RockyAussie

Why not ice instead of glass? Just make em in the freezer. Could even just print the tray. Ahhhh tooo many project and so little time..... back to that radio controlled robot Brian

I have learnt to keep the filament in a sealed packet when not in use as it does suck up the moisture when the humidity is high. Also I have found it better in Cura to put the filament setting at 1.74 instead of 1.75 as this makes it pump a little bit extra which makes the adhesion to each layer a little more attached. I have found that with some colours that they like a different heat setting and so far my favourite all rounder is the silver at 212c on my machine. Running a little hot can also give a better adhesion to itself. I run the bed temperature at 65c and as long as I clean the glass each time with a quick spray of isopropyl alcohol I almost never have any problems with the job coming loose or unstuck. Brian

Thanks Uwe. I will keep an eye out but let me know when they are done if you don't mind. Brian

How many to you expect to produce in a day with that setup?? Sorry Dwight I may have misunderstood your question with regards to the numbers. What I though you were asking was how many pouches do I expect to produce in a day not how many moulds could I print. The printer would be busy for nearly 2 days to print I set and the cost $8.23 for 1 and $12.96au for the other + a bit of power. The printer is just a Prusa i3 with a few improvements I made with regards to stability of printing etc. How long to learn how to program it....... maybe 3 days of reading online in reprap forums and the like and the drawing stuff is just a bit more playing with stuff in AutoCad .Hardest part was teaching myself to always keep copying the part and move it by having a 2 line reference point to always get back to exactly the same position on any copy. Basically a couple of days or so. There are a lot of simpler and cheaper drawing programs out there that can do the same thing now days. Once the drawing is done you just make a stl file out of the part and then put it in to a program like Cura which is what I use. From there it works out a lot of what you want to print and has suggestions for settings and can be sent to any 3D printer in the world.There is a lot of forums and stuff on line to help with this but really it isn't all that hard. Many people on this forum could use it well as the main thing needed is the ability to conceptualise something and find a way to make it happen. Robots will take over much of the work in the near future but there will be work for those that can conceptualise what people will want those robots to produce. Regards Brian

I have to point out that even with a large swing head hydraulic press doing big knives can be difficult. If you need to click left and right you will end up with bowed knives. Polished sharp knives can reduce the pressure of the cutting a lot. My opinion for what it is worth would say that any knife bigger than a 12" circle would be hard to do with a manual pull down set up. Using a hydraulic jack set up could give you more but the need to get the pressure in the middle is a pain. Have a look at the recent topic I posted-http://leatherworker.net/forum/topic/77677-how-to-make-a-press-for-moulding-leather-pouches-and-such/?page=3&tab=comments#comment-515365 You can see in there where I tested this set up for small clicking. I am thinking of doing one more for clicking along that construction line but with double pressing rods actuated by a single hand lever all mounted on top. With 2 rods pushing down together the need to centre up before cutting would be reduced considerably. A bit of metal work drilling mostly would be required and a touch of welding may be necessary. Have you any patterns/pics in mind you would like to cut?

In the past I have mostly had to do this sort of thing in wood but there are quite a few advantages to working with printing plastic. One I like a lot is that if I want to change the mould a bit a little bit of redrawing and a new one gets made while I can keep on working. Another is once I'm happy with the mould I can get many more made whenever I need them and again while I keep drinkin working. As for how many in a day I expect 25 would be easy but I suppose 100+ if I wanted to get all serious.

Here a few more ideas you might like.

In the next lot of pictures you can see the making of the handcuff pouch after the moulding. This is about 27mm deep (1 1/8") For you Aussies it is black Allaska (buffalo I think) from East coast Leather. Reckon they'll give me a discount on the next order for the plug ??? The inner mould came out most easily first. Here you can see where I did not sand down my hardwood all that well on the press and it left a few grain marks in the top. Blunt sandpaper and too far from town. This picture shows I could have reduced the leather overhand a fair amount on my first cutting. The next picture shows that I have trimmed the overhang off neat with the relief line and cut out the back as well. Now I have stitched a strap to the back which I forgot to photo and proceeded to glue the pieces together. I did some edging first as well. following pics show it stitched and edged and polished and this prototype is now ready to check if the handcuffs will fit. With a bit of luck I will find out tomorrow. That's it for now. Brian

For those interested to see the 3D printed mould for the handcuffs here are some pictures to see. The first 2 pictures show the inner mould printed OK but did take nearly a full day to print. I will point out that this is not a veg tan leather and is a retan of some sort. It would have been a bit easier on a unpainted smooth veg. These next pictures show the printing of the outer mould which failed. Where I had put a 6mm(1/4")wide hollow to give the leather some relief on the fold it got caught up at the top of the hollow. It gets a bit funny when you print in the air without supports some times. Fussy B things. Went back to the drawing board and made a few changes as follows. Note: I decided to leave out a few of the support holes and made the top and the bottom of the mould splayed more on one side and reduced the hollow to 5mm wide. One side of the mould can now do a bit of pre shaping if needed. Oh and for you 3D people the fill is 30% and the wall thicknesses and top and bottom etc are 2mm. The tube holes are to give extra resistance to crushing as they as well get a 2mm wall. Next one I will try 20% fill and 1.6mm wall thicknesses to save some printing time. Had to watch this layer to make sure it didn't fail again and I did have to push some raising spots down a couple of times. Turned out alright. Next pic shows the press had no trouble pushing the leather in to shape. Did the jack turning down by hand mostly. Notice the water being squeezed out of the edge of the leather. I left the mould in the press overnight in this case to dry as this mould was made to test my sizing and design first before making the more elaborate moulds that will have allowances for clamps to be clipped into whilst in the press. As usual I should not have worried so much as it came out pretty well as the next round of pics I load should show. Can't fit any more pics in this load so I'll be back later.

