StrongPrint - A 3D Printer that prints in metal

[Kolergy]

Hi, thanks for your interest

concerning the Creative commons, Weak might not be the most appropriate term I should have used , it couls be beter worded as limited, the CC licence protect a "work" which is defined among other things as a literary work ore a shape that could be 3D. but it dose not protect a function. on the other side patents protect functions. One possible is to make the effort to describe the functions performed by the designs that are puts under the CC. Up to now most of the people where just dumping the design on thingiverse without much explaination because the functions where self evident. But this approach appears not to be protecting enough.

Concerning cooling, you are nearely right I plan to use a pyrometer on the head at terms, it is infact it is what I have experimented manually.

Concerning tolerences: 0.1mm is clearely out of the league, I consider 1 mm as a good target at the begining the result should be considered as near net shape with the functional faces needing some machining to be functional, for the print I have done up to now the metal sheet has been bending a lot with the heat. A friend from the fab lab has recently made for the printer a 1 cm thick steel baseplate on which the metal sheet can be bolted which I hope will limit the deformations by spreading the heat & by holding tightly the metal sheed.

Concerning the plastic part Feign you are probably right, infact at the start I was fearing that the ones just above the torch would melt but up to now it is doing well, as you said with time the UV will damage the plastic although ABS is decently resistant to UV.