Website for the Health Ranger's open source 3D print project to be announced this Friday

Tuesday, December 16, 2014
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Tags: Health Ranger, 3D printing, open source project

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(NaturalNews) This Friday I'll be announcing the new website and a 3-minute teaser video for the upcoming open-source, non-profit 3D-printable project I'm launching in early 2015.

The video will describe more details about what this project achieves, and the website will feature an email signup for people who wish to receive announcements as the project goes public.

The feature photo for this article (shown at the top) is an actual photo of one of the key parts of one of the inventions I'll be releasing in 2015. This part is an important functional element in a multi-part system. There are many more parts to come, and even this part will look quite a bit different upon its final release.

Nailing down the printer specs

If you're looking to acquire a 3D printer in anticipation of what we'll be announcing, here are some specs you'll want to keep in mind:

• The biggest print area you'll need is 6 inches cubed. We are designing everything to be 6 inches in height or smaller.

• I strongly recommend a heated bed. It's not yet clear whether these parts will be printable without using a heated bed. Most 3D printers come with heated beds.

• Make sure the printer you choose can handle PET-based filament. After a considerable amount of testing, it seems increasingly likely that my final designs will be fine-tuned for PET-based materials, which might include PET+, PETT, PETG and Kodak's new Amphora filament (see below).

• Aim for layer precision of 0.2mm. All the models I'm designing are successfully printed at this resolution. Some printers are capable of 0.1mm, but this does not seem to be necessary (and it takes longer!).

• I prefer 3mm filament, but many printers currently support 1.75mm filament. The objects I'll be sharing can be printed with either one, but 3mm seems like a more economical choice, and it's what the Lulzbot TAZ printer uses (the TAZ is the printer I'm printing all the prototypes with).

• Make sure you get a printer supported by the Simplify 3D software, which is the printer controller software I strongly recommend. This software makes printing a breeze compared to the open source software I've tried so far.

Filament experiments and choices

I have eliminated PLA, ABS and Nylon as filament materials for these projects.

PLA is too fragile.

ABS has way too much shrinkage and screws up all the boundaries of parts fitting together.

Nylon also has a serious shrinkage problem, sort of like George from Seinfeld in the cold water episode.

The filament I'm finding to be the best solution is PET-based filament. So far, I've printed with MadeSolid's PET+ filament, and I've also got some T-Glase filament and the new XT-copolyester fiber from ColorFabb, made from "Amphora" resins created by Eastman Kodak. (Click here for the news release. These are all candidate filaments currently being tested.

So far, the PET-based filaments are clearly the superior choice. They experience far less shrinkage than ABS, yet they're strong enough to achieve the functionality I'm looking for. They also don't absorb humidity the way Nylon does (which is a good thing).

How to 3D print with PET-based filaments

If you already have a 3D printer, I strongly encourage you to get good at printing with PET-based filaments. My own formula for making this work is two-fold:

1) Print SLOW. You can't run these prints at 4800mm/min. You'll need to slow way down. I'm currently printing at 1250mm/min and slowly trying to work the speed higher to see what it will tolerate. The first layer needs to be especially slow, with NO COOLING.

2) Print HOT. You'll want your extruder running at 245 C if possible, depending on the filament. The Lulzbot tops out at 238, but that seems to also work fine. Bed temps are less crucial and can usually range anywhere from 50 - 80 C.

3) Print a skirt and use Tweezers to grab the filament that tends to clog up the extruder nozzle during the first minute or so. Printing a skirt gives you time to watch the extruder and clear off any gunk that tends to accumulate at first. Once it starts to go smoothly, you can usually leave it alone and the rest of the print will go like clockwork. I use a pair of TweezerMan tweezers to nab the ooze.

More details to be released this Friday

I'll be releasing a 3-minute teaser video and a new website this Friday, so stay tuned for that news.

In the mean time, prototyping and field testing is well underway, and I've got 3D printed parts already assembled, deployed and working extremely well. In fact, this entire project is moving along quite smoothly, which means I should be able to make the target launch date of early February.