Holy shit man, absolute king. Just the perseverance to keep going with this after all the set backs, never mind being able to build all this by yourself. Gave a dono and as i said this has so much potential for society in general, excited to see more.
@@user-wg5lu6ub6e For real. Pure insanity. Fighting for every bit of progress, but never giving in. Always progressing and always learning (and teaching) in the process. (edit: even his failures are a wealth of knowledge).
It’s so tough for individuals making huge projects like this. Micronics likely needed more time and money to finish their idea, but shouldering that without outside investment isn’t a small feat! The kickstarter could have helped with that, but the promise of delivering a product in a timely manner was where things went wrong imo. What would have been better is a campaign that promised a discounted rate on a later produced machine after 4x the time they assumed they would need. Idk if kickstarter would even allow a campaign like this though, and the excitement of sharing the awesome product you’re making while creating a company to sustain it is understandable. To be clear, I think the Micronics guys are super talented, and ended up in a situation where they needed more time and money to finish their idea, but didn’t have that option. Hindsight is 4 years ago or whatever and it is easy to make armchair quarter collector calls after the fact, but I blame their “failure” on the situation they ended up in and not character flaws inherent in them as individuals. Hopefully FormLabs doesn’t just nuke them and we see some improvements in their products (ie price lol) from the acquisition. Also I’m not implying you feel they’re bad people, but just clarifying my thoughts! So, give this guy money I guess? Or advocate for community backed companies to support him? Either way, I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next!
well this is already available to buy a company named alphalaser from germany has such an machine in their portfolio, but still impressive he developed one himself in his garage
This guy is insane. More than the knowledge even... What impressed me the most was his dedication to keep going with this after all setbacks... For a while I thought he hasn't succeed, but then today I was gifted with this video. Really awesome!
The only thing more impressive than your vast technical knowledge is the unbelievable amount of perseverance you have in the face of repeated disappointments.
Holy shit, this epic story has more drama, grit, heroic refusal of defeat and plot twists than the average HBO series! I absoultely salute you for the mental fortitude to not give up. o7
If you want a global shutter, there's a raspberry pi camera that has it, which might be worth it on a budget, especially since you can mount your own lens
holy shit, that's one heck of a cool project you have there, mad respect maybe some tips or rather suggestions from someone who works with a SLM machine (from Aconity for anyone interested), if I mention anything you already addressed then it's just me being too enthusiastic and writing this comment while watching the video: - as someone pointed out, when working with 316L a lot of people use base plate heating, 316L normally takes around 300°C, for cubes it's relatively safe to not heat cause you don't have that much volume in comparison to the area connected to the plate, but anything with a different area to volume can make some problems cause the stresses get too high to handle for what little support you have, if you ever go into aluminium like alsi10mg use 200°C, that can also reduce your adhesion problems - 316L is notorious for spatter, if you have problems with that either reduce the layer thickness (we would use 30 um with such problems) or take a look at the gas flow, we had a problem with it being too turbulent and thus leading to a different print quality depending on the position on the platform, a slight modification to the exit nuzzle made it way better and more consistent over the whole platform, also drying the powder can help - concerning your density, it would be pretty cool to see a cross-section of your parts, depending on the form of your pores you can see where you are concerning energy, big irregular pores? probably lack of fusion, so more energy. big round pores? probably keyhole pores, so too much energy. lots of small round pores? gaspores, can't do a lot about those except for drying the powder and going slower with lower energy, or remelting every layer so the gases can escape the meltpool - we have 2 solutions for the coater, either a silicon lip or a carbon brush (there exists a 3. one from the manufacturer, a metal lip, but that's just shit), the silicon lip gives a way smoother powder bed but can break off any high spots or parts that threaten to rise up due to a lack of fusion or warping and it doesn't work with higher temperatures, becoming too soft and ripping out of it's holder, the carbon brush is way more forgiving but can lead to valleys in the powder bed, where particles are stuck to the brush - normally we burn in the first layer up to 3 times, just because you can't really control how thick it is, so rather put in more power and be sure, than having too little, putting in too much power will even out with the next few layers anyways - printing bigger or just a lot of parts and thus crowding the platform can lead to not enough powder being transported, so we normally brush over with a supply factor, meaning 2 - 3 times the height in powder that we theoretically need being brushed on, saved my ass more often than I want to admit hope my rambling could help you even a little bit, good luck with the project, would be so cool to see bigger and more complex parts being printed
Thanks for sharing all of that info. I don't know if I will be able work in any preheating in the near future but will keep it on the cards. I found a recommended temperature of 50 - 80C for SS316 in a MDS and was referencing that. I think at the current scale things should be alright.
