Carousel Tree Printer – WIP
The two steppers that control the tables rotation and x-axis are installed and working beautifully. I do need a new belt for the rotatory table. The cannibalized carousel-CD player design is a good one for a single extruder – but I will need to revise it when I want 4 (yes four, and I’ll post the sketch tomorrow). Next post should have video too.
The extruder assembly is taking shape and we did our first set of experiments with the extruder and crayons with good success. The current heating element responds predictably to linear increases in voltage up to 119 degrees. then it jumps. I think we will need to pulse-control it and prolly make a separate controller with sensor (thermistor).
According to the folks at crayola, different colored crayons will have slightly different melting points because of the varying clay content in each color. I intend to eventually test 4 color families to for melting point variations – red, yellow, blues and earth tones/blacks.
Tags: cannibalized parts, extruder, polar 3d printer, Tree Printer