Rapid Prototyping and 3D Printing

[MTUHusky]

Hey guys,

Just wondering what everyone is doing with regards to rapid prototyping and 3-D printing? My company has been experimenting with the technology and have recently made some fun breakthroughs that I am trying to get them to let me publish. So far we have been successful in making a mold cavity and running it through 700 shots. We have also been very successful making end of arm parts for robots and electrical testers using both filament and liquid acrylic. We are waiting for our new metal printer to start experimenting with heavier stuff (detailed mold cavities with slides and lifters, automation tooling, hand loads and just about anything else we want to try) .

I just wanted to see what others are doing and to gauge interest in publishing and sharing info.

Thanks,

Husky

[JayDub]

We have one we use for simple fixtures or fixture components. The black resin (Acrylic?) it uses isn't as nice as machined Delrin, but if I give a sketch to the drafters in the morning, they can have a CAD model by afternoon and let the printer run overnight. Rapid prototyping, as advertised.

[iautry1973]

Last place I worked we printed a lot of parts for fixtures and secondary equipment that would run overnight rather than waiting a week or two for it to get machined by our shop. It was pretty useful, hope we get one at the new place sometime.

[nikom]

We got around 1000 parts in ABS out of an SLS aluminum filled nylon insert. Cooling was an issue, the insert was about 1" thick and would retain heat pretty well. Had the mold base it was in set to 55 °F and still had to add a 15 second blast of compressed air onto the surface of the B-side to keep it cool enough. The end of flow for the part wasn't critical and we were worried about stuck parts damaging the mold so we ran short shots for the production with minimal pack pressure to fill the sprue.

[MTUHusky]

We had a lot of trouble cooling our mold as well. We ended up blasting both sides with air along with periodically spraying mold release. We are experimenting with heat sinks but so far no real gains. The gates are getting eaten away before the part detail so we are also moving towards an aluminum gate and possible runner.

The part fixtures for QA has been a huge help. We were able to eliminate a lot of heavy fixtures by printing them all out of ABS. We have some fixtures that were printed with ABS+ magnetic particles so we can set a part in the fixture and "clamp" it down with a magnet.

[nikom]

Is the magnetic ABS commercially available? I've done prints with internal voids for permanent magnets but haven't considered using a material that is inherently magnetic.