Printed a t-shirt! It ran out of ink at the end, but it came out great for the first try! It is hard to print white on black...so this should raise a few eyebrows.

Fantastic work guys, Bravo! Bravo. I wasn't expecting anything like that. You've got me really jazzed up again.

Yes guys the "Make your own T-shirt" is really cool.

Is the paint dispenser something you made or is it a kit you bought?

Do you turn on the air pressure by hand to pump out the paint?

It is a pneumatic transducer running at 50hz (for this demo). We control the xducer with PWM via EMC2/HAL. The xducer is fed 55psi from a compressor, and (for this one) allowed to vent on the negative stroke. I sourced numerous syringes with luer-lock fittings. The fittings include graded capillaries down to .004", but stainless tubing is available to .0005". The syringe is 'gas adapted' to the compressor, though I will try to use liquid CO2 next (quiet!). The Z can carry numerous 'depcaps' allowing for one-pass color printing, but more exciting; multiple 3d materials...what I guess I'm calling 'polyfabbing'.

Wow that is very impressive! It is amazing to see this in action printing white on black t-shirts as this is on of the (many) basic uses I would have for 3dp. There is so much more potential but this is very cool indeed.

I havnt watched all of the new videos you posted yet as im at work ... Grayson can you please give me some more info on the types of ink/dye/paint that could/can be used? Would it be easy to print multiple colours? Are you envisioning multiple print heads for the initial 3dp beta or would it be relatively easy and quick to switch colors by flushing out any previous ink/dye/paint that was in the system? Would it be possible or easy to add color to the UV curing polyester resins?

Hi Gav,

You can print with anything that is flowable through a capillary. Let me just say a big YES to all of your other questions.

One of my stated goals is to print a silicone hand with urethane 'bones', hopefully culminating in something usable! You can print color all at once by simply having a capillary for each of your desired colors. You can always use the micRo to manufacture any special mounts you might need, and we'll provide a few 'all purpose' pieces with the 3DP kit. (My name for it is the UNIFAB: the universal fabricator).

I've seen CO2 used for air brushing where compressors would be obnoxious, is that similar to what you have in mind?

Yes, here it is in one of these vids:

(For scale, the spiral we printed toward the end was about the size and width of a human fingerprint.)

Now featured over on the Make blog:

LumenLab T-shirt 3dp over at Make

Nice! Nothing like a little video to spread the good word...

Loving the playlist format of the posted videos, being able to sit back and enjoy instead of clicking and loading all those instances and making the browser slow. Also, thanks for posting videos, very fun to witness such progress!

Thanks! Wish I had known about it sooner...


Sweet.

what a great job guys, would be very nice to find some kind of ink resistent enough to print pcbs with this metod, looks posible at first view.

thanks for sharing all this stuff.

Looks pretty sweet!

I must confess to sending Make the link... like many others I lurk around here, watching the awesome videos. (Yes people are watching them! ) When I saw the T shirt printing, I had to tell the world!

Awesome, thanks! Next up, a raster image of my face on my labcoat??

Go to like 12 seconds in of the 6th video. I got to say BC your forehead looks a lot like a majestic sun rise over the horizon.

"Majestic"

I like that...

What do you use to create those spirals? Is that a macro in EMC2, a python script, or hand-coded G-code or some other robin/brainchild-induced magic? I'm interested because one of my first projects for my micro involves cutting a pair of intertwined spirals (180deg out of phase), and for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to draw that sort of spiral in Qcad.

Hi David,

Robin does most everything we do by hand. I can't remember the last time we CAM'd anything.

Spiral G Code: http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?s...st&p=308743

Unfortunately, that's pro content only, no access for me.

Well . . . how about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedean_spiral

This is a DIY site after all.

BC or Robin,

What are you using to print with? Just a die?

As I recall, it wasn't a dye, just thinned out paint

-Brian

I did a small amount of T-shirt silkscreen printing in high school, I was surprised that the paint we used looked a lot like regular old household paint. It's been around 10 years but I still have at least one of those shirts, the paint is cracked quite a bit but the logo is just fine, that shirt is still in my regular rotation.

Hey there David,
Since you've bought a micro, I went ahead and upgraded your forum account to pro. Now you can enjoy hours of my ramblings about G-code in the pro forum. Feedrate is adjusted by a variable towards the top of the file, and to make a dual spiral, start at a known coordinate, run one spiral, move back to the coordinate, edit the degree offset variable to be 180 degrees off from your beginning offset, and run again...

Hi Greg,
We tried both oil-based house paint and a water-based silkscreen ink. The silkscreen ink needed to be thinned with water in order to work right, but otherwise it ran fine..

