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Just to show I'm not just goofing around here... Lol.
07/10/2016 at 21:04 • 0 commentsSmall update video showing where we stand right now. Which is, of course, busy as all heck. Making my way through the manuals and all the pictures and all that. I DID come out of the process of doing the documentation with a pleasant bonus though! As you will see in this video.
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Working on Documentation
07/06/2016 at 22:21 • 0 commentsStill slogging through the documentation for the build. The one for the syringe, the cabinet and now the electronics has been added and/or updated on the projects github page.
Still have the HV power supply to go, and then one on Operation, at least what I've learned so far.
I'm really trying to get the BOM right the first time. If I missed anything, please let me know!
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and more file changes...
07/06/2016 at 11:02 • 0 commentsAdded the syringe assembly instructions. Changed a few files on the syringe.
Wiring and electronics manual is almost done, and hopefully I can get that up on github real soon, as in a day or two.
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Added New Link.
07/01/2016 at 13:39 • 0 commentsI added a link to the abstract of some research done making transparent electrodes by electrospinning.
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Changes to files
07/01/2016 at 11:24 • 0 commentsI changed a few files on the projects Github page.
Changed the DXF files B1DuelPost and B2Right.
Added a new STL DoorSwitchMount.
Modified the assembly manual Part Identification section to reflect these changes.
This is to follow modifications on the door switch mounting arraignment.
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The Videos I said I would show you...
06/28/2016 at 11:34 • 0 commentsIn this first video we have a fairly decent jet being formed and fiber being continuously pulled. If you look close at the bottom of the whipping around jet you can sometimes see that the fiber is being pulled into even smaller jets which take off on their own. THOSE fibers are so small my micrometer can't measure them.
Next we have a 'blossom', which happens sometimes when I don't have the settings right or the solution is not mixed well. This one is different in that it climbed up the nozzle instead of hanging below it like they usually do. While not wanted, it is rather neat to watch them form in real time.
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Video
06/27/2016 at 22:52 • 0 commentsThis is the first video I promised you. Check out the perfect Taylor cone that formed around the 10 second mark. If the rest of that mess hadn't been there, it would have been perfect!
Way too many exit points. It really should have been JUST that cone.
There are two main causes of that, I've found. The first is too fast of extrusion rate. The jet just couldn't keep up with what was coming out so it formed more jets.
The other reason is the solution not being properly mixed. This has another effect eventually. What will happen is what I'm calling a 'blossom', where the material comes out and has nowhere to go, so it forms a big blob, which just keeps growing and growing. Some of them are kind of neat, but still not welcome.
Just a matter of dialing in the settings and making sure things are well mixed.
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Heck, this is getting fun! And a little goof up...
06/27/2016 at 19:30 • 0 commentsSo, with the cabinet assembly manual version .001 done and the materials list entered, I decided to get back to the fun part: Trying it out! For a material I settled on an acrylic/methylene chloride mix in a 70/30 ratio by volume.
It pulls very nicely, probably my favorite material of those I've tried so far. I'll start by showing you what a decent jet looks like. Not perfect, but good enough.Now before I get to the little goof, this is the final output. It's a mat of semi woven fibers. The largest of the fiber's is about the thickness of a human hair. The smallest, well, you won't be able to spot them in this next photo.
The mat is very flexible and holds together nicely. It takes a bit to pull it apart. I was surprised at that, and by how flexible it is. Not use to being able to cold bend acrylic like that. Average thickness is about .15mm.
Now to the goof. No biggie, but I left bed plate all the way down when I started, and went at 18.5 kV. I based that on what the other materials had been doing, and as it turns out acrylic loves to be pulled. So what happened is it went about everywhere. Anywhere it could find a landing spot, it did. And the fibers were longer than I had expected, too. I was getting some that were 250mm long, as no thicker than a human hair. The REAL thin ones were impossible to see. I stuck my hand in the cabinet after a small run and I could feel them on the back of my arm, but still couldn't see them.
As you can imagine with them going all over the place the inside of the cabinet looked like a bunch of tiny spiders had moved in. Fibers large and small, everywhere...
See what I mean? Lol.
Now I can get to what that mat looked like through a home made webcam microscope. The finest fibers I could spot through this contraption worked out to about .0065mm thick.
I really like the tiny little air bubbles in some of the fibers. :)
I'll finish this post by explaining why it was a goof. I didn't take the time to try to dial in the settings before I just let it run. As a matter of fact, for a while I just let it do it's thing and left the room.
The second goof was I didn't have the materials mixed up as well as I should have. I will have some video later today or tomorrow that shows what I'm hereby officially calling 'blossoms'. It's going to take the video to show you what happened, so I'll get that up as soon as I can. It's kinda neat, but not really something I want to happen too often.
I'm learning here as much as you are, and doing it the hard way. But that's okay, that's what it's going to take to open up a whole new area for us amateur scientists and makers and tinkerers to explore.
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Assembly manual and updated files now available.
06/25/2016 at 14:05 • 0 commentsI wrote an assembly manual for the cabinet, with plenty of pictures. If you find any mistakes, omissions or gobbledygook-speak that makes no sense, please let me know. The assembly manual and the ZIPed files are available on the projects Github account, listed in the project links.
The assembly manual for the electronics section and Syringe pump are works in process.
Meanwhile, back to pulling fibers... :D
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Still here, still working on it...
06/20/2016 at 14:21 • 0 commentsIt's been a while since I last added an update, so I thought I'd let you know I'm still working away at it. This is definitely a 'one man band' act here, and sometimes it gets a little off key. :P
What I'm doing at the moment is writing up the assembly manual for it. I'm sticking together another machine, pretty much, documenting each step of the way with plenty of photos. In my opinion, the documentation is not only a very important part of something like this, but it's also the one part I dislike the most. So hang in there with me, please.
I'm setting up to do some more runs in the next few days to a week, and with any luck I'll have some good stuff to show you. I took the time last week to make myself a little USB microscope out of an old web cam that's been in the junk box for years, and it seems like it'll work pretty fair for getting you a close up view of what this thing is capable of. Basically, I took a web cam with a busted up case, flipped the lens around and hot glued it back into place.
Then I scrounged around in my junk and found an old, solid built, Dremel drill press stand in a box in the basement. Perfect! I disabled the return spring in it so it would hold it's position, then wire tied the web cam onto it. It's got a real fancy handle, too! (What that means is the handle was missing, and I just clamped a small vise-grip to it). Anyway...
I put this contraption together a few days before HackaDay did that 'stay scrappy' article, and thought the timing was about perfect! THIS is why I keep all that stuff my wife calls junk around, stuffed into boxes in the basement, most of the closets, the attic and, if she looked close, even behind some of the books in the bookcases. :D
You just never know when it will come in handy, that's all there is to it. And with the kid all grown up and on his own, I have the room, no matter what the wife says. Lol.