Has anyone tried (or seen anyone try) to "circularly-spin" a printing table beneath a

Has anyone tried (or seen anyone try) to “circularly-spin” a printing table beneath a fixed single-axis extruder? Seems like it would be a less complicated process. Granted, I’m a complete novice, and don’t even own a printer yet.

Sounds interesting, I’d love to see an animation/simulation of how it might work…

Me too! I’ve never really even tried my hand at animation; my skill-set is limited to Rhino3D modeling…

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wjsteele/ultra-bot-3d-printer/posts/362119

You mean something like the PiMaker (has two axis extruder)? http://www.3ders.org/articles/20121206-innovative-pimaker-has-a-build-area-larger-than-makerbot-replicator-2.html

Something like pottery? Hmm interesting ! If i got your question correctly I would imagine that you need to redesign the way the hardware is arranged …and essentially design with cylindrical coordinate system in mind instead of the cartesian coordinate system …

I’m no expert but I would guess that something like that could have accuracy issues at any decent speeds, centrifugal force and all that.

YES! That’s it, EXACTLY! Thanks for the link!

There would be no more issues than there are with cartesian bots due to inertia of the moving masses. Centrifugal force is exactly that - inertia, but applied to rotational motion (i.e. inertial reference frame vs. rotational reference frame).

@Ante_Vukorepa I see your point, I think I was thinking about it only in a one direction setup vs. a two direction, back and forth setup, the way cartesian bots do.

Beautiful !!!

@Rene_K_Mueller the PiMaker looks very cool, too bad it’s not open…

Wow. At first I really thought the PiMaker was awesome and was going to start talking it up, but then I read-up on the back-story and it’s a bit disturbing.

So the Kickstarter project began as a clone of the open-source Makerbot cupcake. Once funded, the creator developed the PiMaker, but turned around and patented the device to protect his intellectual property.

So it was OK for him to build (and sell) his project on the backs of others, but it’s not OK if someone were to do the same with his work?

it worked for Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerburg

A radial bot will have speed, resolution and step-rate issues because of the massive difference in effective steps/mm when printing near the center of the platform vs near the edge. Theoretically this could be solved by using continuously variable transmissions on both axes, but that would make it impossible to maintain proper positioning accuracy.

That’s where the firmware handling the CLV comes into play. It’s no different than the really old CD ROM drives that stepped the motor so the laser always read the data track at the same rate per mm of track.

  1. The electronics don’t support that, and I didn’t see any mention of custom electronics.
  2. CD rom drives never have to touch the center of rotation, where the variables approach 0/infinity.

@Jason_Gullickson I’m one of the PiMaker backers on Kickstarter and Bill Steele (PiMaker creator) posted a follow up confirming the PiMaker will be open sourced. It’s not live yet (as far as I know), but it sounds like it will be open sourced in the end. In this post, he clarifies that the patents were around the way the printer is manufactured and not the actual printer design/functionality itself. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wjsteele/ultra-bot-3d-printer/posts/363889

@Adam_Byram I’m glad to hear that Mr Steele is one of “us;” patent protection has been perverted into a corporate-monopoly-making game that only the ultra-rich can play & win. “Open-Source” is the only weapon we have to defend ourselves from the self-appointed ruling class.

Thanks for the inside scoop @Adam_Byram , I’ll check out that link and I look forward to seeing the project opened up :slight_smile: