[vacpress]

Heres the first 4 hours of a potential design:





The friction belt is driven directly by the stepper which has 10x microstepping driver

the airbrush is $10.00 from harborfreight!

[vacpress]

[vacpress]

any solidworks users want the files? i would love if someone would do some mods.

this is the last digital image. i have all these parts allready, thats what inspired the particular design choices. i will take apicture of them and make a parts list.

[owhite]

incredible drawings. solidworks?

[vacpress]

yep. solidworks. started at 2:30am, this far along at 6:30am

[owhite]

get some rest. you look tired.

[Bloy2004]

yes! Incredible! ...have been following this and related threads....

[vacpress]

if anyone ever needs a very fast CAD\3D Designer....


anyone with experience using friction belts got any sugestions for the design of the "tensioners"? i just have 2 nylon bushing holding the belt against the pulley now.. i think they may need to go closer together? should i put one on a spring-loaded cam?

One thing I like is that if i update these photos, they update here also, so i can just change these to new ones when i do another few hours modeling. gonna put in all the bolt holes, and bolts and screws, "limit switch" whiskers, "optical" home sensor & tags. etc. i am also going to design a pneumatic manifold and a 3 color printhead.

Any good ideas?

[Bloy2004]

..just a thought...
you could incorporate a toothed pulley on the motor and use a matching open-ended toothed belt to make a more positive drive.
the nylon bushings could be on bearings to "roll" with the belt.

[vacpress]

the belt is a belt with a bunch of tiny teeth, and so is the pulley. its from an old dotmatrix printer.

heres all my parts i have. all i need is to cut the acrylic, assemble the thing, and get 2 more xylotex drivers.

the small stepper has gears and will push the lever on the airbrush via the bike brake cable.

the tablet PC can run turboCNC, or other control software. the LCD will be used to configure the PIC microchip for the multicolor printhead when i do that.



parts list, cost, and sources list forthcomming, as well as construction pictures.

i have been waiting to have a project that i allready have all the parts for. finally! i am still collecting parts for a big "production" machine.

[turmite]

Hey vacpress I was just wondering if you need a home? I have always wanted a son:banana: !! Now of course you would need to bring all your drawing tools with you cause I think I see some potential in you but it just needs to be developed....uh on my projects!

Great drawings btw. I am curious as to what the use for this machine would be? Sign painting or ????

Mike

[vacpress]

the use of this machine is to massively waste the time of its creator!

what else?

its also the first step towards a www.pixation.com type product. i am thinking about using oil pant with little hoops running into it, and air jets blowing it off. the fun part is going to be programming the color-mixng algorithms.

my drawing tools are nuthin-just pens, markers, and computers.

its my machine tools you want.. check my user gallery.

[vacpress]

Here is a partial parts list and sources file.


http://www.vacuumstudios.com/partslist.rtf

[balsaman]

I would move the Paint gun motor up, and use larger idler wheels with a bearing (or even just use two roller skate bearings side by side) where the nylon bushings are.

This thing will just paint a line acording to a gcode at this point. One color, correct? (as drawn at least).

Eric

[vacpress]

move the motor up? further from the plane the belt is mounted to? i have the belt on .25" pads on top of a extrusion it rests on. the .5" nylon "bushings" are actually bearings on SS rod. is there an advantage to be had by going to rollerblade bearings? slightly less drag?

yes. as drawn, the thing only paints a line. it can also control the thickness by varying the actuation of the trigger. if i switch to a different style of paint delivery, perhaps like www.pixation.com with a driven wire or a plastic hoop, or something, then i will have much finer control.

one thing i am invisioning that isnt a pixation rip, is just putting 4 of those cheapo paint guns in a star pattern with their nozzles all pointed at the same place. fueled with CMYK process color semi-opaque paints, this may allow for a decent color pallette..

I have just started reading about opensource RIP drivers, perhaps there will be an off-the-shelf solution. If not, it can just run G codes. I bet i could figure out a way to do 4-color through g code and DXF import into mach2... No idea for sure though..

[buscht]

Vacpress,

Thanks for posting on this forum. Your ideas are always refreshing.

A couple of thoughts, maybe dumb but that's never stopped me before.

1. More your airbrush out from under the gantry. It will be hard to add more paint to the hopper with it tucked under the drive mechanism. Alternately, you'll need a quick disconnect for air brush removal for cleaning and such.

2. For your friction drive, I wonder if you could just mount the belt flat on the bar and have the stepper motor spring loaded so there is a small amount of tension against the drive roller.

3. Instead of the airbrush, you could mount a swivel knife and this device could do double duty as a large scale vinyl cutter.


Good luck.

Trent

[publitime]

congratulation with the solidworks drawings.
How far you are with the electronics?
Whene you want you can make colorpictures to with the one spraygun.
You can first paint the first color.
Thene clean the spraygun and paint the second color .
You can do this as much colors you have.
Finaly you have paint the black color to make contours to all the other colors.
This is the same principe like painting with the airbruch by hand.
There you can also make color paints by working color after color.
Whene my milling cnc is finished completly i will start with a project like this.
I just have to make a vacuumtabel to my milling tabel.

[vacpress]

buscht-i like the swivel knife idea... it changes some stuff about the carriage. would have to add 4 bearings to hold the thing down.. no biggie..

publitime- thats to much hassle. it would be better to have 4 nozzles. and the electronics as described are Off the shelf. you could build controller boards, but when there are xylotex, why?

so far it is designed just to use 1 color and act like a plotter. to make it full color would require only like $40 more cost... its making a RIP driver that is a challenge then.

[teilhardo]

Im going to say it again Vac, nice job!! You have so much to contribute and your open-source philosophy is very heart warming. We need people like you to run the big corporations out there whose guiding principle is self-interest and profit. How fast do you hope to have it going with the steppers?
How are you going to change the colors for such complex pictures as on pixation?
-Tei

[publitime]

vac

did you have build the controllerboard yet?
Whit 4 colors it's not that simple to get a fullcolorpicture.
Whene you see a photo you have split in photoshop to cmyk the you can see that
you will have places who are dark colored and other places who are colored light.
So the spryguns have to be controlled permanently and with a very fast speed.