What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

My school just purchased us a Lulzbot 3D printer. I've printed a few things but I'm curious to see what everyone is using there's for in terms of FRC.

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

The big 80/20 black framed one? I put a few of those things together, nice machine.

For team use mostly I've done spacers and washers and prototype parts for certain things. I find the ABS just to weak to use in most things, and even for spacers we started to lathe everything from alum stock after we got our lathe.

Enclosures for certain electronics and cases for Gyros is also useful.

On the flip side I've made jigs for light duty machining.

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

Yup...that's the machine.

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

We have printed some motor mounts for an early version of our pickup, an adaptor to attach a RS775 to a Harbor Freight planetary gearbox, a master wheel for a mold, and a bunch of spirit stuff.

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

Hex spacers are really useful to print, particularly the 0.0625" width. We used these on our chain drive this year to space out sprockets.

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

As a beta testing team, we've made a 3D printed part that can be placed in the roboRIO to keep the cables organized, more resistant to swarf, and slightly more secure. Link to check out the Cable Magic.

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

Think you should call that the WildStang RoboRio Wire Wrangler! ::rtm::

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

We are currently using ours to prototype a compact frame rail with an integrated single speed gearbox. We have printed the gears and will be printing some pulleys to save on cost and also delivery time. It will let us control our gear ratio by simply being able to print a new set of gears in just under two hours.

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

For our robot's intake, we used our Cubify printer to prototype, and eventually create, pulleys and spacers. We also made little "bricks" used to mount our shooter to the chassis.

For non-robot stuff, we used it to print keychains that were CAD-ed by students at our robotics summer camp. We also printed some medals for our mentors, and I think someone printed a feather.

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

We don't have a 3D printer (yet), but I think this is pretty cool.

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

A small selection of what 2220 used 3D printing for last year:

• Small spacers for our electronics panel
• Mounting blocks for our polycarb side shields
• Gearbox covers
• Camera/IR sensor hybrid mount
• The all important Scorpio name plate
• Prototype of the Stratasys 3D Printing Award trophy given at the MN FTC State Championship
• All sorts of minor electrical stuff

Here's some of what Eagan Robotics FTC teams used 3D printers for last year (in case anyone's interested):

• Hook to hang on the bar
• Small "flicker" arm for scoring the autonomous block
• A variety of electrical isolation mounting components
• Mounting for the Samantha module outside of the base robot frame
• Battery holder

Overall, they were extremely useful. Many parts we developed on the printers went through many iterations in a way that wouldn't have been possible if we were machining them. The finished products (printed in Makerbot PLA) were durable enough that there wasn't a single failure in competition (though we did destroy the original camera/IR mount in testing).

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

So now that we are seeing a lot more people with 3D printers, I want to know what ones you have found most successful. This includes print quality, price, and durability(how much you have to play with it to get it right) all put into one.
-Ronnie

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

We had two, one with better resolution than the other. We've used our for many different applications. Anywhere from extra spacers in custom gearboxes, creating a shield for a gyro, wedges to help pick up frisbees, to positive stops to reducing the amount of travel a polyU band along a moving apparatus.

Obligatory "The possibilities are endless!" quote.

But actually though, they're super helpful.

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

Recently printed 192 game pieces out of PLA on a small army of Bukito portable printers for MORT.

Printing parts for the Prusa I3 I gave them now out of ABS on my Up! Plus.

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

We plan to use our Lulzbot to print out the custom gearbox we designed before sending the drawings to the factory for manufacturing.

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

Be careful when printing parts such as gears or holes perpendicular to the table of the printer. We did not get very good results when printing gears due to the enges having some residual plastic and being unable to get it off.

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

We've used our Makerbot Replicator 2 at school for aluminum tubing caps and we also printed a bracket to hold cables in our radio so we wouldnt lose commuication with the robot. Also made 1507 keychains for all students, and lots of custom phone cases for myself.

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

Lots of things! Here's a few items I've made with the printer in the past 6 months:

Stackable jaguar mounts:
http://eric.segonline.net/2014/frc/jagmount3.jpg

A fully working 3D printed Swerve Drive:


A modular, 3 foot tall high-powered rocket (fits I and J 38mm solid motors, max altitude ~3000ft)


Not robotics related, but here's my birdhouse:


Here's my Tiki Chess Set:



And here's a wedding cake topper I designed for a friend



And finally, here's the 3D printed gear heart and Big Balls I printed and gave to Jill Wagner when I competed on the game show "Wipeout":

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

I used mine to print many things (robot parts) for my team last year. I posted a video of one thing here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFjenjGTKBc
All of our designs from last year are posted here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:415214

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

Over the summer we had a rehab center for children with severe mental disabilities ask us to help them modify those little cars that the lucky kids drive around the neighborhood. We modified them with buttons on the steering wheel that the kids could push to make them go forward and made the seats better for them and made the steering remote controlled by a parent. We made the steering remote controlled by taking an old globe motor and having it turn the steering shaft with a couple little gears that we printed out. We had other designs with string and chain and stuff but the gears were by far the best solution. I'll try to find some pictures of it.

We're also printing out stuff to help prototype some new drivetrains we might want to use this next season.

edit: here's some of the cars during their photo shoot, we did like 4 of them. http://imgur.com/a/rziev

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

This is amazing.

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

Our team doesn't actually have it's own 3D printer yet, so far we've been borrowing other people's 3D printers. There are a lot of parts of the vacuum that were 3D printed though, one of the most notable parts that was 3D printed was that black plate thing. I forget what the plate specifically does, but I think that it's an air release of some sort. There's also a few connectors for the vacuum that we 3D printed too because we couldn't find anything that would work for that.

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

We usually use our 3D printer to make trinkets. But last year, we made a clip for our D-Link and we also made a hex spacer. Unfortunately, both of those eventually broke.

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

We use Autodesk Inventor for 3D dwg. Through motion analysis they are able to move the components of the dwg. then we create models with the 3D printer.
eg. Students must design a Circular Gripper to hold a 2" diameter ball.

One of my students did an excellent job; so, the drawing is now being CAM on the CNC Mill.


:cool:

Re: What are you using your 3D printer for?
 

Last year we spent 40 hours of printing to make a LOT of the green and blue rollers here:
https://twitter.com/frc2605/status/436627785478848512

We also found them to be incredibly useful for encoder and sensor mounting. Be sure to test specifically for each part. Tolerances will change from warp, and the warp will change from the part shape to the printer. The more you use 3D printing, the more you will come up with ways to use it, and what you use it for won't be a question anymore!