AS220 Time

Hello fellow 3D printer fans! Just wanted to give you all an update on what are plans are for the smaller Utilimaker's! First off we are making 4 smaller printers 1 for Make-It-Labs for their cooperation letting us use their massive laser cutter, 1 for the AS220 for letting us use their Epilog Laser, and 1 for me, and one for my Dad! However this as you can see is going to take alot of time spent cutting. The Large Utilimaker is under way and after we put it together last night we found that we need to redo the designs for the top and bottom but other than that it looks amazing. Now for the smaller ones we don't need as big of a laser as the one up in Make-It so we are using the AS220 Lab's Epilog Laser. So far we have gotten most of the parts to build the smaller ones but its still going to take alot of time before we have all of them running. Now I need to decide which color I want my printer to be! So overall it has been a great experience so far and I can't wait to re-assemble the large Utilimaker!

Utilimaker is ALIVE!!!

Hi everyone well last night we decided to venture into the unknown. We put our large Uilimaker together and might I say it is HUGE! It is definitely going to be a permanent addition to the house. It's so big that you could probably fit about 6 or 7 Utilimaker's inside it! Well if you don't believe us check out our pictures! Oh and pardon the mess we had to make alot of room for the machine.

Makerbot Sold

Hi everyone just wanted to say that our Makerbot has sold and we sent it off the other day. It was sad but we are ready for a change, and we want to get the Utilimaker up and running really soon. So now we have some extra money for Christmas and also for getting parts for the Utilimaker. We hope that the next kid to get our Makerbot (as a Christmas present) will enjoy it as much as we did. Hopefully he will stay active and be letting us know how he is doing. We are always ready for Q&A time!!

Cleaning up

Hi everyone just wanted to give you all an update right now we are taking the bords and cutting out all of the things that the laser diden't cut all the way through. So far it looks great we can't wait for it to be up and running. Right now we are saddly packing up our Makerbot after about 4-5 years of service to us. We figured that if we sell it we can get enough to build the Utilimaker. So it's for the greater good, I will post a link to it on ebay and also attach pictures for anyone that is intrested. We hope the next person to have it will have as much fun and productivity as we did with it. :-)

Second cuts

Hi everyone wanted to say that this past weekend we went back to Make-It-Labs and cut everything we need for our massive Utilimaker and also for 2 small ones!! Now with everything cut its time to start piecing the boards together to make sure everything fits! Cant wait to see this put together I will post pics up when we get the Exo-Skeleton put together!!

First cuts

Hi everyone just wanted to say that today we headed up to Make it labs where we got to use their massive laser cutter. However they have never printed something as large as 4x3 so we pushed it to the limit. We had to calibrate it which took about an hour and a half but once that was done we were cutting like no tomorrow. We ended up with 3 sheets done out of the 9 so we will be heading up again in the near future. In one of our cuts we had all of the parts for another utilimaker so just to show you the scale of this printer here is a picture of our masterpiece and there is the original size on the bottom. It was not until we got it home that we realized how massive this thing is...

Comic's!!

When I first saw this I was a little shocked that a fellow 3-D printer colleague would do this but, he does have a point :-P I found this at http://repraprip.blogspot.com/ hope you find it as funny as I did.

Decisions,Decisions...

Hi everyone just wanted to say that we are heading up to Make it Labs this weekend for Sunday to get all of our designs cut! Tonight we went to a little R.I. thing we do every month called the Geek Dinner and it was quite interesting we brought our cupcake (Makerbot) and everyone really liked it. So now my question to you is what color should we make our next printer? Wish us luck, and can't wait to see the responses!!

Hi everyone so as promised here are the pictures but my dad already posted it on Thingiverse. So that's right folks you can go and print this design but like it says on the top of the page it's a work in progress so bear with us hope you like our crazy idea!! http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:12459

Great Work So Far

Hi everyone just wanted to check in I know it's been a while since I have posted anything, but i think everyone will  be happy to know that we have nearly perfected our design! We have all of the designs just about ready to send up to Make-It-Labs! In fact because of all that extra space in the middle of the boards that we are cutting we decided to place another utilimaker inside of it! That's right people we have enough room inside this printer to not only make just one printer out of it but we are able to fit another inside of it. We were going to attempt to fit another one but decided against it because we only want one for now but so far this beast is looking good. This week I will make sure to post some pics, when you see this you will be blown away. We are also in the process of getting all of the rods together for it so hopefully by the time we go and get all of our parts cut we will be able to start assembling fairly quickly. I will make sure like I said to post pictures real soon but until then keep on printing!

A Work in Progress

Hi world so just wanted to say that as of now me and my dad are working really hard on the design of our next masterpiece. We are up to the point where things need to start being enlarged, first off we had to separate all of the pieces in the original design and then work on each piece individually. After that was done we needed to add more of the areas for the screws to go into. So it's always a work in progress. However I did find a little nifty program that I can take awsome screen shots of what we are up to so expect those to be up anytime this coming week. We hope everyone is as excited us at coming up with this crazy idea of mine. Hopefully by the end of this week we will have all of the laser cut parts all designed and ready to send up to our friends at Make-It-Labs!!

Design Time

So today me and my dad worked on separating the pieces of the original design down to layers. At this point we need to start working on making things tall and large! Lucky for us we are using Qcad so it's pretty easy to do this with. Today when I got home I also went and felt like doing a little bit of Printing so i fired up the old maker bot and made a starfish. Then after it finished I realised that the version of the software (ReplicatorG) was not the one that I had used previously. So it was spitting out more plastic than it had to, and not moving the steppers fast enough. On a different note today I was asked a question by my friend Bryan Round, "why would you want to make something 4 feet tall?" To answer your question Bryan, by making it 4 feet tall i have the ability to make tall objects such as a sword which if I am right in saying is on thingaverse. With this object you would normally have to glue it together, with this design you are able to make it all in one piece. We are moving closer to going to visit our friends up at Make It Labs hopefully we will be able to come up around November. I can't wait until I will at least be able to make the Exo-skeleton for this (hopefully world record holding) machine.

Back to the Basics

Ok so to start with this project I need to first go back to the basics. First with going back to the basics we need to start out and make a whole new design. I am going to take the original Utilimaker design http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:8563 and then, go and really stretch it out. This design is not going to be a walk in the park, first off I need to start to add the notches that the utilimaker has in the side just like makerbot to hold the screws. On top of that i need to figure out how big my build platform can be. Even with the idea of having it 4 feet tall and 2 feet wide it is going to have to be smaller, this way the build platform is able to move. Now by now you are all probably thinking what inspired me to come up with the idea of 4 feet by 2 feet? While believe it or not I am contouring this printer to be the exact size of the laser cutter I have access to. It's going to be a tight fit but I will stop at nothing to concur this monster of a machine!

Getting Started

Hi everyone, with this blog i plan on sharing my tales of building one of the worlds LARGEST 3D printers!! I am planning on building a Utilimaker that is 4 feet tall and 2 feet wide!! I picked the Utilimaker because of the design of the extruder, which i forgot to mention I am adding 4 of them to this design. The Utilimaker has a unique design for the extruder where it has the pinch wheel in the rear of the printer. It then sends it over to the actual extruder head which uses a heater cartridge to heat up the plastic and then spits it out of the extruder. The other neat thing about this design is that the head moves instead of being stationary and because I have the availability to incorporate 4 into my design..... I will