OpenBuilds @ National Maker Faire 2016

Also See Previous Post -- OpenBuilds @ Maker Faire Bay Area

Well kids I’m back, this time in our Nation’s Capital. Turns out that the National Maker Faire is in my backyard, well, 2:30 hours from my backyard but still close enough.

Considering that MF Bay Area is one of the Flagship fairs I knew better than to expect big things from NMF. Mind you, I was still happy the fair was so close and still very excited to go. All of this considered it was exactly what I expected.

The fair was small; it had a very relaxing feel to it, not the Rock Star feel of the Bay fair, but more of a local acoustical band playing in your favorite pub or brew house. It allowed you to get up close and personal with the makers, spend time with them, and get to know what their projects were all about. I really liked it!!

There were no real “big guns” like MF Bay Area, the merchants (for lack of the better word) were companies like UP3D and 86Duino, no Printrbot or Makerbot or the likes, which was something else I liked, the “little guys” representing. The local contingency was high, whether it was a local school, lab, or just a group of Makers. This again gave the show that hometown feel. There was a bunch of stuff to see, touch and play with; you can see more of that in my photo album.

Now that you have the big picture I’ll keep rest of this short and touch base on a few things that stood off for me.

The home use DLMS printer by Ability3D was one of those standouts. It was very innovative and the prototype looked great. They are fusing powdered stainless steel into fully functional metal parts. They have designed it to use a Nitrogen Generator (I have no idea what the technical name is) that pulls the required amount of inert gas to allow a clean burn/melt of the powdered Stainless Steel. This is a great idea as it eliminated the need for a high pressure tank for Nitrogen or Argon. Very cool idea!!! There were no print samples so I’m not sure if the prototype was fully functioning or still in the design/test phase!?!? Either way the designer says they will be on Kickstarter in 2017 at a price point similar to a Makerbot (for whatever that means).

Another cool item was the 3d Printed Mold at the DOE booth. It was being used to make composite Turbine Blades. The mold was printed by Cincinnati Inc. using their BAAM (Big Area Advanced manufacturing) 3D Printer. It has a build volume of 240” x 90” x 72” and can deposit up to 80lbs of filament an hour. The printer can make a 6’ long section of mold in about 6 hours. From there it is covered in fiberglass, machined to a final dimension and hand polished. This is very near and dear to my heart as we (where I work full-time) have made similar molds using a method of Fiberglass over Foam manufacturing. Although the 3D Printing is much faster than making a plug and doing a hand laminated mold, I’m not sure it beats out our method of machining the foam, laminating the mold surface and re-machining it to a finished dimension. Nonetheless I must admit, I’d love to try this ;-)

Last but not least was the Dopplebot by Paul Paenian. It is a large format printer using all Openbuilds linear motion components. This thing was a beast of a “desktop” printer with a build volume of 300x600x300(mm) or 12” x 24” x 12”. It was super smooth and quite innovative. The thing I liked best was that Paul used three triangulated leadscrews to move Z. This will allow him to write code that will run “true” bed leveling, not the current bed compensation like most other printers. It will literally adjust the level of the bed and run the print head straight back and forth in X. This eliminates the constant movement in Z that the current bed compensation requires. It should allow the Z steppers to stop while printing each layer allowing for much cooler run temperatures. Brilliant!!!

One final note, I loved all the Makers that setup to cater to the younger crowds. Not unlike MF Bay Area they are changing the way kids think about stuff, less TV and more innovation…great job guys!!!

Stay tuned for my report on the World Maker Faire in NYC, it’s simply too close to miss ;-)

Regards,

Sonny

Sonny is an OpenBuilds Resident Builder and lives with his wife and “bat dogs” in beautiful Williamsburg Virginia. He has been building for as long as he can remember and especially likes to play around with his 3D Printers, Laser Cutter and CNC machines. When Sonny is not working on his next OpenBuilds machine, he keeps busy as a researcher in the Aerospace Industry as he has been doing for over 25 years now.