Try using two or three powders together, of different particle-sizes. I forget the math on how it works, but smaller particles will fill void-space of larger particles, and you should be able to get the powder itself up to like 85%-90% of pure/solid material, and thus that should help with the fusing of the particles to make a solid piece.
that can make spreading the powder quite difficult due to agglomeration. industry standard is to use 15-45 or 15-50 um powder distribution. it provides a good balance between density and flowability of the powder
Smaller particles also melts easier meaning that you now have something very hot that will spread the heat to the larger particles, this is very noticable when casting as as soon as you just have a little molten metal in the bottom its very easy to melt more metal rather than a hot empty crucible
I'm absolutely certain that even half of this project would've driven me to insanity. The world wouldn't have half the tech it does without people like you.
I didn't understand 95% of what you are doing, but I can easily tell that you should be respected for your knowledge and dedication... I only know about normal 3d printing (pla, abs, nylon and CF etc.) and I call myself a maker... But compared to you, I am a teletubbie..
This should have millions of views and likes. Incredible effort. It would be a dream to be able to affordably print metals in the home/ hobby space. Thankyou for making it closer to reality.
I'm so very very glad you're not dead, and that you'd been working on it this whole time! I think about your older videos a lot, and I'm sure this one will be the same despite much of it going over my head. Great work!
The quality of the benchy after seeing all the issues in the test prints really impressed me. There's so much going on here, to be able to crystallise any working solution on your own is amazing
Wonderful and very detailed video! I have a tip: with the cheap Q-switched units you _can_ indeed just turn the q-switch off physically. However, If you want an OEM plug&play solution, JPT's M7 series MOPA laser sources can be kicked into CW mode digitally(set pulse length to
I BOW TO YOU. Please keep this independent and DIY. You show the rest of the world where we can go and for that, you are to be commended. Bravo. 🙏🏿✊🏿💯👏🏿
Just a request from my side, please keep uploading videos or shorts or atleast some posts to keep us updated with this project. I am also trying to build a Metal 3D printer myself and your videos helps speed up the process. Thanks and All the best!
I think this is the first time I've ever seen transverse modes illustrated like that and it pretty much explained everything about a concept I was aware of but never really dug into, it was just something laser beams did that people doing much more important things with lasers than I was needed to be concerned with. Impressive project, I would never have been able to push through all those setbacks, some no doubt quite costly.
Dude I just stumbled upon this video out of no wear and am blown away at one man is capable of with modern resources and perseverance. Incredible. Keep on keepin' on son.
Just think about it. If you do something like this and you face an obstacle, there is no TH-cam, no reddit, no hidden forum posts. You have no help. You have to figure it out. Amazing - and I feel so stupid now, this is a whole different level.
hey, I work @ Carbon as a controls engineer / architect and... I just wanted to say mad props. Thats an insane amount of work and there's so many details across many engineering disciplines (mechanical, electrical, optics, control systems, image processing, software / FW, materials). awesome job!
Amazing things like what you have created take a lot of time and never forget all that time that you spent will matter because you are making one of the coolest things I've ever seen
everything remind me very much of a publication "development of a hollow laser beam for micromachining" by E. Demirci in Advanced Optical Technologies long time ago. cool work, keep on!
