With a compressor. No stepper at all. Just 2 electric valves.
Works very fine on the Thing-o-Matic with the plastruder MK2 head.
Okay, but needs an additional compressor. More noise and more devices. Could work with this little noisy 12volt car compressors. Can recommend valves?
I recommend airbrush compressors instead.
I’ve been considering doing this, I’d like to see it done with an Arduino InkShield. It could even be done with UV curing resins. The only thing I don’t know is how large the molecules of available resin are compared to regular inks, I don’t know how well the resin will fit through those Micro-Nozzles on the HP cart that the InkShield project uses. It they fit and the resin can be kept clean then we could have an open-source multi-material machine similar to an Objet. I’d be willing to bet those patents aren’t up any time soon though.
Give me a year or so and I may have something developed. The mUVe 1 is my first priority.
I was thinking of extruding the (viscous) resin like a paste (or even using a vat) and inkjet printing the polymerizing catalyst (which is a much lower volume, and is presumably much more liquid).
The reason for using non-UV resins is cost of material, and possibly properties of the cured resin.
That’s a pretty darn good idea. I wonder if a small medical syringe could be used…? We have a company in town that sells machines that have precise ability to dispense fluids. I wonder if there is any technology there that could be adapted. Lots of food for thought at the very least. It makes me think of those folks that just printed the droplets of non-mixing chemicals and then had a sphere self assemble. If a vat were filled with a non-viscous and potentially clear fluid and then the catalyst extruded through a syringe it may cure on the spot allowing paste like extrusion capability. Partner that with a really small nozzle/syringe and you could really be on to something.