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You-SLS The first desktop Open-Source Lasersinter

The first “Full feature” Open Source Laser Sintering 3D pinter. Print without support!

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You-SLS The first desktop Open-Source Lasersinter

You-SLS The first desktop Open-Source Lasersinter

You-SLS The first desktop Open-Source Lasersinter

You-SLS The first desktop Open-Source Lasersinter

You-SLS The first desktop Open-Source Lasersinter

The first “Full feature” Open Source Laser Sintering 3D pinter. Print without support!

The first “Full feature” Open Source Laser Sintering 3D pinter. Print without support!

The first “Full feature” Open Source Laser Sintering 3D pinter. Print without support!

The first “Full feature” Open Source Laser Sintering 3D pinter. Print without support!

Lukas Hoppe
Lukas Hoppe
Lukas Hoppe
Lukas Hoppe
1 Campaign |
Bremen, Germany
$4,545 USD by 183 backers
$3,600 USD by 129 backers on May 15, 2015

THE FIRST PRINTS ARE IN:




Look for Updates and Progress on www.you-sls.com



THE DESIGN FILES ARE CURRENTLY OPEN TO EVERYONE INTERESTED!

Indiegogo just won’t let me end this campaign (I am an idiot).


Great thanks to everybody who has contributed!


Why this project is different to anything else out there:

You SLS will be the cheapest SLS printer that includes all the key elements of industrial machines. it will also be the first Open Source Laser sinterer that features a heated build chamber.

How does the SLS process work?

Selective Laser sintering works by scanning a Laser over the surface of a thin layer of powder. The powdered particles fuse where the laser hits. This way, one cross-section of the model is created. After this first cross-section is finished, another thin layer of powder is deposited and another cross-section is sintered by the laser beam. This process repeats until the model is completed 

What are the advantages of the SLS process?

Laser sintering allows you to build parts without any design restrictions or the need of support structures, as the powder supports itself. Therefore overhangs of any degree will be built perfectly in unreachable resolution. This is a huge advantage over FDM and SLA machines that are currently popular for home-use. Another huge advantage of SLS over other 3d printing processes is the variety of materials that become printable. Anything that is available as powder, ranging from sugar to professional grade sintering nylon, can be printed. The strength of nylon sintered parts is also well beyond anything that can be created with FDM or SLA machines. 


What are the challenges of making a working SLS printer?

While the process seems simple and not too hard to reproduce, there are many challenges involved when you try to make a DIY SLS-Printer:

To counteract warping of freshly sintered layers, the print chamber must maintain a temperature that is just 10 degrees Celsius lower than the melting-point of the material that is sintered. In order to achieve this You-SLS employs a three way heating system: each of the two pistons will be equipped with two 300W heating cartridges. In addition, the chamber will be heated by two powerful optical heaters. Each of these heating systems will utilize independent temperature feedback for accurate temperature control.

All this heating power now leaves us with another huge problem: Lasers, stepper motors and electronics like to be cool. It is absolute unacceptable to run a two watt laser in a 150 degree Celsius hot environment. To solve this, You-SLS is designed in two parts: the lower segment, which contains the two pistons and the recoater, and the upper segment, that hosts the XY-stage and the laser diode. In order to access the print-chamber, the upper segment simply folds away. The laser light passes through a laser window into the build-chamber. This way, the hot and the cold parts of the machine are nicely separated. Obviously there will be a security switch prevent the laser from turning on while the system is opened.


How big will You-SLS be?

Its outer dimensions are about 90 by 50 by 55 centimeters, the build piston size will be 20 by 15 centimeters and the Z hight will be about 10 centimeters. This allows big parts to be printed diagonally, jet small parts can also be printed without using too much powder to fill the bed.

Where is the project now?

At the current stage, the design work is almost done: all difficult problems have been addressed and all major decisions have been made. At this stage, there are only minor cosmetic decisions to be made. Therefore, there may be slight variations in the final design, but again, everything important is done. Now it has to be build an tested!

To create and verify the design, I went through countless experiments and tested many subsystems, such as the powder distributer. The experiments included the sintering of sugar, with my modified reprap FDM printer!

The progress i have made is  posted at  Instructables

This project came a long way

During the last year this project has made an enormous progress, but I have over time also followed ideas that were proven wrong by my experiments and then abandoned. So to say, my first design used one circular piston and the powder was not fed by another piston, but by a distributer “valve” atop the build area. While the round piston design was a working solution, I had to swap du a rectangular one because it simply allows for bigger parts to be printed, with the same size XY-gantry. The novel powder dispenser was abandoned even though my handling tests suggested that it might be working, because it was never consistent to the degree I needed it. Plus using the same parts twice (the pistons) reduces the cost of the printer.


What do I need the money for?

Even though this project is breaking the price of SLS projects down by ha huge number, it is still an expensive and work intensive project. The money will be used to purchase the numerous Laser cut aluminum/acrylic parts and the remaining electronics I haven’t acquired until now. I am expecting this project to cost 1800-2200 euros in total. A big share of this has already been covered by me, while I was ordering the parts to get exact measurements or do experiments with. Even if i don't reach my funding goal i will continue to work on you SLS, so Every dollar makes my life easier!

About myself:

My name is Lukas Hoppe, I am 18 years old and I am about to finish school in Bremen, Germany. I build my first 3d printer one year ago, and am a supporter of the reprap project. Ulitmatly i would like YOU-SLS to be part of this, much bigger and really really awesome project. One of my goals is to keep this campaign as transparent as possible, so if there is a question you have I will try to give the best answers possible! just ask!


------------YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE GEEKY PART OF THE CAMPAIGN----------

What set of electronics/software will power the printer?

This actually is one of the parts I like best about the You-SLS printer: it will be controlled by the regular trustworthy Ramps 1.4 board in collaboration with a regular Arduino mega. Both of which can be aquired for less than 50 Euros. If you are into 3d printing, and maybe have played around with a rep-rap, there is no way you don’t know Ramps. It is the most common solution to control 3D printers. The firmware will also be the known and good marlin firmware that is proven to work reliably. However, controlling a SLS machine is a more complex task than controlling a FDM printer, therefore another Arduino that is in control of driving the recoater will support the Ramps-board. Using commonly available parts is one of the main goals of You-SLS, and will allow you to build your own without having to acquire custom circuit boards, or experiment with complex programming.

Gantry X-Y System vs. Laser scanners

As this is the “geeky labeled” section of the campaign, many of you have probably wondered why You-SLS uses an X-Y gantry system over the more common laser scanner. The reason for this is, that the open-source hardware and software for Cartesian robots is sound and broadly available. Laser scanners use a completely different driver circuit and are quite expensive. Therefore I decided that it would be best to stick with the Cartesian X-Y system, as the software is hassle free, it allows the use of a standard RAMPS board, which again is very common with open source printers, and the hardware is available all over the world from different suppliers at a low cost.

Also moving the whole laser yields a very consistant spot size, as the distance between the material and the laser remains constant. This also allows You-SLS to do laser cutting and etching of circuit-boards.


What kind of laser will be used in the printer?

I will be employing a Laser-diode with 2 watts of power at a wavelength of 445nm (approximately the kind of laser you would find in a Blu-ray burner. It is visible and blue). At first, that doesn’t sound like a lot of power, but considering that most of the melting job is already done by the powerful heating units, the laser is only responsible for heating the powder up 10 more degrees to the melting point. 



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