Thank you for sharing the process. I have been clicking on your channel to see if I missed on any new videos once a few weeks. Congratulations on the successful benchy! Looking forward to watching your new updates.
Extremely impressive! I've worked at two companies doing hardware engineering on LPBF machines. I can appreciate the complexity of what you are doing and cant believe you got this thing to print a benchy on the budget you are working with.
This video is amazing and you are a monster for keeping the project going after all these failures. I know a couple of companies that would actually pay you to miniaturize this or even put it into production. You should call a company like Prusa Research or one of the Universities that study this to see if they'll connect you with a great manufacturer
A job well done mate. Insane professional engineering for the money given. You've got some serious knowledge of optics and SLM printing. I've graduated my bachelors on experimenting with SLM printers, the second time I made a laser positioning system for my masters. The struggles I see in your video feels like a 10 of my project all cammed into one project. My respect! I hope you'll will have a lot more succes with these projects!
Amazing work! I worked with 3ds printers in Germany. Your research and success are amazing feats. I can see very similar implementations within titanium additive machines. Your findings are very inspirational on a consumer level! Thank you
This is crazy, I watched the video and at some points I got lost. I never thought that metal printing has so much going for it and it's so deep. Really loved the video and can't wait to see where it goes. Much love
Even if the results look good, there are two main problems at cladding powder, surface tension and powder oxidation. cladding powder that has been exposed to oxidation is main problem. try a protective chamber with oxygen-free atmospheric gases. secondary try to reduce heat tension by heating up your platform to more than 800 K. Thirdly, it would be advantageous to pre-sieve your colloidal powder, of course under inert gas. 🤐It is much easy to clad with powder fractions above 50µm
wow… i think thats the coolest looking benchy i ever saw and the proccess behind it is even cooler. totally love that you didnt give up and you posted a video explaining all of it. really great to see it and i hope you the best of luck in other projects.
Hot Damn!! I had thought you stopped the project, but here we are, printing a Benchy. Absolutely mind blowing. See you again, whenever that is. Good luck and godspeed!!
This video is absolutely bonkers! Wow, thanks so much for sharing and persevering. Seeing the process is so much more interesting than the usual TH-cam shake and bake projects. Respect!
When it comes to your laser welding layer height being lower than expected: you hit it right on the money, every pass will accumulate heat if not given time to cool in between, and that can easily lead to your weld puddle being much more spread out, overheating of the material, and warping like you saw on your plate. You'll almost certainly need to include a heat sink below the baseplate as a way to pull heat from the part between layers to prevent them from sagging, we tend to use copper backing bars behind thin sheet or to fill holes, as it works great to pull heat away and most filler metals won't stick to copper. As for beads of molten wire sticking to the feeding nozzle: welding supply stores often sell Mig Nozzle "tip dip" or spray that acts as a coating to prevent spatter from adhering, that might be worth looking into. One more thing: the first layer of your print should be using more heat/power than every successive layer because you want to fuse the weld to the base plate. After that, be sure your gcode turns down the heat for each successive pass as heat builds up within the part. There's going to be a lot of tuning required to get that machine printing benchies once you've gotten it mostly working, but most of that is stuff you can learn by asking welders luckily lol Also, I wonder if you could do SLS printing using SAM (Submerged Arc Welding) powder? You might want to look into that as another possible way to print metal.
I understood about 20% of the video, language barier and all but still this is over my pay grade :) I have no idea why I watched it fully but.. here we are. Thanks for the lecture :)
wow, it's so motivating to see your progress. keep at it. The results look really cool! I'm looking forward to the next video! Thanks also for showing all the mistakes and solutions.
I'm sure other people might've said this but for your leveling hammer, invest in a rubber or plastic tipped mallet. It is generally what we use for leveling / adjusting in the shop. Also might want to use a test indicator instead of a travel indicator for your leveling; the dial may take a minute to learn to use but they allow for much more accurate leveling. Really cool project!
This is crazy. Metallurgy, optics, electricity, electronics, software, mechanics, systems & more? How are you so knowledged on all these difficult topics? How is this even possible? How long did it take to learn this much? How do you learn and improve your skillset?
