[School Project] Print with Beeswax

Hi guys,

We are a group of 3 french students from the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint Etienne, and as part of a school project, our purpose is to adapt one of the two 3d printers we got at school to make it print with beeswax.

The advantages of printing with beeswax are various: it would permit to create prototype molds for metal forging for example. Moreover the kind of plastics used for printing are pretty bad for the environment, whereas beeswax is way cleaner as it is a natural material.


We got a few months (until june) to make the project advance as much as we can, that's why we'd like to introduce it on this forum to show you our improvements and eventually ask you questions.


So let's explain a little bit what we already have, and what we are about to do:
The two 3D printers of the school are a MakerBot Replicator 2X:
Attachment 936

And a Reprap Mendel, made by the school staff, which has a problem of head movement, that we are currently trying to fix:
Attachment 937
(our personal pics will come shortly)



We will try to create a total new head, for this our tools are basically :
-The Makerbot printer itself
-All the processing machines of the school lab (CNC,...)

An important part of the goal would be to make this new head manufacturable by everyone who already has a 3dprinter. That is to say, we should not use processing machines, at least for the final version.

The first thing we are doing is to find the good temperature to get the beeswax fluid enough to be printable. For this, we must found how to calculate the viscosity of the melted beeswax at different temperatures. We will use the viscometer the past group of students made and see if it works.

After that, it will be possible to start thinking and designing a new head.


More pictures will come shortly, and we'll update the topic regularly!:D

I've worked with beeswax, but never tried to use it for 3D printing. However, I doubt it will work very well in that application. The problem is that it has a rather abrupt phase transition between its molten and solid states. So it will either be too runny, in which case the layers won't sit up on the other layers but tend to run off, or it will be too stiff and crystalline, so there will be deep fissures between succeeding layers and they won't adhere well. There are other waxes marketed to the jewelry industry, some of which come in filament form, that might be more suitable, although the wax printers I've seen are fairly complex machines with heated lines, expensive jets, and a planer cycle that's used to flatten each layer previous to laying on the next one.

I'd suggest you do some simple tests with heated syringes full of wax, and see if you can get it to behave as desired at any temperature. If that works, see if you can find a paste-extruder head that accepts heat well. Inventing your own might be an interesting project, but it could well take more time than you've allotted for this whole machine. The trouble with trying to print one is that the temperature range of the wax is pretty close to the melting point of the thermoplastics used in the printer. Instead, think in terms of a metal syringe/extruder device that could be precisely heated at the barrel.

Andrew Werby
www.computersculpture.com

Very interesting project. May I ask you what level of schooling are you in? High School? College?

Can't wait to see your results.