I need to come up with a research project about 3D printing

Have any useful or recommended links for that Chinese Reprap thingamajig?

Reprap is one of the 1st 3d printer models. There have been several revisions since then. The goal of the reprap project was to have 100% of the parts 3d printed, but they quickly found out it's impossible to 3d print stepper motors and electronics, and some parts that could be 3d printed (frame for instance) just shouldn't because they'd make a really shitty printer. I call them Chinese because many of the reprap /diy/ kits that are sold come from china. The quality of parts is cheap but usually pretty decent for the price. Occasionally you'll hear someone who gets bent rods but replacement rods aren't too expensive.

3dprintersonlinestore.com/
Here's a site that has many printers for sale. Just search for reprap to see. Also /diy/ always has a general thread and they're pretty knowledgeable about hobby printing.

I thought they could etch boards now?

I would do a very cheap design showing what one can do now with like no money.

youtu.be/v2FNUNALSTw

3D printed steeper motor

I did my undergraduate project on 3D printing. I was trying to produce optical bench components for the optics lab that were interchangable with Thorlabs parts (the most common type you buy). I saved them a fortune on parts. Perhaps you could try something similar, find something thats expensive and niche and try to reproduce it.

You can make circuit boards with a 3D printer, sure, but they're kinda shitty and you can't make the actual components for them. You especially super can't print microchips.

awesome idea, I will look into that!

3d printers are best when they're making custom pieces that are cost infective to make molds for. Custom footwear, custom ear pieces. Almost anything that needs to integrate with the human body because everyone's body is shaped differently. Some prosthetics are 3d printed.
Would be nice if you could 3d print custom glasses for people, lenses and all. T-glass has a filament that might do the trick. It's used for creating custom light pipes that go in electronics/leds.
Would be REALLY cool if you would walk up to a booth or machine, have it scan your eyes, then print set of glasses to your prescription.

in clandestine firearm production in west africa. look it up, you really couldnt tell the difference between theirs and factory made without having it in your hands.

3D print the worlds biggest bong

Speaking of 3D printers have you seen the one Carbon put out?

It prints continuously without discrete layers so you get isotropic properties.

3d print a barebones CCD camera satellite (sphere-sat, sized of a grapefruit) which can be deployed in a decaying planetary orbit and can scan the planet's surface and send back footage to the shuttle.

can add more sensors to it to develop telemetry, radiation readings etc.

$3K ?? OMG !
Get cash.
1 Score a bag of kush
2 Jerk, or if accompanied, copulate your buddies like no tomorrow
3 if still cash, repeat 1
4 bullshit about better tomorrow, great technology, usual stuff.

I bought an flsun kossel delta just a few weeks back. The hardest part of any consumer 3d printer is the calibration. Getting the absolute cleanest print as possible is quite a challenge as you need to tweak pretty much everything so it's just right. Note that any 3d printer is basically just a "stupid" computer, that just follows the commands that a more powerful computer has computed for it (the slicer program on your desktop/laptop). It doesn't actually know where your object it, it just follows command and assumes a whole lot in the process. To make sure it assumes the right parameters is therefore a challenge. Figuring this out could be worthy of a project, although 3k in funding is a bit overkill as you'll only need like 100 bucks in filament tops for this.

I was reading a book on military science once, and one of the things they talked about was that the fat cushions in the heel of the foot (which is made of a particular type of fat that's very fibrous or something and doesn't really occur anywhere else in the body) can be destroyed or blown out with sufficient trauma (e.g. standing on the deck of a ship when it's stuck by a large shell), and that currently (as of the time of writing) the only suitable replacements for the fat pad come from corpse donors.

And if you can't get a replacement then you basically can't walk because the bone of your foot is grinding against whatever you're walking on and can actually wear through the skin of your foot, exposing the bone.

If you could 3d print implant-grade artificial fat pads it could make a real difference helping rehabilitate wounded veterans, and you'd probably get a lot of respect as well.

make a gun

Why don't they just use silicone implant or something? Works for boobs.

This.
Make a presentation about how 3d printers need some identifier so that nobody can be shot with a gun made by one without some identifier.

Some day when you get to feel a boob you'll notice that it's soft and fatty to the touch. Compare with poking the heel of your foot, which feels much denser because the fat is closely packed and interwoven with fibrous tissue.

This type of tissue does exist in other places on the body e.g. the "ball" of the foot, but not in enough quantities to make grafts. And just plain silicon like in breast implants would not provide the same cushioning function.

The reason I suggested it to OP is that they might be able to infill medical grade silicone with a lattice of denser plastic to provide a reasonable approximation of the fat pad.

And how would you provide the identifier exactly?

Well, regular printers (at least some models, mostly the big commercial / industrial ones) print tiny serial number codes onto your printouts - see this for example w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/

For a 3d printer, it would be harder since most only have one type of filament, so no colour (or in this case, material) coding. Maybe it could have the print head scrape patterns into the cooling filament or something like that.

This is somewhat off topic, but if people were truly concerned about guns lacking identifiers they would stop the sale of 80% lowers (for those unaware, you can buy a lower receiver of a rifle, the part which normally has the serial number, but only 80% complete and with no serial number, and with a small amount of machining make it functional). Trying to regulate home manufactories, aside from by regulating the sale of chemical reagents, radioactive materials, etc. is just silly.

In any case, these 3d-printed guns are normally so poorly manufactured (due to the properties of the materials used, who would have guessed that ABS plastic is a poor substitute for steel) that the only person in significant danger is the person operating it.

>It prints continuously without discrete layers so you get isotropic properties
The problem is it doesn't do this for things with big cross sections. Thats why in all their videos you see lattice constructions being printed.
The oxygen filled deadzone doesn't replenish fast enough so they have to go back to the layer aproach. Also Teflon-AF is expensive as fuck and the window made out of it degrades and is considered a consumable.

OP here,

I kind of like this idea. Maybe if not exactly what you are suggesting, I can try to figure out the best structure and material which will be most similar to a human fat pad or muscle, at least in terms of feel.

>Some day when you get to feel a boob
>when
>not 'if'
DELET