3D printer berkeley

Makerspaces

Steps to get started with making!

Usually people that start out with using the makerspaces tend to focus on 3D printing and laser cutting since they are relatively easy to use compared to other machines such as a CNC.

The great thing about attending UC Berkeley is the amount of support available at your disposal.
If you have no idea how to use CAD (Computer Aided Design) such as Solidworks, go the fast route and find examples online. Look for examples that you can download as a .stl file. STL stands for stereolithography and is the standard format used by most 3D printing software such as CURA.
Once you find a design/make a design and save it as a .stl file, use a compatible slicing software. If you are using a 3D printer that is part of a makerspace on campus, they will have a recommendation to which software to use. For instance the Type A 3D printers in Jacobs Hall use Cura Type A slicing software.
Afterwards, save your file as gcode. GCode is sent to the 3D printers.
Send the G-code to the printers

Useful Resources:

Instructions on building projects

Examples and tutorials on getting started

Hardware examples

3D-print examples

Additional 3D-print examples

Websites to buy beginning product:

We do not endorse these companies nor receive any funds from them.

https://www.sparkfun.com/

https://www.digikey.com/

https://bayareacircuits.com/mobile/

https://adafruit.com

https://amazon.com

Getting Started Laser Cutting

Due to the dangers of laser cutting, we recommend that you are fully trained by a design specialist in the makerspaces. Laser cutting basically involves a powerful beam (laser) burning through a material such as wood. These devices need to be operated in an open and well-ventilated room. For further background information, check out this Instructables page!

Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation

The Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation is UC Berkeley’s interdisciplinary hub for learning and making at the intersection of design and technology. With a Maker Pass students can explore, prototype, and tinker in the Jacobs Hall Makerspace. The Jacobs Institute also offers a variety of resources to students interested in getting involved with design-focused student groups, in attending events, or in learning more about design opportunities through Jacobs' student services advisor. Sign up for the Jacobs Newsletter to get updates on events and news at the Jacobs Institute.

CITRIS and the Banatao Institute

The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao Institute create information technology solutions for society’s most pressing challenges. CITRIS and Banatao support students from concept to prototype through a variety of programs and labs that bring together multiple disciplines to address critical challenges. Programs and labs include:

CITRIS Invention Lab (requires Maker Pass)

CITRIS Tech for Social Good

CITRIS Foundry Startup Accelerator

CITRIS Social Apps Lab

Plus, check out a 3D Printer through CITRIS Invention Lan's GoFab(link is external) program. Open to all Maker Pass Holders, the Invention Lab is offering a suite of 3D printers that are available for checkout to extend your creativity and making outside of the lab, into your living room, dorm, kitchen, cafe, or personal workspace.

The Moffitt Makerspace

is a general access Makerspace located on the first floor of Moffitt Library. Operated primarily by student staff, the Makerspace features support for core maker activities such as CAD design, 3D printing, digital prototyping with digital components (e. g., Arduino, Raspberry Pi), as well as traditional craft and hand tool based design activities for wood and fabrics. It also offers training workshops to help and guide students learning both the basics (e.g. safety and basic use of equipment, use of software applications) and more advanced tutorials for projects and guided learning activities..

Supernode

Supernode is a student-run space, and all our equipment will always be free to use to anybody in the UC Berkeley community. The door is open whenever a member is inside (which is a lot of the time!).

New 3D printer uses rays of light to shape objects, transform product design

(UC Berkeley video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Stephen McNally)

A new 3D printer uses light to transform gooey liquids into complex solid objects in only a matter of minutes.

Nicknamed the “replicator” by the inventors — after the Star Trek device that can materialize any object on demand — the 3D printer can create objects that are smoother, more flexible and more complex than what is possible with traditional 3D printers. It can also encase an already existing object with new materials — for instance, adding a handle to a metal screwdriver shaft — which current printers struggle to do.

The technology has the potential to transform how products from prosthetics to eyeglass lenses are designed and manufactured, the researchers say.

“I think this is a route to being able to mass-customize objects even more, whether they are prosthetics or running shoes,” said Hayden Taylor, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley and senior author of a paper describing the printer, which appears online today (Jan. 31) in the journal Science.

“The fact that you could take a metallic component or something from another manufacturing process and add on customizable geometry, I think that may change the way products are designed,” Taylor said.

UC Berkeley researchers used a new light-based 3D printing technique to add a handle onto a screwdriver shaft. (UC Berkeley photo by Stephen McNally)

Most 3D printers, including other light-based techniques, build up 3D objects layer by layer. This leads to a “stair-step” effect along the edges. They also have difficulties creating flexible objects because bendable materials could deform during the printing process, and supports are required to print objects of certain shapes, like arches.

