It is time to fabricate our first silicone object. Our system is ready regarding hardware and software. You will see that fabricating soft robots with additive manufacturing is much easier than the molding techniques. Here are our fabrication steps:
Fabrication steps:
Step 1: First of all, get your 3D robot design and turn it into .stl file format. Later, open that stl file in slic3r software and generate gcode file. Finally, upload that gcode file into the 3D printer's micro sd card. Down below you can see the slic3r software gcode generation steps.
Step 2: Make sure that you home the all axis and be careful with the Z-axis. Since we changed the nozzle it might be homed above the bed or below the bed. To avoid any problems relocate the z axis limit switch. See the pictures below.
Step 3: After we finalize our homing sequence right now we will start our silicone pump. First, raise the z height of the extruder over prontorface and put a small cup under the extruder.
Step 4: Start the mixer motor and then run the pump with 26 ml/hr and make sure that silicone flows through the clear tubes into the nozzle
Step 5: Wait until the two part silicone material to mix. It will take around 5 minutes to get good composition. You will understand the mix with the color change inside the mixer. In this case my mixed material looks like light red / pink~ish. See the picture below.
Step 6: After the compotion ready open the heater controller system and set the fan speed up to 80% and set temperature to 50C
Step 7: Hit the "print from sd" button from prontorface and remove the cup.
Step 8: If your part is taller than 3 cm, increase the heater wings temperature up 80C after 3cm height
Step 9: Wait until your print is done. (Also give it some time before you remove your object from the heated bed. Top most section will still need time to cure. Around 5 minutes or 10)
Step 10: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CELEBRATE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Congratulations
Your 3D Silicone Printer is ready for the next awesome soft robot fabrications!