Terence Tam’s OpenBeam Kossel Pro Deltabot 3D Printer.
About a year ago, I designed the OpenBeam Construction System as a low cost way to rapidly build mechanical prototypes. One of the application I had in mind was the construction of 3D Printers. Up until OpenBeam, the traditional method of building 3D Printers was with 3D Printers.
3D Printers are great, and we have been involved in the 3D Printing community for a very long time. However, when used in a production setting, it quickly becomes an artificially created bottle neck in work flow and a possible support issue as well due to variances between parts. So, with the OpenBeam Construction System, we chose to do things differently. We designed components that form the fundamental building blocks of 3D Printers and other small scale automation machines. These components are designed to be as modular and reusable as possible. This way, individual components can benefit from the economies of scale of modern mass production techniques while still allowing designs to iterate and evolve….
Featured Adafruit Product!
OpenBeam Advanced Precut Kit – Silver Aluminum: Get cracking on your robot, fixture or gantry with this luxurious extruded aluminum kit. This is the ultimate Open-Beam kit, for machine builders! You get tons of stuff, so you won’t end up frustrated and missing a component. The pieces are also pre-cut so for many projects you won’t even need to get out your hacksaw. All extrusions are 15mm by 15mm square. (read more)
Every Thursday is #3dthursday here at Adafruit! The DIY 3D printing community has passion and dedication for making solid objects from digital models. Recently, we have noticed electronics projects integrated with 3D printed enclosures, brackets, and sculptures, so each Thursday we celebrate and highlight these bold pioneers!
Have you considered building a 3D project around an Arduino or other microcontroller? How about printing a bracket to mount your Raspberry Pi to the back of your HD monitor? And don’t forget the countless LED projects that are possible when you are modeling your projects in 3D!
The Adafruit Learning System has dozens of great tools to get you well on your way to creating incredible works of engineering, interactive art, and design with your 3D printer! If you’ve made a cool project that combines 3D printing and electronics, be sure to let us know, and we’ll feature it here!