Recently, Jim has purchased a Makerbot 2x printer for our group. I’ve spent the last few weeks printing and debugging. It has the capability to print many different types of material, along with 2 separate nozzles. I have been able to get many fine prints done with ABS plastic, and I’ve put together a basic guide that will allow people to run the machine (n = Tejas), printing out previously designed builds. I am currently working on other parts of the guide that will describe how to design and slice up models for printing, how to finish parts, and how to weld printed pieces together.
Our Shiny new machine,…missing its lid. I’m told that it is on the way by Top Men. Top Men.
The neatly trimmed ABS plastic, ready for insertion into the extruder. It’s not transparent, unlike PLA.
Replicator 2x has 2 extruders! We can print in multiple colors/materials. Dissolvable scaffolds, 2 tone prints are both possible!
Nozzle extruding a thin line of plastic.
It’s really important to wipe down the build plate with Acetone (ABS dissolves in acetone) to make sure the prints stick. Otherwise, you may have wasted 3 hours for nothing.
Beginning a print. The nozzle purges it’s initial volume of ABS in a line on the front of the build plate..
And we are printing (in this case a bracelet)
Other larger pieces can be printed simultaneously. Here is a spin cup designed by Meghan.
Joining pieces together can be done using a hot glue gun (akin to resin) or ABS slurry (akin to welding). Each have their pros and cons.
Joined with hot glue. It’s water tight!.
We will be able to print PLA and dissolvable filaments in this printer as well, but I haven’t determined the best settings for these yet.
This week I tried to run a few “eq-tests” with some samples from wafer 187 to get some hydraulic permeability value for our membranes to see how they compare to the polymer filters used in the microcon and nanosep systems. Unfortunately I have no results to report, of the two samples I tested one broke…
Since my last update I have been trying to achieve reliable size-separation of DNA by length using dwell time with the NPN pre-filter. Originally I had hoped to achieve 250-bp resolution near the optimal length for the NPN filter devices that we are working with, but that turned out to be a bit overly ambitious,…
With Joe’s help, I was able to take some SEM images of the samples that I performed my previous set of separation experiments on. Sample 1: The obvious aggregation in this sample (exemplified by the ‘victory eagle’ blot in the second image) is observed in all five of the samples. What we can’t know is…
Recently I did some further research on the agglomeration in SiO2+Si layers. On my first post about agglomeration,I found that after annealing at 1000ºC for 1 min without susceptor, 15nm thick Si layer agglomerated and the average diameter of agglomeration islands is around 200nm. This time, I deposited three different thickness of top Si layers…
After the w310 series being beautiful (few pinholes, reasonable strength, high yield), we have retreated somewhat with a return of the copper-related piholes. Here is an SEM image and EDX scan from the well wall: Here is a pic of a pinhole on the membrane with a telltale copper silicide particle attached to the edge:…
