3-D Printing Metal Objects Project
James Armijo, D. Mike Daniel, Miguel Galaviz, Nebojsa Jaksic, Bahaa Ansaf, Jude DePalma, and Trung Duong *
Engineering Department, Colorado State University-Pueblo, CO 81001, USA
* Corresponding author (trung.duong@csupueblo.edu)
Our setup consists of the Mini Metal Maker, a laptop computer, and a electrical ceramic kiln. There are three general steps involved in getting an object from an idea to the printer: (1) 3D Modeling, (2) Slicing and (3) Printing. The 3D modeling software can be any program, such as Solidworks or Tinkercad, that can create the part and save it into a .stl format. The slicing program Slic3r creates the G -code representation of the printing part layer by layer. The Pronterface program is utilize to control the MMM printer according to each command of the G-code file to print the part by clay. After printing, the clay objects can be cleaned up, minor touched up, and dried before buried in carbon grains and sintered by an electrical ceramic kiln.
We installed a new version of the firmware for the MMM machine to
have more control of extrusion rate by software or manual knob
button. In practice, to successfully print an object, different extrusion
rates and print speeds are needed for different sections of the part,
such as the outline, the infill, and the lettering. To combat this
problem, a 3D visualization Matlab program was developed to read
the file, separate the sections, and change the values according to
user specifications.
Funding for this work is supported by Communities to Build Active STEM Engagement (CBASE) grant—Colorado State University-Pueblo. Its goals are to create student centered services, increase the number of Hispanic and low income students attaining degrees in STEM fields.
1. N. Jaksic, N. D’Angelo, and G. Vigano, “Inexpensive Metal 3D Printers in Engineering Education,” ASEE Rocky Mountain Section Conference, 2016.
2. David Hartkop, “Mini Metal Maker, Instructions for Setup and Use,” Mini Metal Maker LLC, 2016 3. Bill Struve, “3D Design: With and Without a Computer,” Power Point Slide Show, 2017
Working with the Mini Metal Maker
Problems with extrusion
Matlab GUI program to visualize each layer/component and modify printing parameters
E x p e r i m e n t a l S e t u p
Re s u l t a n d D i s c u s s i o n
Re f e r e n c e s
A c k n ow l e d g e m e n t
I n t r o d u c t i o n
Existing machines capable of 3D printing metal objects can cost in the range of millions of dollars and the process can be dangerous. It is desirable to develop a process that is inexpensive, safe, and open source based. There are commercially available products, such as Mini Metal Maker (MMM) by David Hartkop and the BRONZpaste3D (TM) by Bill Struve, that utilize sinterable clays or pastes and are potentially satisfied these conditions. However, the existing software and firmware setting used by their system are known to produce high rate of poor quality products with either under extrusion or over extrusion condition. Our study explores the better way to control of the extrusion rate and visualize the printing part.
Mini Metal Maker System consists a printer and an electrical ceramic kiln
