LeBigRep is a monster RepRap capable of building within a 1-meter cube.
Inspired by the RepRap Project, the idea arose of having a machine which could actually produce objects exceeding the dimension of objects produced by desktop fabbing devices as the RepRap, Makerbot, etc.
Imagine printing furniture, sculptures and other life size structures and experimenting with materials which are maybe more useful on a larger scale, like concrete, home-cooked starch plastics, or maybe the leftovers of your cnc-mill mixed with some resin?, etc…
This project is about building a Repstrap kind of machine with a approx. build-envelope of 1m^3, designed with a focus on openness, extensibility and lots of room for experimentation.
Also as this machine is build in a repstrap kind of tradition, the materials used to build it will be easily accessible and comparably cheap..no fancy and expansive t-slot aluminum for now.
[Via Ponoko]
18 thoughts on “LeBigRep, a Giant 3D Printer”
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These bigger sizes of fabricator sure seem to point up the need for engineering in multiple “deposition heads” (which can work independently or …cooperatively?). Full well understanding the engineering nightmare that that would promote.
While it would be expensive, I think 2 dimensional array of print heads working in tandem wouldn’t be too hard to coordinate. If you had say a 10×10 array of heads spaced 10 cm apart, the X and Y positional control could potentially be less complicated that with 1 head moving a meter in each both directions.
If you look to old dot-matrix printers for inspiration there was the Tri-matrix printer that had three print-heads that kept the maximum travel of the head assembly to 1/3 the width of the paper. Then there were line-printers where there was a separate head for every column.
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This would work with voxel-based printing, like zCorp’s Inkjet or SLS printers. However, FDM/FFF, the method RepRap is based on, is vector-based, that is the printhead “draws” lines instead of dots. It would require some pretty slick optimisation to make it work.
video I did of the monster: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLzhbKJpZD4
a video I did of the monster: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLzhbKJpZD4
All your life savings gone in reels of plastic! :P
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