Technology Post 3/21

Vimal Patel built an extruder using Lego, attached it to an ordinary hot glue gun and ended up with a 3D printing pen. The gun double act stemmed from a project aimed at looking into making products from just one 3D printing filament, to make recycling a relatively simple matter. Before embarking on his Lego adventure, Patel did some preliminary work using the university's UP 3D printers to find out if he could incorporate zones of different stiffness into his single material objects. The layer by layer approach was found limiting and programming robotic assistance for extrusion along a path in multiple axes looked complicated. The extruder is made up of 112 Lego parts including an electric 9 V battery box and a 9 V motor, five toothed gear wheels, and numerous beams, connectors, axles, bricks and bushes. Once assembled and attached to the hot glue gun, it feeds the filament through to the nozzle at a steady rate. Then the artist can work on the creation of objects.