Reflection 6: More research opportunities with 3D printers

Out of interest, I went back to the lab to meet Joe to work with the 3D printers on March 16th for 3 hours. We were still in the process of building parts for the 3D printer which had to be rebuilt. So we were asked to start working on the rods for the x-axis of the printers. We were given a replica of it and asked to make it the same way.

We took some time to figure out how it should be built and where we should start first. So we eventually started making it. The biggest difficulty we faced was to put the screws through the parts. The parts were brand new so the holes were approximately the right size but not exactly big enough to put the screws and bolts through them easily. So we had to put in extra efforts to squeeze through the screws and make the screw imprints on the parts. But we were able to do that. Sometime we figured out that we forgot to add washers. They are really tiny pieces so we forgot to put that in before the screws many times.

But eventually we were able to put together almost about 3 fourths of the whole piece. We hope to finish it up the next time we get to the lab. And I already know that it will feel very rewarding to see that I built a whole part of a 3D printer fro scratch.