Making your own impact tester

So, a bit of a story...

I was watching this video on trying to build 3d printed objects by using half layer offsets...

...and got halfway through when I saw the YouTuber test his products with what seemed to be a homemade Charpy-esque impact tester.

5:38 in the above video

That homemade impact tester is something we've been talking about in our summer camps as a hypothetically simple thing to build, but our discussions tend to be fairly abstract and general - not at all specific as to plans that could be followed. This, however, looks to be something fairly specific and even branded by CNC Kitchen's blue and white logo.

So I went searching and came upon this video by CNC Kitchen that shows a homemade tensile/compression tester at about 8:15, a three-point bend tester at 10:45, and the same impact tester at 12:10.

So onward I went to find plans for the various testers.

I did find a video showing how to make the tensile/compression tester.

...and another for the 3-point bend tester.

...but I wasn't able to find a video for how to make CNC Kitchen's impact tester. Luckily, the impact tester's plans are available online.

Why 3D Printing Buildings Leads to Problems

It's tough to repair a building that is a single piece of material.

That's the short answer to the rhetorical question posed in the video's title, though the host goes into a lot more detail than that simple sentence.

He also explains that making a house out of a single material defeats the purpose of using different materials on the inside (drywall, for example) and outside (bricks or siding, for example) of the house; that no single material will work for walls, doors, and windows necessitating the merging of the 3d printed materials with some sort of additional structure for those features, partially defeating the advantages of 3d printing; and the 3d printed house's size is restricted by the size of gantry on which the 3d printer moves.

I subscribe to Stewart Hicks's channel, primarily covering architecture and focusing on the Chicagoland area with a frequent highlighting of Frank Lloyd Wright's work. Most of the videos aren't on material science but rather on the architecture.

World's first 3D-printed rocket launches but fails to reach orbit - BBC News

You might've seen my previous post about Relativity Space in May 2022. If not, here's the very short version: they're using 3d printing to make rocket bodies and engines.

Admittedly, the fact that their first launch wasn't fully successful isn't anything to look at as a failure in my eyes. The fact that the first launch failed is sort of the benefit of the 3d printing process. One of their supposed benefits is the fact that the engineering cycle will be sped up, allowing iterations to happen in far more rapid succession than was previously possible.

So, good on ya, Relativity. I look forward to seeing your 3d-printed metal rockets in space someday soon...just not yesterday.

The Material Science of Metal 3D Printing

<cough>Additive manufacturing?</cough>

The first four minutes or so of this video are about the economics of 3d printing with metal and why it is - for now, anyway - restricted mostly to just prototyping rather than mass production.

Then there's a bit of coverage about testing 3d printed parts - particularly in fatigue strength - as compared to traditional machined parts and a bit of explanation as to why their fatigue strengths tend to be significantly lower - including a micrograph exploration of metals while they are sintered . It's surprising to me that there isn't - at least shown - an example of a sintered piece of metal being tested.

Overall, the video is a nice exploration of why mass produced engines will likely not be made by 3d printing experts in the immediate future.

The Genius of 3D Printed Rockets

There's a part of me that looks at this video's tour guide like he's from the Parks and Rec Grizzyl offices. I know he's probably brilliant - his wikipedia article certainly suggests so - but it's like Dr Derek is getting a tour around a rocket factory from a teenager. 

This is another video where I spent much of the time with my mouth agape once I realized how revolutionary this method of production could be if they get all the hiccups worked out. The process seems like an extreme of the 'build it fast and wrong, then build it again and better' style of prototyping and manufacturing.

If you have the time, compare this video in which rockets bodies and engine parts are 3d printed from aluminum and alloys to the old-school rocket manufacturing tour from Smarter Every Day. I don't know which is better, but they show radically different approaches.

3D Printing Extremely Viscous Materials

I'm guessing that Bonnie Raitt could've helped solve this long ago if anybody had just asked her.

Seriously, though, I love that song. Take a few minutes to give it a listen if you haven't before.

More to the topic, though, the idea of 3d printing highly viscous materials would open up a whole lot more possibilities. Heating any polymer filament up to force the polymer through the nozzle leads to complications that could be mitigated apparently with a little shaking.

Plus we get increased opportunities to precisely print with ceramics, cement, even - as the video above mentions - icing.

I wish we'd gotten more of the icing shown.

As always, check out the ASM video of the week.

40 Cool Things to 3D Print That are Actually Useful

That actually does look useful - maybe not for a classroom setting but for an office setting.

It's one of the 50 Cool Things to 3D Print Which Are Actually Useful, each of which links to the plans.

Get printing, folks.

But don't ask for tea from your drink printer.

Markus Kayser - Solar Sinter Project

This doesn't look quite ready for prime time just yet, more of an art project/proof of concept stage for now, but...

The concept of 3d printing using sand (assumedly very pure sand, maybe not the stuff that's surrounding the 3d printer in the open desert) is pretty outstanding there, and the bowl looks awesome.

Mostly similar video but with slightly different edit after the jump...