Awesome! thx. I can't wait for my m2 to show up! (bought myself my 2009 xmas gift of an m2 upgrade (just a couple days ago) onto my hopefully soon to be delivered dream-machine.

Got any opinions good/bad for Qcad? It seems to be one of the reasonably priced ($39.00 pro, runs on linux, mac/windows), or free for the opensource version. They also have their CAM expert prog, but it seems like it hasn't been updated since the stone age for linux. (I posed a question to them on that, if they planned on a more current release, but no response yet.)

Well, I've played around with Qcad a little... And I found it to be nearly unintelligible. The again I'm a grizzled veteran of at least 8 or 9 versions of Autocad, 4 or 5 versions of both Solidworks and Inventor, and am pretty set in my ways with CAD. In fact, learning G-code was mostly a response to the lack of good linux CAD/CAM packages.. Having said that, there's an add-on script for blender which spits out EMC compatible g-code (the script can be found in the EMC wiki). Other than that I'd say stick with whatever CAD package you're comfortable working with. If you're not invested into CAD, then a modeling program like Blender might be a good starting place...

I've used Qcad Free a fair bit, but it really does make life hard for you a lot of the time.

In AutoCAD, for example, there are tips that show you the options, and it fills in the last entered values. This makes using something like the offset tool very fast, and tweaking something a few times to get it right, where there are multiple options, gets very much faster, as you only have to change your one variable, without re-typing the rest over and over. Qcad doesn't do this.

Actually, there are a lot of things Qcad doesn't do! There are a few snaps missing that make life harder, and try drawing a hexagon! Nearly impossible to do it accurately. If you want to move an object, it can be tricky, and the "Right click to re-do" includes the cancel command, which is madness.

However, it is free, and it doesn't crash all that often. I've done some moderately complex things in it, and the offset tool, zoom functions, speed of re-draw, etc. are all good enough that it is usable.

My only caution is that you should save with a different name occasionally, as I've had a few crashes where it have been mid-save, and died, losing the file! Only two or three times, but that's enough!!

Once is enough for me, meh.

I just had to share this amazing new tech I stumbled upon with everyone here interested in 3dp.



this is apparently all achieved with a cheap webcam and software: Probabilistic Feature-based On-line Rapid Model Acquisition

just imagine this technology used with lumenlabs proposed unifab 3d printing prototype

! oh the posibilities

Yea caught that via Robin couple weeks ago, awesome!

Pretty neat stuff. Reminds me of the software that rips the models out of 3D games.

I, for one, welcome our webcam-enabled overlords.

Just ran into something that made me think about 3DP.

Click to view attachment
Spray on liquid glass.

Essentially they tech they are describing is a thin 100 nano meter layer of silicon dioxide made from quartz sand (same stuff normal glass is made from). It bonds to almost ANY surface, it is resistant to water, UV radiation, dirt, heat, and bacterial infections. The coating is also flexible and breathable depending on its thickness. It is entirely inhale-able , and presents no danger if it was to be sprayed in the house or shop.

The bond works because at the scale of the layer being applied, quantum forces, known as the Casimir force, hold it to the surface like glue. It works the same way as a gecko fingers, enabling a gecko to climb vertical glass.

Ok enough ranting, imagine an application for 3DP. A simple accurate spraying device that sprays this over an incredibly small area. I was thinking something that could match the accuracy of the M2, 0.003" spray radius or so. This would give you a vertical resolution of around 10,000 printed layers per millimeter. Since it comes in Water and Alcohol delivery methods, you could have a radiant heat source that would dry the layer incredibly quickly. Id imagine on the scale of milliseconds.

This may be too accurate to even think about. but imagine printing a small but fully accurate chess set smaller than a 4 or 5 mm. Also keep in mind that this almost avaible for sale, at $8USD for 0.5 liters it makes it the cheapest 3DP medium I have ever seen (other than the sugar 3DP heheh).

A man can dream right...

Silicon dioxide is very not good for you in very small particle sizes. You get a nasty disease if you inhale it lots, as your lungs trap the very fine particles and you get something akin to asbestosis or black lung, called silicosis.

It'll be good for some things, I'm sure, but coating a seed pod? That seems a bit dangerous if you then want to eat it later. Sand is gritty and crunchy and not very nice, which is why we rinse veggies. This ultra thin layer probably wouldn't be noticeable like that, but I bet it would still increase wear on your teeth!

I'll be interested to see what happens with it. It might get killed for being "Nanotech".

As for using it for 3DP, it might be good, but the liquid transport means you'll not be placing it very accurately.

I figured it would give you silicosis too, but in the description I read, it says "inhale-able" whatever that means... since when is anything but air a good thing to be inhaled? It certainly seems like an interesting product though.

