Initiation of an open mold sdm project

Hey, I am moving towards the development of an open source Mold Shape deposition manufacturing system.

The bottom line is that it looks like a good, relatively easy way to reach a system that is dramatically better than any other three d printer that anyone else seems seems to be working on. In terms of the quality of the output it can produce.

To produce objects of almost any shape you can draw on the computer, to a degree of accuracy (deviation from the computer model) which is higher than or close to typical conventional milling, with smooth surfaces, with low consumables cost, low system capital, low retooling cost, which can make a large fraction of it's own parts, of fully dense high strength materials including metals perhaps steels.

This is not something I see coming from any other approach, at least not combined with the relative ease of development of sdm.

I am scheduled to get access to a house in Windsor that will be a suitable workplace.

The most critical thing to do is to develop a good set of materials with deposition and removal processes. At least one set of three materials, one as the build material, one as the support material, one as the final material which will fill the mold that was produced. They need to be millable sufficiently strong etc, and mitually compatible in the various ways during deposition and removal, e.g. they can be deposited on top of each other without remelting or whatever. Plus the deposition process has to leave low residual stress..

We will have to buy a ball screws based a desktop router with tool changer, and go through the process of developing the robot and material . Order a bunch of materials and tools to work with.

The software is one of the major challenges. The process from stl file through sli c ing/process planning to gcode. The higher level pseudo code I can see the way forwards on, but not beyond that. It doesn't require fundamental technological research, but is by no means easy. We need to make sure it is well documented and modular and with relatively transparent operation (so for troubleshooting and changing things in the field), from pseudo code through algorithms to the code commenting so we don't encounter a lot of the issues with the earlier reprap software, which was too opaque re diagnostics etc. You gotta be able to see in there, unless the developers want to be three times as thorough, so it just works, but we can't afford to be that thorough and this stage. Transparency, modularity, editable is the order of the day, I think, then. Open, indeed, extra open.

Too support this and get funding, make some videos and a crowdfunding campaign, and of course bring in more collaborators. Soon, ideally, get a better workplace.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/26/2017 12:15PM by Adouglas89.

... maybe something like this? - [forums.reprap.org]

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]