July 2022
This month is steering focus month, amongst a gazillion of other foci, as is always the case when you are retired.
The good news is, I am making progress.
For Christmass I bought a 3D printer, a Prusa mk3S+ in fact. I know there are cheaper options but
I needed something that would work straight out of the box. I don't want to develop a 3D printer.
That is someone elses job, IMO, and Prusa do this very well.
This gimballed design will take out any vertical alignment issues. Laterally, well, I will just have to get it right.
I have to say, using Fusion360 to design models for 3D printing is amazing. Ok, it's a whole new way of thinking and you
really have to plan ahead, but it is well worth the effort.
There are plenty of excellent tutorials on YouTube but I found this book particularly
useful.
There is a lot of work to do before you can just FDM print stuff. You need an enclosure and an air scrubber to keep nanoparticles and smells at bay.
Here is the classic IKEA LACK table enclosure made from two LACK tables and a bunch of printed parts.
I have designed quite a few additional components to the basic IKEA LACK table enclosure system and they can be found here on Printables.com
The air scrubber is microprocessor controlled to give it three speeds, but you could just run it flat out by grounding the blue wire.