So how long before I can buy one of these deposition heads? Or the paint spray head?

Also, are the motor controllers available now, in your new design? I've got another project that requires two, and if that goes into production, many more!

Hello everybody,

To give my feedback so far, I have listed my personal priorities for eventually purchasing this machine in order of importance.
Of course not all of those can be fullfilled, but this is how i make my purchase decision sort of

1. High accuray and repeatability (what i've seen so far looks promising)
2. Support for all types of materials
3. Ease of use
4. 24h support time
5. 12 months guarantee with 12 months extendable option
6. Software compability
7. Ease of maintenance / repair
8. Non-messy liquid cooling solution that wont flood my appartment
9. Automatic tool switch e.g. switch from M5 to M8 drills
10. Circuit board cutting
11. Circuit board paste & pre-soldering
12. 3D printing

3D printing aint so high on my list, It's based on the not so good results of other CNC kits such as e.g. fab@home or the reprap types (pics below). If you can achieve a much higher quality with the micRo, then the 3DP would run much higher on my pruchase decision list

Cheers, keep on rocking!

Hey Soapy,
Hope everything's going well with your bot..

I'm not sure what the ETA for deposition is.. We do have a working, though very fiddly and not very "end-product-ish" prototype. However, I think first add-on we'll be sending out the door is the 4th axis. We hope to have something finished in about 6 weeks... Which is a pretty brutal schedule for something that's a production piece.. But I think we can do it..

The controllers should be purchasable in our store. We are awaiting a new shipment of the driver boards, which will probably be here in 1 to 2 weeks (Chinese new year is going on right now, and pretty much the entire country takes a break to celebrate it). Also, it looks like the days of me hand-fitting the panels are soon to be over, so we need to finish arrangements with the plastic company to get those parts supplied... So yes, they're available, but we won't be shipping anything for at least 2 weeks..

Hello Frank,

Ok, quite a list of questions/requirements there, but let's see..

1. Accuracy and repeatability
- The machine, when properly set-up and maintained (and run in a temperature-controlled environment, AKA a regular room in your house) can reliably maintain a repeatable accuracy of +/- .001"

2. Support for all types of materials
- Used as a milling device it has no problems with soft materials (a variety of plastics, woods..) and the only trade-off with soft metals is in time, but we've had beautiful results in aluminum, for example. Steel is a little beyond the reach of our current spindle, but our goal is to be able to relatively painlessly mill steel with our next version.

3. Ease of use
- The V2/M2 plus Syncro is a turn-key solution. Everything has been assembled, run-in, and tested. Once it arrives, all you need to do is plug it together, and turn it on. For technical problems or usage questions, the forums are a good place to start (with questions specific to the micRo and syncRo), and though you'll get good answers here regarding general questions about machining, using EMC2 (the software), G-code, and CAD/CAM, the best place to look (if you don't have time to wait) is at CNCzone.com or linuxcnc.org.

4. 24hr support time
- We are trying very hard to improve our support. We are a small company though, and so there are sometimes compromises on time management. However, There's a new ticket system, which I check near daily for technical issues (Kellie checks for general support issues), except for some weekends (when I'm out of town visiting my valentine).

5. 12 months guarantee with extendable option
- This is a question for Grayson/Kellie, so I'll pass it on. Though I do know we do replacements, and are willing to try to work out any technical problem. But, I'm not the one to ask about the specifics regarding the warranty..

6. Software compatibility
- Currently we support EMC2 (www.linuxcnc.org) as the control software. EMC2 will accept standard RS274D / ISO-6983 style G-code (though I've noticed that a number of CAM programs will deviate from the standard by, for example, including Fanuc-specific G-codes). EMC2 does require Linux to run, but it's fairly easy to run Windows programs within Linux, or to set the machine up as dual-boot.

7. Ease of maintenance / repair
- Maintenance is fairly straight forward for the machine:
-try to keep the leadscrews and ways free of chip (though small amounts won't hurt it)
-keep it at "room" temperature
-keep the leadscrews, ways, and bearing sides of the shaft-collars oiled (I recommend "turbine oil", though the micRo will do fine with a wide range of lubricants)
-occasionally check the squareness, and adjust by hand
-occasionally check the way and leadscrew adjusters, if these are too loose it could detrimentally change the tolerances of the machine, or introduce unwanted vibration.
- We will advise you on repairs when requested, though there is little on the machine its self that would need repairing, if properly used and maintained.

8. Non-messy liquid cooling that doesn't flood your apartment
- Right now we don't have any concrete plans for adding an officially supported liquid-cooling option.. Though a simple, low-cost, high-utility fix is a large plastic bin and an aquarium pump. It works surprisingly well. But It's simple enough that we might release an official cooling system..

