Make a DIY Waterjet Cutter From a Cheap Pressure Cleaner

In my youth, I used to work at a local car wash place. If you traveled trough Balkans you probably saw many of them, and they all use handheld pressure washers. When I saw this video it reminded me of that time and I thought you guys would enjoy and find something useful in this project.

Ben Krasnow used a very cheap pressure washer and attached a DIY abrasive sand container combined with AccuStream professional cutter head to make a low-cost DIY waterjet cutter.
It can cut thin aluminum, wood, and plastics. it looks like the cuts are very precise and controllable. In water only mode it cuts trough soft materials like foam.


Here is the full video with all the details.





Next step would probably be to mount this cutter on a CNC gantry and turn it into a fully computer controlled machine.
Since there are much more powerful pressure washers, like the Karchers I used, this could be made into a more capable device.
With right settings, it could potentially cut plastic 3d printed parts or use it as a sand blasting device for surface finishing.

Applied Science YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCivA7_KLKWo43tFcCkFvydw

Ben's blog:

http://benkrasnow.blogspot.com/

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How to make translucent 3d printed parts transparent?

Do you know the difference between translucent and transparent? I didn't, but I got it after watching this video.
This free webinar will teach you how to get 3d objects optically clean by polishing, buffing, photobleaching, sanding, clear coating and applying other techniques. It is focused on Stratasys VeroClear material but it can be applied on other surfaces to get better finish.




Webinar is presented by Tyler Reid of GoEngineer.

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How to Make a Concrete 3D Printer

Muhleman developed a concrete powder bed 3d printer that uses hacked Shapeoko CNC router mechanism.

It uses sand and cement mixture and a liquid soil hardener called polypavement as binding agent. Powder bed is loaded manually :-) but a mechanism could be developed in the futre.
Printed objects are rough but the concept is interesting for artistic purposes and concrete furniture where you can get more complex organic forms.

Full construction guide with plans and operational instructions can be found at:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Concrete-3D-Printer/?ALLSTEPS


Here is a video of it in action:

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Sand blasting 3d printed objects for matte surface finish

Andreas Bastian made this guide for sand blasting 3d printed PLA objects to give matte surface finish with reduced visible layering and shiny parts.
His conclusions were:

• Even blasting helps the final surface quality.
• Additional shells (3 or 4) help keep the print sealed during washing.
• After blasting, the matte surface is prone to absorbing skin oils and other particles, much the way an SLS print does.
• The blasting grit will alter the color of lighter PLAs, the white took on more of a bone hue and the natural clear developed a somewhat murky color. The black PLA blasted to a very nice matte grey.

White PLA object inside sand blaster

Close-up of sand blasted black PLA object

Non-sand blasted compared to sand-blasted PLA

Source with more details and results photos:

http://www.instructables.com/id/3D-Print-Finishing-Technique-for-Improved-Surface-/?ALLSTEPS


Andreas is also well known for his work on e-Nable and Open SLS 3d printer.


If you are more interested in surface finish and smoothing of 3d printed objects with acetone look at:

http://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2013/06/smoothing-and-polishing-pla-with-thf.html

http://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2013/03/more-on-acetone-vapor-smoothing.html

http://diy3dprinting.blogspot.com/2013/03/smoothing-models-with-acetone-vapor-bath.html

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3d printing with sand and glue

From video description:

IAAC RS3: Digital Tectonics with IAAC MAA Co-Director Marta Male Alemany, Victor Vina and Brian Peters

Students: Miguel Guerrero Pinar, Anastasia Pistofidou, Chryssa Karakana, Carolina Miro

This video shows the fabrication process of solidifying sand piles and our experiments to define the rules of the binder deposition, in this case it is white glue. By attaching a customized board with two nozzles, one for sand and the other for glue deposition on the shopbot, we made our first primitive model of Fabbot. the idea is to use a material found on site, cheap and plentiful, take advantage of its physical rules and character, to generate easily fabricated structures with a wide range in scale. the generation of the structure is indicated both by the site specificity and the digital manipulation of the form through programming. The coordinates are taken from processing and translated into the g-code of the shopbot. There is a direct connection with grasshopper, using Ghowl plug-in to design the structures in Rhino.

More on the project website:

http://www.iaacblog.com/blog/2011/maa-projects-areana/


Source: http://retooling.tumblr.com/

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