3D Printing for Discontinued SMT "A" Slide?

[leehljp]

ON the thread below, I suddenly got the idea of using a 3D printer for making the hard to get/discontinued "A" Slide for the BT3 SMT table.

Anyone here good with drawing up and then printing 3D "A" slides?
Is it possible?
Would it be cost prohibitive?
How much would it cost to make it worthwhile (time and material) to make a run of 25 - 50 - 100, and then mail them to buyers?


http://www.sawdustzone.org/showthrea...908#post541908

Thanks

Hank

[tfischer]

Sorry for the dumb response but what's an "A slide"?

[ballard770]

There is no such thing as a dumb question - it may have been ignorant because you had not had experience with the BT3000 Sliding Miter
table (SMT). There is nothing wrong with ignorance of a specific situation as we can't know everything about everything. The SMT has four positions between the SMT base and the SMT top that each have slide (A) and Slide (B) whereby the sliding top part moves toward the saw blade. Of each pair there is a slide A and a Slide B that are small plastic parts that hold the sliding top to the fixed top base.

When the slide breaks or gets lost it is difficult to impossible to maintain coordination between the SMT and the blade.

If you have a BT3000 manual there is a page or two with an exploded parts diagram and list that shows the interface of Slide (A) and Slide (B) with the SMT Base and SMt top.

Lee

If you don't have the saw manual it is available online, just search for Ryobi BT3000 (or BT3100) manual and the SMT is toward the end of the manual.

[woodturner]

ON the thread below, I suddenly got the idea of using a 3D printer for making the hard to get/discontinued "A" Slide for the BT3 SMT table.

Aren't the original slides Delrin? 3D printed parts are usually fairly brittle, I'm not sure it would work well in this application.

Pretty simple to cast in Delrin, though, but you would have to machine a mold.

[tfischer]

There is no such thing as a dumb question - it may have been ignorant because you had not had experience with the BT3000 Sliding Miter table (SMT).

Thanks for the detailed explanation. I have plenty of experience with the SMT, but just have never needed to take it apart and didn't know what the parts were called.

[leehljp]

Woodturner,
I am not up to snuff on the 3D printing for sure, but if 3D printed guns are a current possibility and other precision parts are also, I'm not comprehending the problem. It may be brittle as you say, but if it is strong enough to make gun chambers, it should stand up as a slide part on the SMT.

[atgcpaul]

Woodturner,
I am not up to snuff on the 3D printing for sure, but if 3D printed guns are a current possibility and other precision parts are also, I'm not comprehending the problem. It may be brittle as you say, but if it is strong enough to make gun chambers, it should stand up as a slide part on the SMT.

Hank, there are many levels of 3D printers and they can print using different mediums. Some are much more dense and strong than others. I would not want to shoot a 3D printed gun made on a consumer grade 3D printer. Although you can purposely print your parts with no voids, the less expensive media can be brittle, can delaminate, and isn't necessarily airtight--not what I would want between me and a bunch of exploding gas.

For your application 3D printed parts aren't necessarily very smooth either unless you move to higher end 3D printers. Finally, on the less expensive printers which use either PLA or ABS, those plastics have a tendency to shrink and warp during the printing process so it's not easy get the exact part you expected.

Delrin is ideal for your application because it is hard, stable, and slick.

[woodturner]

Hank, there are many levels of 3D printers and they can print using different mediums....

Thanks for the "connecting the dots", my reply was a little cryptic and brief.

There are commercial online services where one can access industrial 3D printers, but I'm not aware of any that will print Delrin or PTFE or something like that.

Casting is likely a better option. Epoxy casting is easy to do and would probably work fine, maybe use a filled epoxy such as JBweld. Take an existing piece, coat it with silicone rubber to make a mold, pour epoxy into the mold, wait for it to cure, remove the part. Pretty simple to do at home.

[cwsmith]

Replies are a bit disappointing. I didn't realize that there was any shrink occurring after the printing process. I've seen a few video demos, and the resolution of some of the newer 3D printers appears to be fairly fine. Unfortunately, there is no where in our area that even has a 3D printer for demo.

I would think ABS plastic would be a pretty decent material as it's quite strong (same stuff Lego brick are made of). Even if it required a little touch-up with a file or sander, it would still be a lot cheaper than buying the part with shipping included in the price. I would think these small plastic parts would lend themselves well to 3D printing manufacture.