The new printer relies on a viscous liquid that reacts to form a solid when exposed to a certain threshold of light. Projecting carefully crafted patterns of light — essentially “movies” — onto a rotating cylinder of liquid solidifies the desired shape “all at once.”

“Basically, you’ve got an off-the-shelf video projector, which I literally brought in from home, and then you plug it into a laptop and use it to project a series of computed images, while a motor turns a cylinder that has a 3D printing resin in it,” Taylor said. “Obviously there are a lot of subtleties to it — how you formulate the resin, and, above all, how you compute the images that are going to be projected, but the barrier to creating a very simple version of this tool is not that high.”

Taylor and the team used the printer to create a series of objects, from a tiny model of Rodin’s “The Thinker” statue to a customized jawbone model. Currently, they can make objects up to four inches in diameter.

“This is the first case where we don’t need to build up custom 3D parts layer by layer,” said Brett Kelly, co-first author on the paper who completed the work while a graduate student working jointly at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “It makes 3D printing truly three-dimensional.”

The 3D printer works by shining changing patterns of light through a rotating vial of liquid. A computer algorithm calculates the exact patterns of light needed to shape a specific object. (UC Berkeley photo by Hayden Taylor)

A CT scan — in reverse

The new printer was inspired by the computed tomography (CT) scans that can help doctors locate tumors and fractures within the body.

CT scans project X-rays or other types of electromagnetic radiation into the body from all different angles. Analyzing the patterns of transmitted energy reveals the geometry of the object.

“Essentially we reversed that principle,” Taylor said. “We are trying to create an object rather than measure an object, but actually a lot of the underlying theory that enables us to do this can be translated from the theory that underlies computed tomography.”

Besides patterning the light, which requires complex calculations to get the exact shapes and intensities right, the other major challenge faced by the researchers was how to formulate a material that stays liquid when exposed to a little bit of light, but reacts to form a solid when exposed to a lot of light.

“The liquid that you don’t want to cure is certainly having rays of light pass through it, so there needs to be a threshold of light exposure for this transition from liquid to solid,” Taylor said.

The researchers formulated a thick, syrupy liquid that hardens into a solid when exposed to a certain threshold of light. (UC Berkeley photo by Stephen McNally)

The 3D printing resin is composed of liquid polymers mixed with photosensitive molecules and dissolved oxygen. Light activates the photosensitive compound which depletes the oxygen. Only in those 3D regions where all the oxygen has been used up do the polymers form the “cross-links” that transform the resin from a liquid to a solid. Unused resin can be recycled by heating it up in an oxygen atmosphere, Taylor said.

“Our technique generates almost no material waste and the uncured material is 100 percent reusable,” said Hossein Heidari, a graduate student in Taylor’s lab at UC Berkeley and co-first author of the work. “This is another advantage that comes with support-free 3D printing.”

The objects also don’t have to be transparent. The researchers printed objects that appear to be opaque using a dye that transmits light at the curing wavelength but absorbs most other wavelengths.

“This is particularly satisfying for me, because it creates a new framework of volumetric or ‘all-at-once’ 3D printing that we have begun to establish over the recent years,” said Maxim Shusteff, a staff engineer at the Livermore lab. “We hope this will open the way for many other researchers to explore this exciting technology area.”

Indrasen Bhattacharya of UC Berkeley is co-first author of the work. Other authors include Christopher M. Spadaccini of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

This work was supported by UC Berkeley faculty startup funds and by Laboratory-Directed Research and Development funds from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The team has filed a patent application on the technique.

RELATED INFORMATION

Volumetric additive manufacturing via tomographic reconstruction (Science)
Taylor lab website

Photopolymer 3D printer from a household video projector creates objects without layers / Sudo Null IT News

Adapted from article Kara Manke from the UC Berkeley News publication. Translated and adapted by Top 3D Shop .

Most 3D printing methods involve adding material layer by layer. This sets some limitations in the use of 3D printed objects, for example, printing new objects in combination with existing ones is extremely difficult, usually you cannot install a damaged part into a 3D printer and print a broken fragment.
The same technique allows such operations to be carried out.

Metal micro screwdriver with printed handle.

Designed by: Brett E. Kelly, Indrasen Bhattacharya, Hossein Heidari;
Contributors: Maxim Shusteff, Christopher M. Spadaccini;
Head of Lab and Corresponding Author: Hayden K. Taylor.
Scientific publication in Science 3’2019.

Kelly et al. presented another fabrication method, 3D printing by rotating a photopolymer in a dynamically developing light field. This allowed them to print entire complex objects in one full rotation of the photopolymer vessel, bypassing the need for layering.

Additive manufacturing with a new method promises geometric freedom and the ability to combine materials to achieve a combination of different properties in a single part.

