PENSA D.I. Wire bender

The D.I. Wire Bender by PENSA llc is an arduino-controlled CNC machine that bends metal wire to produce 2D and 3D shapes - an interesting take on a 3D printer. The D.I. Wire Bender can read vector files, OBJ files, text commands, and coordinates.

This is one of very few low-cost machines I've seen that can do rapid prototyping in metal - and it is open source! The Google Code project page is here. You will need tougher motors if you want to use tougher materials than 1/8" aluminum wire/rod.



I find the D.I. Wire Bender exciting for the following reasons:

• Rapid Prototyping in Metal is typically expensive; this could be a lot cheaper.
• CNC Rapid Prototyping is even better, because it removes a few chances for human error
• If we can do this, we can make a CNC pipe bender - Which would open up doors for rapidly prototyping and manufacturing new vehicle designs. For example, a CNC pipe bender would make it easy for the MakerPlane team to print out structural components for future non-composite aircraft designs.

Kit Built CNC Mill/3D Printer

What do you get when you cross a MakerBot, a dremel, and a kit built CNC router from BuildYourCNC.com?

A WhiteAnt CNC Mill/3D Printer


Video stolen from the white ant product page, via BuildYourCNC.com

Although the cost of the WhiteAnt kit strikes me as similar to other open source 3D printer kits, and I already have a Makerbot thing-o-matic in the house, there are a few things that catch my  interest about the idea of building a WhiteAnt:

• I am a proponent of versatile, low cost manufacturing equipment, and the WhiteAnt looks like a 2 for 1 deal since the user can quickly swap the extruder for a Dremel and have a CNC mill without taking up extra space, or investing the time to build another frame and set up a second set of electronics and software
• The WhiteAnt frame looks a lot sturdier than the Makerbot
• Building a WhiteAnt is essentially a practical, guided lab exercise for this textbook on 3D printing in plastic, and I am old school enough to like textbooks and formal labs.
• BuildYourCNC.com produces good videos about how to assemble their various kits. (To see what I mean, you can watch an instructional video on the WhiteAnt Dremel mount assembly here, or the video instructions for connecting the WhiteAnt electronics.)

The WhiteAnt is built using the arduino, a single-board open source microcontroller, replicatorG, an open source 3D printing program, and the generation4 electronics and tool-head available from Makerbot.com.

If the ability to do 3D printing via fused deposition modeling in extruded plastic is unimportant to you, and you need to use a mill more than you want the experience of building your own, you may be better off to sacrifice the cool factor and buy a low-cost mini-mill like this one from LittleMachineShop.com. It comes fully assembled, has enough torque to mill steel, and has a similar price and x/y/z travel to the White Ant kit.

Eureka CNC: A Microfactory for Airplane Parts, Among Other Things

Eureka CNC is a microfactory that uses a CNC hot wire foam cutter to produce specialty aircraft parts, among other things. According to the Eureka CNC website, the owner, Stephen James, has a (very impressive) day job in the USAF, a family to provide for, and an awesome mental problem called project ADD...and he has still managed to single-handedly produce a wide variety of useful and cost-effective products and build a few airplanes of his own.

Exciting features of Eureka CNC:

• The ability to rapidly and precisely turn a 3-D CAD file into a foam airfoil core ready for the next step in the airplane build project (covering it in fiberglass)
• Extreme versatility and efficiency: products include custom crown molding, race car fairings optimized for structure and Reynolds number, and (most exciting of all) wing cores for a wide variety of home-built composite aircraft including the Long-EZ, Cozy MK III, Cozy MK IV, Berkut, E-Racer, Quickie Q2/Q200 with LS1,
• Although building it did not sound easy, the Eureka CNC hot wire foam cutter does sound like it's based on technology that is well within the reach of the open source community
•  Now that there are open source aircraft design projects in the works (click here and scroll down for a list), we will probably soon see rapid prototyping processes like Eureka CNC's make new aircraft design ideas a reality in record time.
• This technology could be applied to designing, creating, and selling some awesome fiberglass kit car bodies

I would love to see a higher level of integration between the outputs from conceptual design and mesh creation software like this, computational fluid dynamics optimization codes like this, 3D geometry output files, and affordable CNC rapid prototyping technology like the Eureka CNC hot wire cutter. Anything to shrink the currently huge amount of time between having an aircraft design idea and seeing it in prototype...

On a side note, I am a happy customer of Eureka CNC. My husband and I bought wing cores from Eureka CNC for our airplane build project, the Cozy MK IV. The average build time for Cozy MK IV projects is around 3000 hours, which amounts to a year and a half of 40-hour work weeks. Today, we are in the neighborhood of 10% done. Stephen James' microfactory-built CNC wing cores saved us a big chunk of time by completing several steps of the build project for us, so maybe that figure is more like 12-15%.

3D Printer for CNC Lost Wax Casting Models

Low-Cost rapid Prototyping with metals for high-strength applications is possible with Andreas Bastian's open source laser sintering 3D printer. This is a big step for expanding the functionality of open source microfactories, which have been largely limited to ABS and PLA plastics, and photosensitive resins. Andreas Bastian's 3D Printer makes high-fidelity wax models from 3D CAD files, allowing the user to leverage the precise and rapid prototyping capabilities of CNC systems for lost wax casting applications.

Metal parts created via lost wax casting of printed wax models can be suitable for high strength applications, which strikes me as a first for the DIY microfactory scene. This new design allows the user to draft a part in AutoCAD, then use the resulting .stl file and ReplicatorG to create a GCode file for the printer. The GCode files are sent to the printer's arduino, which has been loaded with custom firmware based on the ultimaker firmware. The arduino transmits instructions to stepper motors and a laser which work together to fuse layers of powdered wax print medium which compose the wax model. Wax models can then be used as the positive for lost wax casting in metal.



This video is from Andreas Bastian's video page for this project...check out the rest of his videos here.

In addition to all the great industrial applications, I would be in no way surprised to see this technology adopted by jewelry designers in the very near future. Who could resist using 3D scans of a customer's hand to print up perfect rings and bangles?

Visit this project's home page!
This printer was featured by Make Magazine in February 2012.