Olaf Diegel’s Post

It’s Alive!!! Here’s the weekly progress update on our little donut engine. The lab demonstrator is now up and running. Just a few more tweaks to get it looking perfect. We are making the engine just for the fun of it, as part of our Creative-Fridays program, and it is intended purely as a cool demonstrator of various additive manufacturing process rather than as a mega-efficient/powerful engine. It will be a working engine, but the initial version will be compressed air powered and eventually used to power a 3D printed motorcycle (Creative-Fridays project for next year). The parts were printed in Aluminium (AlSi10Mg) (but the crank and conrod on the working version will be in CX stainless steel) on our EOS M290 metal powder bed fusion system. #cdamlab #CAMMD  #uoa #3dprinting #additivemanufacturing #EOS #dfam ASTM Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence Wohlers Associates, Powered by ASTM The University of Auckland

Line ‘em up! As the next step in our computationally generated factory, here’s a little chicane conveyor that lines up parts so they all face the same orientation. In the full system, we’ll have 2 of these double-belted conveyors in a row, with each set of belts going bit faster, to end up with parts all facing the same direction. In the automated #nTop workflow, you set a few parameters like the width of the parts being rotated, And the length of the belt (in this example O-ring diameters), and everything else is automatically generated. It’s all evolving towards a suite of automated factory production workflows. The workflow was created in nTop, and the conveyor belt rollers and motor couplings were printed in nylon 12 (PA2200) on our EOS Formiga P110 Velocis powder bed fusion system, and held together by a few bits of laser-cut MDF, and driven by some $0.65 geared DC motors and O-rings from AliExpress, and voltage regulators to control the speeds. #cdamlab #CAMMD  #uoa #3dprinting #additivemanufacturing #ntop #EOS #dfam ASTM Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence Wohlers Associates, Powered by ASTM The University of Auckland

One step closer… Here’s the weekly progress update on our little donut engine. Crankshaft and conrod are done and just the pistons and rings left to finish. Big thanks to Simon Chan for taking the lead on all the machining! I am away for the next 2 weeks, but the following week, we should, hopefully, have the first demonstrator working. We are making the engine just for the fun of it, as part of our creative-Fridays program, and it is intended purely as a cool demonstrator of various additive manufacturing process rather than as a mega-efficient/powerful engine. It will be a working engine, but the initial version will be compressed air powered before we do a more ambitious petrol-powered version. The parts were printed in Aluminium (AlSi10Mg) (but the crank and conrod on the working version will be in CX stainless steel) on our EOS Formiga M290 metal powder bed fusion system. #cdamlab #CAMMD  #uoa #3dprinting #additivemanufacturing #EOS #dfam The University of Auckland , ASTM Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence , Wohlers Associates, Powered by ASTM

Happy accidents! Here’s my little “Jeff Koons meets Damian Hirst” 3D printed balloon dog. The picture of the one on the left is ‘as printed’ from about a year ago. The as-printed colour of the clear resin is quite yellow. I gave one to one of my colleagues who had it on a bookshelf in his office, about half a meter away from the ceiling office UV lights. The picture on the right is the one from his office after several months of ambient UV bleaching. This was just a happy accident but caused quite an incredible difference in the reduction of the natural as-printed yellow colour of the resin! No animals were harmed in the making of this work. The balloon dog was printed in full colour and clear acrylate resin through material jetting and sprayed with 2K clearcoat for that high-gloss finish. #cdamlab #CAMMD  #uoa #3dprinting #additivemanufacturing #dfam ASTM Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence Wohlers Associates, Powered by ASTM  The University of Auckland

The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress (Philip Roth). Here’s this week's progress on our donut engine. First half has been cleaned up, with just a bit of machining left. The other half will be done by early next week, and the crank and pistons by the end of next week. Big thanks to Simon Chan for taking the lead on the machining! We are making the engine just for the fun of it, as part of our creative-Fridays program, and it is intended purely as a cool demonstrator of various additive manufacturing process rather than as a mega-efficient/powerful engine. It will be a working engine, but the initial version will be compressed air powered before we do a more ambitious petrol-powered version. The part was printed in Aluminium (AlSi10Mg) on our EOS Formiga M290 metal powder bed fusion system. #cdamlab #CAMMD  #uoa #3dprinting #additivemanufacturing #EOS #dfam The University of Auckland ASTM Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence Wohlers Associates, Powered by ASTM