Hey, a lot of professional systems use carbide blades for layer deposition and scraping. You might want to look into replacement carbide blades for paint scrapers. They're flat and sharp and fairly inexpensive! This has a second effect of being able to knock off high spots, but also can jam and remove parts if the build Also, stiffness of the recoater and powder beds is super important. Some linear slides may help tremendously
NO WAY i just watched a few of your videos and thought well this is a really great high quality interesting content and was so sad seeing no uploads for over a year and now you come out with this banger. Keep it up amazing work.
I've been following your project for a while. I think the first vid I saw from you was your 2nd or third. The progress and documentation you show is awesome dude. Really excited for the next vid.
Holy shit man, absolute king. Just the perseverance to keep going with this after all the set backs, never mind being able to build all this by yourself. Gave a dono and as i said this has so much potential for society in general, excited to see more.
Dude. Thank you!
@@metalmatters dude you earned my sub frame one you're a genius
@@user-wg5lu6ub6e For real. Pure insanity. Fighting for every bit of progress, but never giving in. Always progressing and always learning (and teaching) in the process. (edit: even his failures are a wealth of knowledge).
What an absolute legend!
It's essentially just a laser welder attached to a CNC head.
Still cool, but not rocket science.
Please please please resist any attacks from big companies!! Spread info and resources! This is way too amazing to be taken down
Effing micronics...
I was just thinking about them lol@@calhoub
No one is going on take it down you spaz
It’s so tough for individuals making huge projects like this. Micronics likely needed more time and money to finish their idea, but shouldering that without outside investment isn’t a small feat! The kickstarter could have helped with that, but the promise of delivering a product in a timely manner was where things went wrong imo. What would have been better is a campaign that promised a discounted rate on a later produced machine after 4x the time they assumed they would need. Idk if kickstarter would even allow a campaign like this though, and the excitement of sharing the awesome product you’re making while creating a company to sustain it is understandable.
To be clear, I think the Micronics guys are super talented, and ended up in a situation where they needed more time and money to finish their idea, but didn’t have that option. Hindsight is 4 years ago or whatever and it is easy to make armchair quarter collector calls after the fact, but I blame their “failure” on the situation they ended up in and not character flaws inherent in them as individuals. Hopefully FormLabs doesn’t just nuke them and we see some improvements in their products (ie price lol) from the acquisition. Also I’m not implying you feel they’re bad people, but just clarifying my thoughts!
So, give this guy money I guess? Or advocate for community backed companies to support him? Either way, I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next!
well this is already available to buy a company named alphalaser from germany has such an machine in their portfolio, but still impressive he developed one himself in his garage
The amount of knowledge the project requires is insane. Metallurgy, thermodynamics, motion physics, electronics, programming etc...
Lasers, optics, photogrammetry…
Metrology
This guy is insane. More than the knowledge even... What impressed me the most was his dedication to keep going with this after all setbacks... For a while I thought he hasn't succeed, but then today I was gifted with this video.
Really awesome!
What category does the spreading a powder with a credit card belongs to 🙃
@@Adrian_Galilea finance
TH-cam algorithm doing it's thing again. Feeding me channels i've never heard of doing some crazy dedicated engineering in their sheds
This sort of channel is why I like TH-cam so much.
I’m here for that though
Hey youtube AI, please keep them coming. Reminds me of old youtube with guys like nile red and codys lab. Mad scientist!!!
@justus1995 I get it all the time because I jump around so much in TH-cam, but let me guess, it got your attention and you stayed for the whole video?
This is wildly impressive. Incredible work. If you need some CNC parts hit me up, I'd be happy to contribute.
yo, nice to see other engineering channels
I'll keep that in mind
Eyyyy this guy :)
I was here on the day that diy metal printing became a reality
If we had only known it would be so simple.
Yes, I'm joking.
This video is great. I'm not joking this time.