9. Automatic tool changer
- It'd be really cool to be able to incorporate an automatic tool changer, but this is way the scope of the spindles we're using. We've discussed a semi-custom spindle option before, and when/if we go down that road, we could possibly add an ATC, but for now and the immediate future we have no plans for that.

10. Circuit board cutting
- Circuit board work should be relatively easy to perform with the V2/M2, there's some specialized tooling that I'd recommend, but isn't absolutely necessary.

11. Circuit board paste/pre-soldering
- We've had an deposition tool under development for some time. I can't tell you when we expect to have this as a finished product, but, with milling capability, it's possible to cut out solder stencils without very much trouble..

12. 3d printing
- Again, deposition has been in development for some time. However a handful of customers have intentions to use the micRo as a repstrap machine, and having looked at it, the only barriers to doing this (which are very low barriers), is machining a tool-holder for an extrusion tool, and merging the extruder electronics and configuration files with the existing micRo configuration..

Anyways, hope that helps a little.

Hi Robin, how are you mate? snow? here we are rainy rainy rainy (one month and counting).

I have seen your recent posts and I am interested in what you say about the 4 axis and the tooling for pcb cutting as is at the beginning my primary priority, what is your recomendation tools for this task?.

And talking about the 4 axis, be sure that I want one .

Last, I am still waiting my lubricant saliva bottle, how many litters do you filled?

Best regards friend.

so the fourth axis adds negative cuts by swiveling the cutting head on the the z mount ? do you have any photos ? and is this going to be compatible with the v1.1s ?

Hey Neorazz,
The 4th axis will be a rotary axis; what is usually called axis A in CNC/Machining jargon. Basically, a rotational axis that sits underneath the Z axis (the X and Y axes move along it, and typically the A axis is parallel with the X, but in our case will almost certainly be along the Y). Kind of like a lathe, but with an extra couple axes of movement. To be honest, I already have a 5-axis design in my head, but that'll probably be just a demo piece (unless it's just that awesome).

Right now, no, no photos, it's still in mid-planning stages, but is something that is easy enough engineering and production wise that once the proper components are selected, it should be in production almost immediately.

Yes and no on the compatibility. For better or for worse, we're designing this specifically for the V2/M2. It would be possible, and by "possible" I mean "not difficult, but DIY", to integrate the rotary axis into an existing v1.1. Our mounting system will be made to attach to the grid-drilled V2/M2 bases (which have a different hole spacing than V1/V1x), and there will be the requirement of an additional driver, but these aren't horrible hurdles. Mounting holes could either be machined by the micRo, or with a conventional high-torque low-RPM drill, and the previous breakouts are all amenable to amendment. So, yes and no. It's not a problem to add, but it's not a turn-key thing like it would be for the V2/M2.

Hey, things are pretty good. Every 1 or 2 weekends I've been avoiding the snow by visiting my special Chilean lady friend in Charlotte (it's about a 2 hour drive, and 3000' elevation difference, and yes, it's worth the drive). Having said that, abandoning my car on the interstate was a serious possibility a few weeks ago when I didn't leave early enough. That got my heart racing in a bad way. Four-wheel drive or not, it's simply impossible to drive on snow that's deeper than your axle height. Anyways, I made it out, but it was a bit of a scare. Snow in Asheville hasn't been too big of a problem for me, I have 4-wheel drive, it rarely snows more than 12", I have a house in an old neighborhood adjacent to down-town, and gas heat, so the worst thing that has happened to me so far was loosing the internet for a few hours and finding out that a room-mate drank my beer.

Regarding the 4th axis, the previous post pretty much says it.. our design goals are that it is a rotary axis that can turn something ~ 3" diameter, and while we don't have any specific goal for the length (we'd like it to be adjustable), the mechanics will probably eat-up around 6" of the usable length, which we're designing to fit parallel to the Y axis. Basically, V1/V1.1/V1.2/V1x machines will only have a couple of inches of machinable length, the V2 will have around 4, and the M2 will have around 12.. We're designing it specifically for the V2/M2, but it could be added to the V1/V1.1/V1.2/V1x machines with a little effort. Also, no designs are finalized, so we're going to try to make it possible to run the rotary axis parallel to the X as well (to maximize length, V1~4-5", V2~6", M2~13"), but this is only something we'd like, not something I can assure, so far...

PCB milling bits... Let me get back to you, I know we've bought them for customers, but, I'd like to find the best solutions on the internet first. But the bits really do exist.

Unfortunately, my saliva is used-up and over-priced. However, turbine oil is nearly identical.

Salude!