What was I doing a decade ago! Was going through my archive and found this in-progress assembly picture of one of the drum kits I did back in 2013. The picture is of the sections of the drum shells being epoxied together on our kitchen counter (much to my wife’s delight! 😡) The drum body shells were printed using polymer powder bed fusion (SLS) in glass filled nylon or in regular nylon 12 (polyamide 2200), depending on who I ordered the prints from. The kits were printed on either large-format 3D Systems sPro systems or on large-format EOS-P systems. The body shells were printed in sections and glued together with epoxy so that I could have the whole kit nested into a single print. If they had been printed as single pieces, it would have taken 3 or 4 builds. A Sonor SmartForce drum kit that was used as a donor-kit for all the hardware #cdamlab #CAMMD  #uoa #3dprinting #additivemanufacturing  #drums #dfam ASTM Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence Wohlers Associates, Powered by ASTM The University of Auckland

To post, or not to post, that is the question… Some friends asked me why I post a lot on LinkedIn. I don’t post with the main purpose of showing the world what we are doing. That’s just a bonus! I tend to think of it in reverse, and rather use it as a tool to force me to get things done. I have a personal target of trying to get one real project ‘done’ each week. Could be a new product, a journal paper, a new course, some working code, or could just be a really cool print. So that’s around 50 ‘outputs’ a year as a personal target to aim for. Although I don’t always meet that target, my LinkedIn posts are just a way of forcing me to get those outputs done. If I haven’t posted in a while, I give myself a kick in the rear and force myself to get something done rather than just talking about it. It makes for a good motivational tool… 😊 I tell students that their ideas are worth nothing unless they can prove they work. Unless the idea is executed and turned into reality, it has little value. So, I try to walk the walk and to live by the same principle myself. The guitar is just some eye-candy for the post but is related to the topic. And, rarely for me, it is not 3D printed! 🤣 It was a birthday guitar I painted for a friend who is a huge fan of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (a Japanese manga series by Hirohiko Araki). For me, it was about learning a new skill. It was my first time doing a stencil paint job, so I had to learn how to vinyl cut, experience the joys of weeding the stencil artwork before applying it to the guitar, spraying it, and then removing the stencil. Lots of fun! The artwork design was done by Emmanuel Lee, and the project was organized by Shino Ikeda. #cdamlab #CAMMD  #uoa #3dprinting #additivemanufacturing #dfam The University of Auckland ASTM Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence Wohlers Associates, Powered by ASTM

As Homer would say: Mmmmmm… Spaghetti donut… The Medusa-like nature of conformal cooling channels makes them look almost like an HR Giger artwork. Here’s the first half of the donut engine we have finally started building. We are making the engine just for the fun of it, as part of our creative-Fridays program, and it is intended purely as a cool demonstrator of various additive manufacturing process rather than as a mega-efficient/powerful engine. It will be a working engine, but the initial version will be compressed air powered before we do a more ambitious petrol-powered version. The part was printed in Aluminium (AlSi10Mg) on our EOS Formiga M290 metal powder bed fusion system. #cdamlab #CAMMD  #uoa #3dprinting #additivemanufacturing #EOS #dfam The University of Auckland ASTM Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence Wohlers Associates, Powered by ASTM

Aerodynamics are for people who can’t build engines (Enzo Ferrari) 🤣. Here’s the little impeller that will serve as the water pump to circulate water in the conformal cooling channels that surround the donut engine we have finally started building. The other printed bits include the crankshaft and piston connecting rods. We are making the engine just for the fun of it, as part of our creative-Fridays program, and it is intended purely as a cool demonstrator of various additive manufacturing process rather than as a mega-efficient/powerful engine. It will be a working engine, but the initial version will be compressed air powered before we do a more ambitious petrol-powered version. The parts were printed in Aluminium (AlSi10Mg) on our EOS Formiga M290 metal powder bed fusion system. The aluminium crankshaft will be used on the sectioned open demonstrator engine. The crankshaft for the working version has already been printed in CX stainless steel. #cdamlab #CAMMD  #uoa #3dprinting #additivemanufacturing #EOS #dfam ASTM Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence, Wohlers Associates, Powered by ASTM, The University of Auckland

Life is better with a side of wasabi! I posted our little automatically generated conveyor belt a few days ago and Travis C. suggested the sushi needed to be painted. So my talented wife, Akiko Diegel, painted them up to look absolutely amazing! The sushi plates are 50mm in diameter. The sushi is just the eye-candy; The important bit is the computationally designed conveyor belt it sits on… In the automated workflow, you set a few parameters like the width of the conveyor belt, and the path you want it to follow, and everything else is automatically generated. It’s all evolving towards a suite of automated factory production workflows. The workflow was created in nTop, and the conveyor belt links were printed in nylon 12 (PA2200) on our EOS Formiga P110 Velocis powder bed fusion system, and held together by a few bits of laser-cut MDF. #cdamlab #CAMMD  #uoa #3dprinting #additivemanufacturing #ntop #EOS #dfam ASTM Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence Wohlers Associates, Powered by ASTM The University of Auckland