I understood about 30% of the video, but it was FASCINATING. Amazing stuff. I'm impressed with your sheer skill and determination
Had to reduce to 75% play speed to even keep up with the waterfall of details.
Keep up the great work
👍👍👍
I passed out twice so had to do it over three evenings.
the "herb" grinder heatsink is an incredible act of DIY ingenuity
“He’s a man of focus, commitment, and sheer fucking will”
The only thing more impressive than your vast technical knowledge is the unbelievable amount of perseverance you have in the face of repeated disappointments.
Holy shit, this epic story has more drama, grit, heroic refusal of defeat and plot twists than the average HBO series!
I absoultely salute you for the mental fortitude to not give up. o7
If you want a global shutter, there's a raspberry pi camera that has it, which might be worth it on a budget, especially since you can mount your own lens
holy shit, that's one heck of a cool project you have there, mad respect
maybe some tips or rather suggestions from someone who works with a SLM machine (from Aconity for anyone interested), if I mention anything you already addressed then it's just me being too enthusiastic and writing this comment while watching the video:
- as someone pointed out, when working with 316L a lot of people use base plate heating, 316L normally takes around 300°C, for cubes it's relatively safe to not heat cause you don't have that much volume in comparison to the area connected to the plate, but anything with a different area to volume can make some problems cause the stresses get too high to handle for what little support you have, if you ever go into aluminium like alsi10mg use 200°C, that can also reduce your adhesion problems
- 316L is notorious for spatter, if you have problems with that either reduce the layer thickness (we would use 30 um with such problems) or take a look at the gas flow, we had a problem with it being too turbulent and thus leading to a different print quality depending on the position on the platform, a slight modification to the exit nuzzle made it way better and more consistent over the whole platform, also drying the powder can help
- concerning your density, it would be pretty cool to see a cross-section of your parts, depending on the form of your pores you can see where you are concerning energy, big irregular pores? probably lack of fusion, so more energy. big round pores? probably keyhole pores, so too much energy. lots of small round pores? gaspores, can't do a lot about those except for drying the powder and going slower with lower energy, or remelting every layer so the gases can escape the meltpool
- we have 2 solutions for the coater, either a silicon lip or a carbon brush (there exists a 3. one from the manufacturer, a metal lip, but that's just shit), the silicon lip gives a way smoother powder bed but can break off any high spots or parts that threaten to rise up due to a lack of fusion or warping and it doesn't work with higher temperatures, becoming too soft and ripping out of it's holder, the carbon brush is way more forgiving but can lead to valleys in the powder bed, where particles are stuck to the brush
- normally we burn in the first layer up to 3 times, just because you can't really control how thick it is, so rather put in more power and be sure, than having too little, putting in too much power will even out with the next few layers anyways
- printing bigger or just a lot of parts and thus crowding the platform can lead to not enough powder being transported, so we normally brush over with a supply factor, meaning 2 - 3 times the height in powder that we theoretically need being brushed on, saved my ass more often than I want to admit
hope my rambling could help you even a little bit, good luck with the project, would be so cool to see bigger and more complex parts being printed
Thanks for sharing all of that info. I don't know if I will be able work in any preheating in the near future but will keep it on the cards. I found a recommended temperature of 50 - 80C for SS316 in a MDS and was referencing that. I think at the current scale things should be alright.
A man of Focus... Commitment.. Sheer Will
Very happy to see this still going, especially with the whole Micronics machine going down in Formlabs flames :)
saw that too. thought a sub £5000 machine would be a good start for sls then bam, formlabs mothballs it.
Try using two or three powders together, of different particle-sizes. I forget the math on how it works, but smaller particles will fill void-space of larger particles, and you should be able to get the powder itself up to like 85%-90% of pure/solid material, and thus that should help with the fusing of the particles to make a solid piece.
how do they all stay evenly distributed?
