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Le 27/12/2009, 00:00
26C3, Day1 : a kit to make a 3D Printer

During this first day at the 26e Chaos Communication Congress, I made a small video on a printer which can do 3D plastic objects !

What does it looks like, how does it work and how those objects looks like ? ...

A 3D Printer ...

The way it works is pretty straightforward : a motor push a plastic tube on a head who melt it. As a result, you obtain a small melted plastic stream through the extruder head. This head can move up and down.

Below, a hard plastic plank is able to move in 4 directions thanks to 2 stepper-motors. Therefore, you create the objects one layer at a time, and create objects up to 10 cm in each direction.

All of this is driven by some electronic board, a PC power box and a USB link to a computer, who allows the machine calibration, and the sending of the data from any 3 dimensional object transformed into melted plastic path.

All those explanations worth a good video :) I created it the same day, in our temporary home in Berlin. Hold on !