Drill motor conversion kits - guaging interest

[Giles]

It's great stuff! Keep it sealed up though, water content in the air wrecks it (found out the hard way).

I recently started using Nylforce from Fiber Force. Its around a 1:5 mix of carbon fibers and nylon. Most other carbon filaments I've tried are terrible gimmicks, but mixed with nylon its actually pretty good. I found T910A to be quite flexible while nylforce seems to be extremely rigid and still exceptionally strong and light.
You should check it out!
http://www.fiberforce.it/nylforce-carbon-fiber/

*edit, 1 part carbon 5 parts nylon, not the reverse!

[typhoon_driver]

I store mine in a heated vacuum tank. The vacuum drops the boiling point of the water and the gentle heat then causes it to evaporate and condense on the cool lid. I then wipe off the moisture. Rinse and repeat to remove all moisture from the filament. Storing in the sealed vacuum then stops any more moisture getting in.

Printing also means keeping it dry so I have a sealed set up so the only time the filament sees the atmosphere is when it exits the extruder.

I'll take a look at the other filaments, cheers!

[Giles]

Snazzy setup! And here's me with my tupperware and packs of silica gel!

[typhoon_driver]

Haha, it's on the higher end of filament storage for sure

[Eventorizon]

Alex, Nylon is far superior to ABS when it comes to loading however it's an absolute pain to print with. Requires much slower print speeds, higher temperatures and a bunch of other precautions. The inter layer bonding when printed properly is much much better hence why I'll be interested to see how these handle in the arena.

Ah, ok. I've only ever printed in ABS. Tried PLA several times but it always seems to get gunked up in the printer head.

[typhoon_driver]

What filament supplier, hot end, temperature and retraction were you using?

[Eventorizon]

The PLA was the stuff that came with the printer some 3 years ago. It was vaccum sealed. As for settings, the makerbot Defaults. The ABS defaults work a treat so I figured they would be fine too. After it kept happening I checked online to see what others used an none seemed to have any problems with the same settings. Its not that important to us right now. The ABS works and its cheap so we will be sticking to that. But if we need it fixing I know who to ask :-)

[typhoon_driver]

Fair enough. I've used some filament that is utter junk before. Interestingly price is rarely a differing factor. Some of the best I've used being hatchbox but it's only available periodically on amazon uk. Filaprints own premium stuff is good.

It's funny that your go to is ABS. I hate the stuff but then I'm generally printing very large pieces where warping is a real issue and ABS tends to delaminate after a while although I may have just had a batch of poor ABS! PLA is my standard go to material.

[typhoon_driver]

Time for a quick update. I've been quiet on this thread for the past few weeks as I was working away from home. I'm now back and whilst I was away, a batch of bearings, bolts, nuts etc have all arrived so I'm hoping to have a few beta test version kits together for people to test and give me feedback on.

[typhoon_driver]

Did some testing this morning and was very happy with the results with some room for improvement (I'll upload pics in a bit).

I bolted the assembly to an piece of 10mm ali. As a very quick and nasty bit of static loading I put PP3Ds 31kg disc on the end of the shaft. After a half hour the mounts were still dimensionally fine and holding onto the weight without issue.

To test dynamic shocking i made a quick and nasty wheel with a nut heated and sunk into a wheel. I then took my sledgehammer and gave it a knock from above my head. The wheel came off instantly leaving the nut which was hardly surprising. The mount however was perfectly in place. Knocks from all directions were absorbed nicely by the material until a sideways knock bend the shaft in the housing. So it looks like I'll need to add a second bearing mount to the front piece similar to what ewan had to do with the gimsons. Not the end of the world.

What i was very encouraged to see was that the nylon really seemed to absorbed the shock. The motor did move during the impact but it returned to it's original position.

I realise this is all less than scientific but it gives me confidence in the material.