I guess you're talking about Fuller Curve Approximation
that can make spreading the powder quite difficult due to agglomeration.
industry standard is to use 15-45 or 15-50 um powder distribution. it provides a good balance between density and flowability of the powder
Smaller particles also melts easier meaning that you now have something very hot that will spread the heat to the larger particles, this is very noticable when casting as as soon as you just have a little molten metal in the bottom its very easy to melt more metal rather than a hot empty crucible
@@bencolbourn5691idk put it in a box and mix?
Very impressive! I envy your relentlessness towards problem solving. Looking forward to see whats next ;) Cheers from Denmark
this is without a doubt one of the most impressive projects that I've ever seen a single person take on. incredible stuff.
You are a god amongst men, this is incredible work. The number of different problems you’ve solved here is astounding. Well done.
That was such a great breakdown of your testing. Thank you for sharing- am excited to see the next one in 2026! :P
Hey Zoe!
@@mikebergman1817 Hai Mike! smol world haha
The Benchy is beautiful.
I'd call your printer a success so far.
See yall again in 2 years I guess
Who will be there first? The chinese with a commercial solution for sale on Aliexpress or Metal Matters? ;D
I'm absolutely certain that even half of this project would've driven me to insanity. The world wouldn't have half the tech it does without people like you.
Way, way, way above my head. I think you are working at genius level.
I didn't understand 95% of what you are doing, but I can easily tell that you should be respected for your knowledge and dedication...
I only know about normal 3d printing (pla, abs, nylon and CF etc.) and I call myself a maker... But compared to you, I am a teletubbie..
Same
Please protect this man at all costs. Genius!
Hope you had time for a job while working on this project.
This should have millions of views and likes. Incredible effort.
It would be a dream to be able to affordably print metals in the home/ hobby space. Thankyou for making it closer to reality.
I'm so very very glad you're not dead, and that you'd been working on it this whole time! I think about your older videos a lot, and I'm sure this one will be the same despite much of it going over my head. Great work!
The quality of the benchy after seeing all the issues in the test prints really impressed me. There's so much going on here, to be able to crystallise any working solution on your own is amazing
Wonderful and very detailed video! I have a tip: with the cheap Q-switched units you _can_ indeed just turn the q-switch off physically. However, If you want an OEM plug&play solution, JPT's M7 series MOPA laser sources can be kicked into CW mode digitally(set pulse length to
Thanks for the insight. The fiber units have come down a lot in the last year since I purchased the DPSS system. Very tempting..
I BOW TO YOU.
Please keep this independent and DIY. You show the rest of the world where we can go and for that, you are to be commended. Bravo. 🙏🏿✊🏿💯👏🏿
TH-cam's most underated channel. Great work, i love your stuff
Just a request from my side, please keep uploading videos or shorts or atleast some posts to keep us updated with this project. I am also trying to build a Metal 3D printer myself and your videos helps speed up the process. Thanks and All the best!
I think this is the first time I've ever seen transverse modes illustrated like that and it pretty much explained everything about a concept I was aware of but never really dug into, it was just something laser beams did that people doing much more important things with lasers than I was needed to be concerned with. Impressive project, I would never have been able to push through all those setbacks, some no doubt quite costly.
An incredible amount of work for one pair of hands! Worthy of admiration!
Amazing develoment capacity. Absolut respect ! Best luck.
Man, this is what I want to be one day. Incredibly knowledgeable and capable across a wide range of engineering disciplines.
Dude I just stumbled upon this video out of no wear and am blown away at one man is capable of with modern resources and perseverance. Incredible. Keep on keepin' on son.
i have absolutely zero idea wtf you're talking about for most of this video, but I like it
Love your content SO MUCH! Welcome BACK & Do more uploads pls 🔥
Just think about it. If you do something like this and you face an obstacle, there is no TH-cam, no reddit, no hidden forum posts. You have no help. You have to figure it out. Amazing - and I feel so stupid now, this is a whole different level.
Might be one of the best TH-cam Videos I've ever watched. You have my greatest respect. Just insane....
hey, I work @ Carbon as a controls engineer / architect and... I just wanted to say mad props. Thats an insane amount of work and there's so many details across many engineering disciplines (mechanical, electrical, optics, control systems, image processing, software / FW, materials). awesome job!
