Lighten Up!

For the Z-table, arm and tower our goal has been to even further lighten up the design and improve the overall sturdiness.  We have moved away from our wooden design to a more professional looking aluminum one.  The whole Z-tower has been redesigned to work with aluminium.  This has improved helped improve the stiffness of the tower so when the actual z-table is attached it will not wobble at all.  The Z- tower arm has also moved away from the wooden design to an aluminium one.  It consists of a hollowed out aluminium bar witch attaches to the lead screw with a custom made lead screw nut that helps maintain the precision 3D printing requires.  The last piece we have been working on is Z-table itself. The new design consists of easy to machine chemical resistant plastic that is going to be pocketed by the mill into a hollow box. This will help reduce weight without sacrificing sturdiness. One of our biggest obstacles in our new design has been getting the mill to work.  However within the next two days it should be running and milling out our Z-table. From here we plan to assemble all the pieces of our new Z-table and start our first print within two weeks.