The developers have demonstrated the simultaneous printing of all dots in a three-dimensional object by illuminating a rotating volume of photosensitive material with a dynamically developing light pattern. Tests have produced features as small as 0.3 millimeters in engineered acrylate polymers and soft structures with exceptionally smooth surfaces in gelatin methacrylate hydrogel.

“The fact that you can take a metal component or something from another manufacturing process and add a new part with custom geometry, I think it can change the way products are designed.

In fact, you can take an ordinary video projector, literally bring it from home, connect it to a laptop and use it to project a series of calculated images onto a rotating cylindrical container with thick photopolymer resin.

Obviously, there are some subtleties here too, primarily in the calculation of the projected images, but there will be no significant difficulties with the creation of the hardware” , Taylor said.

Taylor and team used the printer to create a series of test objects, from a tiny model of Rodin's "The Thinker" statue to a custom jaw model.

Currently, they can make objects up to 10 cm in diameter.

“This is the first time we don't have to create 3D parts in layers; it makes 3D printing truly 3D,” says Brett Kelly, co-author of the paper.

For their new technology, the researchers formulated a thick, syrupy photopolymer that only polymerizes under a precisely defined light intensity.

3D printing resin is made up of liquid polymers mixed with photosensitive molecules and dissolved oxygen. Light activates a photosensitive compound that depletes oxygen. Only in areas where all the oxygen has been used do the polymers form bonds that turn the resin from a liquid to a solid. Unused resin can be recycled by heating in an oxygen atmosphere.

“Our method generates virtually no waste, and the uncured material is 100% recyclable,” says Hossein Heidari, a graduate student in Taylor's lab at UC Berkeley and co-author of the paper.

“We hope this paves the way for many other researchers in this exciting area of technology,” said Maxim Shusteff, engineer, co-author of the paper.

It's one of those ideas that is "in the air" and it was just an idea until these guys figured out how to create a special suitable photopolymer.

The detail of the obtained samples is not yet impressive, but the method itself is at least interesting. It is possible that when obtaining a photopolymer with an even more accurate transition boundary (here the word is up to chemists), as well as when improving the algorithms for calculating images, the detailing of prints created using this method will increase.

Do you think this method can be applied to home 3D printing? Where will it be most in demand?

Will serial samples of 3D printers working on this principle appear soon? Would you buy one for yourself? Share your opinion in the comments.

3D printing technology introduced by computational axial lithography

News

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have unveiled a new 3D printing technique based on the rotational illumination of photopolymer resins. The technology is characterized by increased productivity and allows you to grow products as a whole, and not in layers. Let's tell you how it works.

If in traditional stereolithographic 3D printers the curing of photopolymers occurs layer by layer, then in the development of Californian scientists a rotational method is used: a transparent vessel is used instead of a cuvette, and illumination is carried out by a projector, but not in a horizontal, as usual, but in a vertical plane with simultaneous container rotation. The projected image changes depending on the angle of the platform.

The project can be considered the development of another development presented by LLNL scientists in December 2017 and based on the illumination of resins by intersecting laser beams. One major complication was the need for accurate calibration of the emitters. In the new version, there is no such need, since the product is formed by a single projector that sequentially reproduces about one and a half thousand images - in fact, “pictures” of the future product from different angles. In other words, if the first option was a kind of laser holography, then the new system resembles tomography, only in reverse.

“Basically, this is a video projector that I literally brought from home, connected to a laptop and projecting a series of images while a cylindrical container of photopolymer resin rotates on a turntable. Of course, there are many subtleties associated with the composition of the photopolymer and the calculation of the projected images, but the technological barrier is not that high, ”says Hayden Taylor, assistant professor of mechanical engineering.

As scientists point out, this approach allows avoiding the "staircase effect" - the same layers that are typical for products printed on conventional stereolithographic printers. And this is not only a matter of aesthetics, because layer-by-layer construction leads to a decrease in isotropy, and, consequently, to a deterioration in the physical and mechanical properties of the parts obtained. In addition, the presented technique allows the formation of products in a suspended state, thereby leveling the need for support structures. The key point of the technology lies in the light sensitivity of the photopolymer used: since the product is formed in the center of the container, the light must pass through the thickness of the material without parasitic illumination, that is, curing should occur only after the target areas receive the required dose of radiation.

One interesting example of the finished product is illustrated above: the handle of this screwdriver is shaped right around a metal rod placed in the center of the container. Officially, the technology is called "Computational Axial Lithography", although on the sidelines, scientists dubbed their development a "replicator" in honor of the devices of the same name from the Star Trek universe. No comments have been received from MakerBot representatives yet. The report of the scientific team can be found at this link.

Do you have any interesting news? Share your developments with us, and we will tell the whole world about them! We are waiting for your ideas at [email protected].

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