Amazing things like what you have created take a lot of time and never forget all that time that you spent will matter because you are making one of the coolest things I've ever seen
hats off to you sir ,testament of what a man with will is capable of.
I was just wondering about your project a bit ago. So glad you didn't give up.
everything remind me very much of a publication "development of a hollow laser beam for micromachining" by E. Demirci
in Advanced Optical Technologies long time ago. cool work, keep on!
Thank you for sharing the process. I have been clicking on your channel to see if I missed on any new videos once a few weeks. Congratulations on the successful benchy! Looking forward to watching your new updates.
excellent work! hope this starts the DIY metal printing revolution!!
wow this is incredible, can't believe you did it all by yourself, congrats and good luck finishing the project!
Extremely impressive! I've worked at two companies doing hardware engineering on LPBF machines. I can appreciate the complexity of what you are doing and cant believe you got this thing to print a benchy on the budget you are working with.
This video is amazing and you are a monster for keeping the project going after all these failures. I know a couple of companies that would actually pay you to miniaturize this or even put it into production. You should call a company like Prusa Research or one of the Universities that study this to see if they'll connect you with a great manufacturer
A job well done mate. Insane professional engineering for the money given. You've got some serious knowledge of optics and SLM printing. I've graduated my bachelors on experimenting with SLM printers, the second time I made a laser positioning system for my masters. The struggles I see in your video feels like a 10 of my project all cammed into one project. My respect! I hope you'll will have a lot more succes with these projects!
Amazing work! I worked with 3ds printers in Germany. Your research and success are amazing feats. I can see very similar implementations within titanium additive machines. Your findings are very inspirational on a consumer level! Thank you
Consider blowoff fans for spatter. And silicone blades for recoating powder
Because of genius people like you I am studying engeneering and want to achieve and create things like you !
Absolutely awe inspiring. I'm speechless at your breadth and depth of knowledge and sheer perseverance.
Wow! You've done a great job. It's incredible how consistently and purposefully you act!
Just brilliant! I too have spent many hours trying to film welding, your camera following the puddle was just wonderful. Bravo. Very interesting.
What a staggering effort! Congratulations for carrying through to a finished benchy.
This is outstanding. Your perseverance is greatly appreciated.
This is crazy, I watched the video and at some points I got lost. I never thought that metal printing has so much going for it and it's so deep. Really loved the video and can't wait to see where it goes. Much love
Even if the results look good, there are two main problems at cladding powder, surface tension and powder oxidation. cladding powder that has been exposed to oxidation is main problem. try a protective chamber with oxygen-free atmospheric gases.
secondary try to reduce heat tension by heating up your platform to more than 800 K. Thirdly, it would be advantageous to pre-sieve your colloidal powder, of course under inert gas. 🤐It is much easy to clad with powder fractions above 50µm
Congratulations on the benchy man, what a legend
This is so impressive. Your passion project is much better than mine!
Anyone that can do anything with an fpga has my respect great video
glad the project is still alive!
This was amazing, thank you for your time and money spent testing this for the betterment of this community
A lot of this went over my head, but I still enjoyed the video.
wow… i think thats the coolest looking benchy i ever saw and the proccess behind it is even cooler. totally love that you didnt give up and you posted a video explaining all of it. really great to see it and i hope you the best of luck in other projects.
You have certainly mastered a lot of skills to get where you are. Godspeed.
Hot Damn!! I had thought you stopped the project, but here we are, printing a Benchy. Absolutely mind blowing. See you again, whenever that is. Good luck and godspeed!!
Mind blown. Those are amazing results
This video is absolutely bonkers! Wow, thanks so much for sharing and persevering. Seeing the process is so much more interesting than the usual TH-cam shake and bake projects. Respect!
After watching this I am not confident enough in calling myself an engineer anymore, holy smokes. Great Job!
