Monthly Archives: October 2016

3D Printing, Greencastle's Makerspace

3D Printer Owners Meetup

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It’s been a very busy week at the makerspace, even though a lot of our equipment is still coming in/being decided. Besides the Castlemaker Kids meeting & open shop nights, the 3D printer build continues and there was a lot of activity there for our Putt Putnam County miniature golf build.

3D Printer Owners share their experiences.
3D Printer Owners share their experiences.

We also had our first 3D Printer Owner’s (3DPO) Meetup a monthly meeting to get 3D printer owners to share their successes, failures, and experiences with each other. Anyone that’s done 3D printing  quickly realizes it can be a complex undertaking. Like many things in life, product manufacturers tout things as simple to do but really are quite challenging to master & do well. This group’s 3D printing experience is with Fused Filament Fabrication, although one attendee has a beta Stereolithography 3D printer kit.

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Jacob shows off the leatherman belt holder his son designed and printed, while Bojan reaches for his smartphone DLSR camera mount/control that was a Kickstarter campaign.

What an interesting group of people and first meeting at the makerspace! We started with background/experiences and then discussed future meeting topics.  Six people attended (and 2 regrets) which represented a broad range of printers and experiences.  No one had the same 3D printer/manufacturer, although one person did have 2 models from one firm. Reasons for a printer were even more diverse – ranging from artistic endeavors, “building a prototype for my Kickstarter campaign” (which he brought to show us), gift, curiosity/interest, and of course wanting to make things. We even had someone there who sells 3D printer parts on eBay & is designing his own RepRap printer!

Future topic ideas included software used to slice 3D models and control the printer, designing printable parts, and the physical hardware used. But most of the interest was troubleshooting prints. So for our next meeting everyone will bring in a ‘bad’ print to share to get comments from everyone else.

Becoming a community innovation resource for technology has been a long term goal for Castlemakers, last week we took another important step towards that.

CoderDojo, Greencastle's Makerspace

Initial Castlemakers CoderDojo Session

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Alice and Rebecca working on projects at October 2016 CoderDojo
Alice and Rebecca working on projects at October 2016 CoderDojo

Saturday afternoon, October 1st, saw our first CoderDojo session at the makerspace on Franklin Street. What’s a CoderDojo?

CoderDojo is a worldwide movement of free, volunteer-led, community-based programming clubs for young people. Anyone aged seven to seventeen can visit a Dojo where they can learn to code, build a website, create an app or a game, and explore technology in an informal, creative, and social environment. [coderdojo.org]

Evan shows Brian what he's been making
Evan shows Brian what he’s been making

Assisted by student mentors from DePauw, Brian and Mike spent three hours with kids ranging from Jacob, who worked through introductory tutorials from the Hour of Code, to Alice, with a fair amount of experience already in JavaScript, who learned details about working with HTML and CSS.

The next session will be Saturday, November 5, from 1 to 4 pm. Bring a laptop if you have one, or use one of ours! Bring a project to work on, or try out some of our coding activities! Bring a friend!

Alice taking a quick break from fiddling with fonts
Alice taking a quick break from fiddling with fonts
3D Printing, Tours

3D Printer Manufacturer Visit

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Rostock Max V3 like what we picked up printing a continuous cross-section fractal print. About 11 hours in, it's a really cool print we'll be trying!
We picked up a Rostock Max V3 like this, which is 11 hours into a continuous cross-section fractal print (cool print!).

Yesterday we made a trip to SeeMeCNC in Goshen, Indiana to get a large format Rostock 3D printer kit from the manufacturer. SeeMeCNC began as Blackpoint Engineering 20 years ago, but got into the open source 3D printing world early on and began making 3D printers as SeeMeCNC in 2011, their primary business today. Their main product line is a series of 3D printers based on the delta robot design, versus the more traditional Cartesian design in most RepRap style printers that uses XYZ coordinates.

Nathan, their master machinist, programs a CNC machine that is making parts for extruder.
Nathan, their master machinist, programs a CNC machine that is making parts for their extruder/hot end.

SeeMeCNC embraces the open source design movement. Their design information (both hardware and software) is readily available and the active user community helps to improve it. They also make the parts right here in Indiana. Once you see all the equipment jammed into their facility, you realize this is not a firm that buys different parts and boxes them up; they actually design and make their own parts to have parts designed for each product and to have better quality control.

Their largest injection molder, there are two smaller Niigata machines that get used. SeeMeCNC makes their own dies for the molded parts.
Their largest injection molder, there are two smaller Niigata machines that also get used. SeeMeCNC makes their dies for the molded parts inhouse.

We currently have a member loaned Printrbot Metal Simple that is an awesome compact printer, but wanted something for the makerspace that offered a little larger build area. A delta robot design is a different design that most of our participants have seen (except for Travis who sells 3D printer parts).  We chose the Rostock Max V3 printer, which has a build area of 275mm dia. by 400mm tall (10.8”x15.7”). The SeeMeCNC Rostock line is well proven; the new version adds an accelerometer probe on the hot end plus significant fan and heater improvements. They’re transitioning over from the V2 due to simplified parts and reduced assembly time.

A really big delta robot printer at the NYC World Maker Faire. Yes, the street clock in the distance was 3D printed.
A really big delta robot printer at the NYC World Maker Faire. Yes, the street clock in the distance was 3D printed!

Thanks to JJ in engineering who gave us a great tour. We’ll be putting the unit together over the next week or two (if we can wait that long!). Join us or come to one of the open shop nights on our events page – we’ll be glad to show it off!

Steve "parts daddy" shows off a newly assembled Rostock Max V3 on his desk.
Steve “PartDaddy” shows off a newly assembled Rostock Max V3 on his desk.