JAKE

JAKE

CNC Wire Bender

I was fascinated by the video shown to us at the initial PD2 presentation showing a CNC tube bender.

I thought that it may be possible to convert a 3D printer into a tube bender.

Below is a sketch of what I imagined the machine to look like.

It works by feeding thin wire through the extruder. A structure is built beneath the extruder that has a precise hole in ot to allow the wire to pass through.

I will code a g-code that will extrude the wire and move the x-axis accordingly in order to bend the wire.

I figure I will be able to make the forms below quite easily.

I am interested in finding a way of creating angles greater that 90degrees to possibly speed up wire model making.

I worked out the build volume of the Ultimake original and began building a structure to fit inside the printer.

Below is the model of the structure.

Below is the result of using Slicer for Fusion360 to create the laser cut form.

This was the first test of the wire bender. It made a very primitive result as the extruder could not handle the wire and the fact that I was controlling the x-axis manually through cura.

The final thing stopping this from working smoothly seemed to be the extruder assembly (below).

As the wire is thinner and slippier than the PLA usually intended for the printer, it was necessary for me to hack the printer.

below I added a TPU gripper (blue) to the extruder wheel that I printed.

As i couldn't manage to figure this out on the printers in school, I tried it on my ender 3 at home.

surprisingly, it worked like a dream.

I managed to write a few types of g-code for the printer and I ran them.

One was a simple back and forward that createed a zig-zag form, and the other was a rotating motion that created the coil forms.

JAKE