Glossary

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Glossary

ABS

Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. A thermoplastic used as a 3D printer material.

Often ABS is used as a short form, actually referring to filament made of ABS: do you use ABS in your Mendel?

Bed

The build plate of the 3D printer on which parts are actually made.

Belt

Toothed gear belt. Usually fiber-reinforced to prevent stretching. Used to transfer movement from the motors to other parts of a machine

BOM

Bill of materials. A list of parts. There are BOM for the whole Mendel and for individual components.

Carriage

The moving middle assembly on the x-axis of Mendel which holds the extruder. Often referred to as: x-carriage.

EVA

Ethylene vinyl acetate. Several early RepRap research experiments used off-the-shelf EVA glue sticks in hot-glue guns. Those glue sticks are mostly EVA which melts around 85°C.

Extrude

The act of placing the build material on the build platform. Normally by heating thermoplastic to a liquid state and pushing it through a small nozzle.

Extruder

A group of parts which handles feeding and extruding of the build material. Consists of two assemblies: a cold side to pull and feed the thermoplastic from the spool, and a hot side that melts and extrudes the thermoplastic.

FDM

Fused deposition method. Same as FFF.

FFF

Fused filament fabrication. Where a droplet of one material (plastic, wax, metal, etc.) is deposited on top of or alongside the same material making a joint (by heat or adhesion).

Filament

Two uses:

  • Plastic material made into (often 3mm) string to be used as raw material in 3D printers.
  • Extruded plastic (often <1 mm)

G-code

The information sent over the wire from a PC to most computer numerical control (CNC) machines -- including most RepRaps -- is in G-code. While in principle a human could directly type G-code commands to a RepRap, most people prefer to use one of the many CAM Toolchains that reads a STL file and sends lines of G-code over the wire to the machine.

Heated Bed

A build surface that is warmed in order to keep the base of an extruded part from cooling (and shrinking) too quickly. Such shrinking leads to warping internal stresses in RP parts. The most common result is corners of parts lifting off the build surface. Heated beds usually yield higher quality finished builds.

Hot End

The parts of the extruder that get hot enough to melt plastic, or potentially other materials. Hot end parts use materials that can stand up to ~240 C heat (for current thermoplastic extrusion). The hot end usually refers to the tip of the extruder as it should be hottest there.

Kapton tape

Heat-resistant polyimide adhesive tape, used to secure the heating element to the extruder barrel. It can also be used on the surface of a heated bed.

Nichrome

An alloy of nickel and chromium. Nichrome wire is used as a heating element in many extruder barrels and some heated bed designs. Simpler and less messy enamel resistors are often used for the same purpose.

NEMA

Parametric

(Adjective) adjustable in all dimensions. A parametric model is one that can be resized and/or distorted to suit the user's needs. If the widget has a 1 cm hole in it, you can select that hole and make it a 5 mm hole with a few clicks. As opposed to triangular mesh (see STL), which is more difficult to adjust.

The native format of several Useful Software Packages can store parametric models.

PEEK

Polyether ether ketone. A high temperature thermoplastic used as a thermal barrier in the extruder.

PLA

Polylactic acid. A biodegradable thermoplastic polymer used as a 3D printer material.

Often PLA is used as a short form, actually referring to filament made of PLA: I use PLA in my Mendel.

PTFE

Polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon). A slippery thermoplastic often used as a barrel in the extruder to minimize friction with the filament.

Raft

A technique used to prevent warping. Parts are built on top of a 'raft' of disposable material instead of directly on the build surface. The raft is larger than the part and so has more adhesion. Rarely used with heated build surfaces.

RAMPS

Reprap Arduino Mega Pololu Shield - one of the more popular flavors of the "Official" Electronics.

RP

Rapid prototyping. Creating an object in a matter of hours on a "3D printer" as opposed to sending out a job to a modelling shop that can take days or weeks.

RepRap

A RepRap machine is a rapid prototyping machine that can manufacture a significant fraction of its own parts.

The RepRap project is a quest to make a desktop-sized RepRap machine.

v.t. (in lower case: to reprap): to make something in a RepRap machine. ( RepRapWiki:About )

reprappable

reprappable - adj. capable of being made in a RepRap machine. ( RepRapWiki:About )

RepStrap

A 3d printing machine which can be used to make a RepRap, but is not a reprap itself, as it wasn't made by something like itself. Becoming less common as Mendel printed plastic parts become more available, but still very popular. Often sold in kit form or custom-made from scrounged parts. See also: What Tooling Do You Have

Stepper Motor

Motors which operate only in discrete increments of rotation. This is the type of motor most commonly used in Mendel, the earlier Darwin, and Repstraps.

STL

Stereo Lithographic

A recommended file format used to describe 3D objects. A design program (e.g. AoI) can produce an STL file which can then be fed to a 3D printer or 3D rendering graphics package. Possible alternatives to STL are discussed at a community specification for an improvement to STL files..

Thick Sheet

A firm flat sheet of material 4mm - 6mm thick used as a printing surface. A variety of materials have been used, but the most important property is that it must be flat.

Vitamin

A non-replicated part

In RepRap jargon, a "vitamin" is anything that you need to build a RepRap which cannot be printed on a RepRap. For example, bolts.

Wade's Extruder

An alternative to the standard extruder