Obviously I don't have any experience here, but my curiosity is there. Hank's suggestion has peaked that a bit and I think it is worth exploring, especially as parts are getting harder to find with many tools, appliances, etc. My grandson knows a bit more about 3D printing, having one in his high school... I'll have to ask him what they have and if he can fill me in on some details.

Regarding the drawing of the part(s)... Can a SketchUp drawing be a proper driver, either directly or through conversion? I'm not familiar with the software requirements. I would hope that it's not proprietary to the specific machine. If SketchUp would work, I'd be happy to pop the slide's off my SMT and make the drawing(s).

CWS

[JoeyGee]

CWS, if you make a drawing in Sketchup, I can print one to at least see if it comes out. I'm intrigued, also.

[cwsmith]

Joey,

Okay, let me take a look at it tomorrow and I'll draw it up this weekend, I think I have time.

Now the question, which one is it? I'll have to read back through the posts

CWS

[atgcpaul]

CWS, if you make a drawing in Sketchup, I can print one to at least see if it comes out. I'm intrigued, also.

There's a free plugin for Sketchup that lets you export STL files. You then load this into the 3D printer software and the software "slices" your model into layers that it prints. It sounds simple but if your Sketchup model isn't "solid", this will yield some interesting prints. There's another plugin that examines your Sketchup model for any gaps or voids before you export. The serious designers at work all use SolidWorks, though.

Even simple prints can be extremely slow so most printer software automatically creates voids in the print which aren't seen in the final piece but make the print go faster and ends up using less material. Most times the part is strong enough for what we want to do even with the voids. You can see all the honeycombs in this print which are the voids.




At work we have 2 Makerbots (black), 2 Ultimakers (white), and one Pegasus laser resin (not shown) printers . I haven't used the Ultimakers much but the resolution is finer than the Makerbots. The MB on the left prints ABS and PLA and has a heated bet. The MB on the right only prints in PLA. I don't know what medium the Ultimakers use. I've never used the Pegasus but nobody uses it now that the person who brought in all these printers has left. Even he didn't use that one that much.



I'd say my printing success rate has been about 50% which I think is disappointing. I'm just a user. I'm not in charge of keeping them tuned up. Sometimes the corners of the print will curl even with the heated bed and that could be OK for the final part but usually this spells disaster for the print because the part can come unstuck from the bed. When you come back in the morning, you get a birds nest of filament. Sometimes the head can clog half way through a print. You come back and the printer is printing nothing in thin air. However, when it does work, it's joyous.

There's a printer on the main campus that uses a TriMech Fortus. I think it cost more than my house. The print I got from that was great. The part felt nice and dense and you can barely feel the layers. I thought that was the bee's knees until someone brought in a part they had printed by a Navy lab. I thought the part had been injection molded because the features were so fine and the plastic they used was clear.

I spoke with our machinist on the way out of work. He's not familiar with casting delrin. It's usually injection molded but most commonly he mills out the part from a chunk or sheet of it.

[woodturner]

Even simple prints can be extremely slow so most printer software automatically creates voids in the print which aren't seen in the final piece but make the print go faster and ends up using less material. Most times the part is strong enough for what we want to do even with the voids. You can see all the honeycombs in this print which are the voids.




At work we have 2 Makerbots (black), 2 Ultimakers (white), and one Pegasus laser resin (not shown) printers . I haven't used the Ultimakers much but the resolution is finer than the Makerbots. The MB on the left prints ABS

I'm not seeing the pictures, I'm seeing a circle with a bar. Not sure if it is the site, my end, or what. Are others seeing the pictures?

[atgcpaul]

I'm not seeing the pictures, I'm seeing a circle with a bar. Not sure if it is the site, my end, or what. Are others seeing the pictures?

Should be fixed now. I didn't move the pics into the correct picasaweb folder before linking them.

[JoeyGee]

I don't even know which part we're talking about. I'll print it once I get the drawing.

I agree, printing is slow and probably not good for production runs, but if a suitable material is found for parts like these, this is a great application for 3d printers--one off replacement parts that are becoming hard to find.

I recently had an idea for a segmented pen blank, but couldn't figure out how to clamp it. I designed a jig in Sketchup and printed it. Worked great.