DIY 3D Printer: The CandyFab 4000 Machine
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008Just when you thought the Fabaloo DIY Fab@Home 3D Printer machine was a big sticky mess by squirting goo onto things, there is a new even more sticky 3d Printer design you have to see. The CandyFab 4000 machine by a company called Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories is a DIY 3D printer that utilizes hot air and sugar to craft real life 3D objects. The low-cost method used in this 3d printer is called Selective Hot Air Sintering and Melting (SHASAM). The printer uses sugar as a powder they is laid onto a flat bed in thin layers, then the CNC hot air blower melts the sugar wherever the 3d computer model has a solid body. As each layer finishes a new layer of sugar is put on and the process is repeated until the entire model is complete. After completed, the heated and melted sugar is very hard and glassy. The finished object is a bit rough on the edges, but can be smoothed out. The 3d sugar printer can fabricate fairly large scale objects.
The software for the CandyFab 4000 3D printing machine is designed to be open source for the DIY do it yourself home builder. Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories wants this project to be available for interested hobbyists who want an alternative more affordable rapid prototyping machine. The open source software makes this a project that other people can help improve as well. Hopefully in the near future the designs will be greatly improved with higher resolution prototypes.
The CandyFab 4000 printer is the cheapest 3d printer available today, the total cost of building this 3D printer is only around $1000 plus some spare parts laying around. That is much less than any other design out there. And not only that, you can build it yourself! There are even 3D Google Sketchup models available online for free. All you have to do is order the parts and send some of the parts to local machine shops to make the parts and then you have you very own personal 3d Printer! I think it’s a great project because the materials are so affordable! At the cost of only $1000 you could even build more than one! B)
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