3D printing

[Pitbull]

Hi Guys,

Last night I needed a damn rubber seal and I realised there are so many times I need small plastic or rubber things that either broke and wore out and need replacing, especially on the plot not.

Was wondering about this 3D printers and the likes. I'm not asking for it to be a CNC machine as an example and I can draw very good according to scaled on Coral Draw. What I need to know is:

. Does one get different printing compound? (Rubber, harder plastic)
. Is it able to print varying scales what would you think to be the smallest in diameter and the largest in diameter?

Appreciate the feedback by those in the know.

 

[Vaughan]

The answer is yes they can do multiple compounds, but not in the home hobby price region.
Cheap hobby grade can generally print about 0.1mm to 0.5mm accuracy but bear in mind they really struggle with round shapes. (You need the more expensive processes for this such as laser sintering and stereolithography).

In terms of making your own rubber seals, the best advice I can give is to by plastic hose with the same inside diameter as you need the rubber seal to be. Spray a non stick compound in (lightly). Plug 1 end of the tube and fill with silicon or gasket sealant (many options). Wait X hours. Use a syringe to blow air into the hose to push out the rubber. Cut it to length and stick the ends together.

There is also the option of buying a cheap printer and printing the moulds to make the seals (non-round seals). Use acetone (if ABS printer) and sand paper to smooth the mould and correct the inaccuracies of the 3D printer.

In general hobby grade 3D printers are not really capable of making highly accurate or rubbery parts, you need to go over R100k I believe.

 

[Pitbull]

The answer is yes they can do multiple compounds, but not in the home hobby price region.
Cheap hobby grade can generally print about 0.1mm to 0.5mm accuracy but bear in mind they really struggle with round shapes. (You need the more expensive processes for this such as laser sintering and stereolithography).

In terms of making your own rubber seals, the best advice I can give is to by plastic hose with the same inside diameter as you need the rubber seal to be. Spray a non stick compound in (lightly). Plug 1 end of the tube and fill with silicon or gasket sealant (many options). Wait X hours. Use a syringe to blow air into the hose to push out the rubber. Cut it to length and stick the ends together.

There is also the option of buying a cheap printer and printing the moulds to make the seals (non-round seals). Use acetone (if ABS printer) and sand paper to smooth the mould and correct the inaccuracies of the 3D printer.

In general hobby grade 3D printers are not really capable of making highly accurate or rubbery parts, you need to go over R100k I believe.

Thank you.

I was thinking more in line with replacing leaky toilets seals and the like. Would have been fun to drawn, print and replace. I guess we'll get there still one day. Appreciate the feedback

 

[Vaughan]

It is possible, but just a warning it is a lot of effort to get them printing nicely.
You can modify them to print a wide range of things if you know what you are doing but rubber might be quite hard. The best printer I know of that can do something like 18 grades of rubber hardness was a few hundred thousand or even a million rand.
Printing moulds and moulding sealant pastes is an option but yeah it is probably cheaper to buy the seals

 

[Zen17h]

Not an expert on the topic by any means, but I've recently started dabbling with it

You do get different materials, the most commonly used are both types of plastics - PLA and ABS
These have variations for different uses (strength, flexibility, conductivity, etc.) as well as mixes with other materials(wood, metals)
You also get other types specialty filaments that are rubber-like(TPU, TPC), but I haven't seen much of it

Something you should remember is that all these different materials have different requirements - nozzle diameter, extruder temperature and bed temperature. Printing all of them may not be possible on a single printer (or the printer may only be able to use one type of filament).
The 'basic' printers also only have a single extruder, so you can't (easily) print something using multiple materials - though you can also print 'parts' in different materials and glue them together

Once you have a model to be printed(either downloaded or designed by you - Onshape is a free online tool you can play around in), you have to import the model to a slicing tool that breaks the model down into a set of instructions for the printer(Gcode), while optionally also adding supports so the printer is less likely to try printing in mid-air or the model to fall over during printer.

In the slicing tool you can scale your model to whatever size you want (note depending on filament material, the plastic may shrink while cooling down), up to whatever your maximum build plate volume is (Given as XX mm * YY mm * ZZ mm).
Shrinking it down may be a little more tricky, as a printer has a minimum wall thickness it can do (usually 0.something mm, the slicing tool will completely ignore anything thinner than this), so will just not print these parts of the model

 

[saor]

Would have been fun to drawn, print and replace.

For grown parts you typically need to create a 3d model. You can't just use 2d drawings.

 

[saor]

Making rubber seals - if the seals have a rectangular section (unlike an o-ring which has a round section) you can buy sheets of silicon / rubber and die cut them to almost any diameter / size you want. Getting a die made is relatively cheap, and they can usually do a few runs for you.

 

[biometrics]

@pitbull, I know Nefertiti has a 3D printer, she may be able to answer your questions. Tends to hang out in TK.

 

[Nefertiti]

Hi Guys,

Last night I needed a damn rubber seal and I realised there are so many times I need small plastic or rubber things that either broke and wore out and need replacing, especially on the plot not.

Was wondering about this 3D printers and the likes. I'm not asking for it to be a CNC machine as an example and I can draw very good according to scaled on Coral Draw. What I need to know is:

. Does one get different printing compound? (Rubber, harder plastic)
. Is it able to print varying scales what would you think to be the smallest in diameter and the largest in diameter?

Appreciate the feedback by those in the know.

I have a 3d printer but it can only print with PLA or ABS. Which is not a suitable replacement for rubber parts. But if you want something printed in a hard shape it can do. Its a bit of a mission though, by the time you've set up a project & calibrated it would be much cheaper just to buy the parts.

I use PLA since it was for jewelry projects and it would burn out clean in casting but it turns out mostly true. The finer the print (and I couldnt go really fine with my printer) the less success in burning out i got.

So my next cheapy printer will be a lithographic printer. It uses light to cure a resin and based on the videos I saw it should be able to do what I want.