Tech

3D printing ceramics with Bussoga

Dev, Tech, , ,

Collabos are great. Collabos with great people are DOUBLE great! This is the story behind the first day sharing printing and ceramics ideas with the folks from Bussoga.

Printed porcelain decoration

Printed porcelain decoration

Disclaimer. IF you do not know who Bussoga is, they are the masterminds behind all the awesome tiles that we have been using as dishes for the pasts few months.

You might seen the pictures from the roadtrip, here is how our workspace look right before starting our day. Bussoga‘s HQ are awesome!!!

Bussoga HQ

Bussoga HQ

Our first goal was to set up the printer, after some minor issues (losing our end-effector at the train station) we were all set to start the tests.

During the day mainly we tested two types of materials. White clay and porcelain. Probably the coolest lesson learned during the day was how to start working to get the right consistency for each one of them (still lots to learn yet, but gotta start somewhere :)). Also how to link consistencies with the printing parameters (speeds, nozzle sizes, designs,…).

Here you can see Josep from Bussoga getting the porcelain mix right. It took us a couple of attempts to get the “right” consistency. Porcelain allowed to use small nozzle diameter (1.5mm) but without a hard consistency we could get tall prints.

Josep mixing porcelain

Josep mixing porcelain

This design is from Irina from Bussoga and it is our favourite print of the day. Worth to say it was painfully designed with Curv3s (undo feature request, still pending to implement).

Printed girl face

Printed girl face

During all day we jumped from porcelain to clay several times. Clay happened to be a harder horse to tame. Through each try (wetting it more) we tested lots of different configurations: speeds, pressures and nozzles. One of my favourite was the ultra big 12mm nozzle prints looks just cute.

Printing clay at big with big nozzle

Printing clay at big with big nozzle

Closer look the big nozzle prints.

Printed thick layer pots

Printed thick layer pots

After some trial and error we got a thinner clay that could be extruded with a 3 to 4mm nozzle. Was hard to get the right consistency. The day was arriving to the end but we managed to print a few attempts.

3d printed cup test

3d printed cup test

Overall it was a fantastic experience, that we are sure is going to drive into tons of ideas (it is already) and hopefully some more upcoming cool projects?

Here a couple of pictures from our results.

Day one results

Day one results

Printing ceramics day one results

Printing ceramics day one results

Soooo when is our next roadtrip?

THANKS TO BUSSOGA FOR THE INVITATION!

Did we said already that Bussoga is awesome?

Curv3s, new/update design tool

Dev, Tech, , ,

Curv3s is an update for Lin3s.

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The main different in between this two is that Curves, does have the ability to draw Bezier curves. This means mainly more organic shapes.

A few parameters have changed their names. Also the parameters has been divided into three groups Design, Effects and Printing. Hopefully this makes it more easy to use.

Now if the line is closed (shift + c), the nozzle follows an spiral motion with z-axis increments per segments. This means no big z movements while printing with a closed line. This is known as spiral vase in Slic3r.

If you decide to print an open line, it will go back and forth changing printing direction on each layer(always printing). Please notice that if paste is not thick enough it is quite difficult to hold a not connected end of line.

Another cool featured added is support for extruder based printers. What makes Curv3s compatible with filament printers. We run some tests and it worked. But I think there is plenty of better tools for plastic, still is fun and fast.

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Curv3s is and experimental tool. It generates a LOT of segments for a Curvy GCode. We tried to finetune it to reduce segments without decreasing the smoothness of the path. This requires more work and experimentation . Meaning that sometimes the amount of data send to the printer is too big so the printer stutters for a while.

How to use it:

  • To draw, just click on theplace where you want your new line joints to be (starts drawing the line with the second joint). If you drag your mouse after clicking you would be able to edit the bezier joint handles (paired).
  • To move around a line joint, click on and drag it to the new position.
  • To select a joint, click on it.
  • To edit a bezier curve handler joint, joint needs to be previously selected. Click on and drag the handler point and modify the curve (independent handlers edition).
  • To add a new joint to your line, click on it.
  • To remove a line joint, hold shift and click on the line joint.
  • To close a line, click shift + “c”.
  • To open a line, click shift + “o”.

Parameters:

  • Height (z) [mm]: This param is the total height of the figure.

  • Scale [%]: Total scale percentage between the base and figure’s top.

  • Layer height [mm]: Layer height.
  • Material diameter[mm]: This is equivalent to filament diameter for regular printers. And would be equal to the inside diameter of a syringe based extruder.

Curv3s, even if it has a different name still use Lin3s repository. (Yes, being too lazy to change it :))

Hopefully this new and simplified tool help us to bring easier ways to print food, and a nicer dinning experience.

Lin3s, new design tool

Dev, Tech

Lin3s is a remake of our straight lines design tool.

This time we have added a 3d viewer, so it is easier to get a sense of how the design is gonna look like. Example of a GCode printed with hummus. We keep our no-sense design rule (sorry for that).

What it does?

Creates a GCode path following a drawn line. Without jumps. Goes back and forth over the same line increasing the height until the desired number of layers is reached. The output just controls position, and valve on/off. Mainly for air compressed extruders.

What is what?

3 main parts.

  • Parameters: Left column has a title “Lin3s” (does nothing), list of designing and printing parameters, and GCode button to generate your GCode (after designed).
  • Canvas: Middle area, here is where to draw the “base” view of our design with a single line or path.
  • Viewer: A 3D viewer of the design, with basic mouse controls.

How to use it?

First a short video that we hope makes things easier to understand. If not we wrote a boring description that hoping is good enough.

The center area is a canvas where a path or line can be drawn. This represents the base of the design. Following the basic design actions:

  • To draw, just click on it and place where you want your new line joints to be (starts drawing the line with the second joint).
  • To move around a line joint, click on and drag it to the new position.
  • To add a new joint to your line, click on and drag it to the new joint position.
  • To remove a line joint, hold shift and click on the line joint.
  • To close a line, click shift + “c”.
  • To open a line, click shift + “o”.

To help building and printng a 3d design from the base line the following parameters are implemented.

  • # layers: Number of layers for the whole print.
  • Rotation [deg/layer]: This rotates each layer with the given degree parameter. If you get to play with some crazy fast setting material this might be cool. I can not get it to work over 1deg/layer
  •  Scale top layer [%]: This helps to give a less 2.5D feeling. What it does is change the proportion of all the layers based on the relationship between bottom and top layer. Equal to a basic cone effect (/\ or \/).
  •  Feedrate [mm/min]: Printing speed.
  •  Initial delay [ms]: This adds a delay after the beggining of the print. This is set for printer using valve controls (or at least for mine :)).
  •  enter y [mm], this 2 parameters help to center the print, at whatever center position is desired. By default this parameter is set for delta printers center = 0,0.
  • File name. Write here the name that you want for your file, it will be saved by default at your browser Downloads folder.

If you are interested in the source code, here it is the repository, spoiler alert not fancy coding here;).

It would be awesome if you have any feedback please let us know! 🙂

3d Food printing

Shake that Powder #3

Dev, Tech

Shake that powder 3. Finally we got some new parts to test. First the new pipette tip holder using 3 vibration motors, why 3? because #1 was not enough 🙂

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We got to solve the clogging issue with extra shaking, that is cool right?

Late this week more pictures!

3D Printing ceramics

Tech

Food is not just about food. Is also about how we eat, the experience and the tools we use. With that in mind, at 3DC we started experimenting 3D Printing ceramics.

What is the first thing you have to do when starting fooling around with something new? Look for an expert to help you out. This is where the awesome people from Bussoga come to play.

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Shall we fire this up?

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