruder yeah. Those would be locked out, but not like you can still control another pin if the temperature is not high. So now, of course, you can modify the firmware and all that to do whatever you need to do, but we're just saying we're just hacking, marlin back and forth for different projects and yeah.

B

Of course, you'd.

A

You know get someone software person too. Now this is our osc shredder firmware, etc.

A

I want to actually migrate to the universal controller for the brick press, because, if you're already building one thing like, why do I want to get all these other components for this dedicated box? So that I mean and then you're actually quite convenient? You can select okay, full brick, height, half brick height. You can do that all through the little lcd and still having a bunch of knobs right now we use a mechanical switch where you switch between like four settings.

A

Well, that's a big part, a lot of wires. We already have all those wires in the controller, and you can do that through that now controls your software through a simple screen. So that's more convenient and.

B

A

They have lcd touch screens for the same ramps. That's also quite convenient we're just using the push button thing, but yeah. This would be it's a nice little display here.

A

Right, the heating elements are 120. This is uh 24., I believe, 24 v, so remember that um so yeah the voltage levels are important because you don't want to put like 120 into this motor you'll fry, it immediately um that's 24 dc and we can pull out the supply power supply. That was with that already.

A

These are 120 ac.

A

So just pay attention to that and we'll be how many will be fine.

A

I think like 200, uh it will say like these ones, for example, here 380 watts, yeah 380., ours might be if it's 380, it's like uh about three amps or so of current, so the wires you need, like little phone wires, actually can handle that uh not a lot of amperage. But there is a lot of power yeah, because it's 120., uh I think the ones we have are 200, but just check we'll, say it on them.

A

A

I think, that's about it for the extra extruder part.