Wish you all the success in the world. It's never a problem, only a challenge!
I think the first method definitely deserves more exploring. It seems a more likely mass market solution to metal 3D printing.
When it comes to your laser welding layer height being lower than expected: you hit it right on the money, every pass will accumulate heat if not given time to cool in between, and that can easily lead to your weld puddle being much more spread out, overheating of the material, and warping like you saw on your plate.
You'll almost certainly need to include a heat sink below the baseplate as a way to pull heat from the part between layers to prevent them from sagging, we tend to use copper backing bars behind thin sheet or to fill holes, as it works great to pull heat away and most filler metals won't stick to copper.
As for beads of molten wire sticking to the feeding nozzle: welding supply stores often sell Mig Nozzle "tip dip" or spray that acts as a coating to prevent spatter from adhering, that might be worth looking into.
One more thing: the first layer of your print should be using more heat/power than every successive layer because you want to fuse the weld to the base plate. After that, be sure your gcode turns down the heat for each successive pass as heat builds up within the part.
There's going to be a lot of tuning required to get that machine printing benchies once you've gotten it mostly working, but most of that is stuff you can learn by asking welders luckily lol
Also, I wonder if you could do SLS printing using SAM (Submerged Arc Welding) powder? You might want to look into that as another possible way to print metal.
Thank you for sharing your through development and testing process!
I'm 2.75 minutes in and I'm blown away by your confidence to design your own fuggin camera for your own laser welder. So smart, man
Let's make this video go viral! Really good content!
24:36 when you know you're in the wrong lecture hall, but it's interesting, and you're too embarrassed to leave.
I understood about 20% of the video, language barier and all but still this is over my pay grade :) I have no idea why I watched it fully but.. here we are. Thanks for the lecture :)
You don't know how long I've been waiting for this moment. I almost shed a tear when I saw the thumbnail
For the filling, I recommend a checkerboard pattern and a second pass to make it flatter and better bond to the base layer.
wow, it's so motivating to see your progress. keep at it. The results look really cool! I'm looking forward to the next video! Thanks also for showing all the mistakes and solutions.
I'm sure other people might've said this but for your leveling hammer, invest in a rubber or plastic tipped mallet. It is generally what we use for leveling / adjusting in the shop. Also might want to use a test indicator instead of a travel indicator for your leveling; the dial may take a minute to learn to use but they allow for much more accurate leveling. Really cool project!
Wow, incredible work! Well done.
Man, you built not one but three different designs never giving up in the process 🎉
This is crazy. Metallurgy, optics, electricity, electronics, software, mechanics, systems & more? How are you so knowledged on all these difficult topics? How is this even possible? How long did it take to learn this much? How do you learn and improve your skillset?
Absolutely amazing work man.
Genuinely advancing humanity...
Well done cobba👍👍
Hey, a lot of professional systems use carbide blades for layer deposition and scraping. You might want to look into replacement carbide blades for paint scrapers. They're flat and sharp and fairly inexpensive! This has a second effect of being able to knock off high spots, but also can jam and remove parts if the build
Also, stiffness of the recoater and powder beds is super important. Some linear slides may help tremendously
times like these that you wish that you could give more than one like. This is so cool, and immensely well done!
That's the most impressive benchy I have ever seen! 😊
Absolutley mammoth undertaking man. Very impressive!!!
Amazing dedication to the process! I almost never comment but this video deserves more recognition. I’ll be coming back for more :)
NO WAY i just watched a few of your videos and thought well this is a really great high quality interesting content and was so sad seeing no uploads for over a year and now you come out with this banger. Keep it up amazing work.
I've been following your project for a while. I think the first vid I saw from you was your 2nd or third. The progress and documentation you show is awesome dude. Really excited for the next vid.
I love those wire feeders. I thought what you had looked great.
Your work and determination is top-shelf. Keep up the good fight!
It's funny, I understood almost nothing you said or did, but I couldn't quit watching.
Oh yeah! Yes yes yes! Thanks! That's what searched during last several monthes!