[HN Gopher] Mobile 3D Printer Can Print Directly on Your Floor
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       Mobile 3D Printer Can Print Directly on Your Floor
        
       Author : rbanffy
       Score  : 19 points
       Date   : 2024-11-25 11:41 UTC (6 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | Can it print furniture?
        
         | seltzered_ wrote:
         | "Currently, MobiPrint can only "park and print." The robot base
         | cannot move during printing to make large objects, like a
         | mobility ramp. Printing designs larger than the robot is one of
         | Campos Zamora's goals in the future. "
        
           | rbanffy wrote:
           | Well, you could put a multi-axis robot arm with sufficient
           | reach on top of the base, a counterweight on one arm (or
           | more) and some laser interferometry to position the head very
           | precisely in relation to the room, floor, walls, and printed
           | article. Would be interesting to see it stretching the
           | printer arm while counterbalancing it with the other arms
           | like a ballerina.
        
           | moffkalast wrote:
           | Ok so in a nutshell they took a turtlebot and stuck a 3d
           | printer on top of it. Crazy what qualifies as an IEEE article
           | these days.
           | 
           | Wasn't there a working implementation of cooperative
           | holonomic robots a few years back that each had a print head
           | and they could print arbitrarily large parts by driving
           | around instead of using a gantry for the xy axis? I'm trying
           | to find the article but Google just swarms me with a
           | quadrillion results of how to 3D print a mecanum robot so
           | there's that.
        
       | bix6 wrote:
       | "MobiPrint, designed by Daniel Campos Zamora at the University of
       | Washington, consists of a modified off-the-shelf 3D printer atop
       | a home vacuum robot."
       | 
       | Love the creativity / repurposing.
        
       | shermantanktop wrote:
       | I view this as closer to conceptual performance art than a
       | practical solution to an engineering problem.
       | 
       | TFA article talks about how the robot "feels" and the
       | "relationship" between the printer and the environment. That's
       | perfectly valid but it is artist's statement stuff.
       | 
       | What I didn't see is any discussion about taking the fixed
       | coordinate system defined by a printer's volume and translating
       | that into the larger space, which would presumably need to be
       | mapped to 0.1 mm precision. Or at least any previously printed
       | objects would need to act as registration points at that level of
       | precision.
        
         | deskr wrote:
         | I'm definitely giving this one a chance. It's version 1. I'm
         | convinced that many good things will evolve from this.
        
           | 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
           | I can already print human scale objects domestically on a
           | belt printer. But only on a single axis. Something like this
           | would have the advantage of being able to print at human
           | scale on all axes. But you'd need a human sized printer on at
           | least one axis. At which point, you have to question what
           | you're doing.
        
             | Teever wrote:
             | It would be a fun project to figure out how to optimize the
             | support material necessary for this printer to raise itself
             | up and move itself around a print that is far larger than
             | itself.
             | 
             | Sort of like scaffolding for commercial construction.
        
       | deskr wrote:
       | Is the design/parts/source available?
        
       | globalise83 wrote:
       | Not exactly new: some domestic pets are also mobile 3D printers
       | capable of printing directly on your floor.
        
         | kotaKat wrote:
         | So if we mount this to a Spot or a Unitree Go... we have the
         | pinnacle of robotic 3D-printed poop.
        
       | IanCal wrote:
       | People reading this may also like hexapod from (my goodness) 16+
       | years ago, which was a little robot cnc machine
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hEXwyJ2B78
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quN37YskoaM
        
       | tdeck wrote:
       | For those who aren't familiar, poor first layer adhesion to the
       | print surface is one of the most common causes of print failure
       | in 3D printing. Typically you want a very clean build surface
       | made of an appropriate material, and sometimes covered in glue
       | stick or hairspray.
       | 
       | I can imagine they went through a lot of false starts with this.
        
         | tylerflick wrote:
         | I can't imagine this working that well on a cold floor either.
        
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