@Uwe Do you have any of these available to buy? Regards Brian

I dont know but I think it may be for rolling down the back stitch line on shoe uppers. After they are stitched the need to be pressed out very flat but still maintain the curve to fit the last. A picture taken side on I think would show the post is a curved anvil shape.

At least you can remember to take the knife in the first place.

@gigi although it works it is a little catchy as yet. I'm thinking I might go for a pneumatic ram on top possibly. I made one awhile back out of a 4" aluminium pipe and and some other stuff. Other than just wanting to learn how to do it I never really had a use for it but this might be it. Time will tell I guess. Brian

Looks Ok to me @plinkercases and I reckon that will be a a lot better on your pocket wear and tear as well. Brian

Thanks for the thought there Itch. I have done similar in the past and I may need to do something like that but fingers crossed .....I can get it to work. Having the printer do it over and over while I do something else would be great.

Thanks Dwight.... as I said I hope it helps some.

That is my plan indeed. I hope to be able to inset a bolt head and use a socket in the battery drill and if needed I can then just switch to a hand ratchet to finish off. I'm thinking that if I wanted it to do clicking more so (I don't as I have 2 hydraulic machines already) I would be tempted to put in 2 jacks side by side and use one jack for small jobs and 2 when the knife is larger. Bit slow but way faster and better than doing by hand. Thank you

Mightn't be competition sparing but here a couple of pics of my Molly (The quality inspector/guard dog) trying it on with Jet the brangus bull. Here below she's thinkin (not real smartly) to scare Jet. A big leap into the air should do it. Woooops where is the brakes....up here? Actully I was just goin this a way. Bit busy right now I'll take care of that matter some other day. Now my new dog in training is a bit worried about the size of these critters so Molly shows him that they aint all that bad. So far he has shown a great willingness to be a taste tester for staff at lunch times. I guess his got a lot of growing to catch up here. End of story. Brian

Most excellent

How to use my new press for small scale clicking. I never made it for this purpose and if you do so I would recommend finding a metal plate to cover the knife in order to protect the timber. The boards and the rods etc are easily up to the job but if there is a weak point it would be the jack. I decided to use a kitchen cutting board for the base as shown below. Below pic shows the knife fully in and with a typical clunk. I was not sure about that. I did not line up in both directions to the centre as well as I should and had to readjust it back a bit to the middle more. Pressure lifted off I removed the cutting board to inspect. It went in deeper than I expected. Note the knife mark line in the cutting board. Well that's about it for now until I print up some moulds so I hope that some of you find something that is of use to you in this and I wish you to find fun in making your own if you do. Regards Brian.

Back again. I hope you all bought heaps. The next step is to drill out the top hole for attaching the jack Next attach the 4 3/4" rods that have been cut in half to now 18" lengths. AS seen above the bottom plate is bolted up and in the following picture the middle moving board located over the rods. Now the top board is located and then tensioned to get the unit to sit squarely and flat. A little adjusting up and down in one corner should do the trick Now the jack can be attached to the top board and carefully positioned to attach to the middle moving board. I used a felt pen to mark the holes with. Pull the top board off to give access to screw the jack down to the middle board. A centre punch mark done here to keep the screw holes true. I pre drilled for the screws as the timber is very hard. The unit is now ready to bolt back together Now below then unit is bolted up and square checked and ready to test. Time to go and buy some more stuff Fantastic world class leather goods from Wild Harry. Next steps will show the testing

Ok Its DONE. Not sure how it goes for moulding what I want yet but we now have a poor man's (whoopps I meant persons) clicker press at least. See the pics. 1st is to drill pilot holes into the jack for later attaching the jack. 1/8" size bit should be fine. 2nd step - I found a cup 5/16" cup head bolt I think would be good to use and drilled the top out to receive it. 3. I then used a small triangle file to square out the hole to lock the cup head into the jack. 4. It was necessary to take a little of each side of the cup head to fit up into the jack. The jack must be fully wound up to give enough opening to push the bolt through. It should now look as below Next I cut the stair tread into 3 equal lengths. After giving the boards a little sanding on the orbital sander I marked out the positions for the holes. In order to get every thing at the same distance from the edge I decided to stand the board on its edge and use my square to scribe with as shown below Next step is to drill out one corner and watch to keep square. I decided to use the long drill bit I use when I do a little fencing for the cows. I broke the screw tip on one recently and checked for 1 at Bunnings. The cost there was about $60 something dollars so I got a whole set of 6 out of China for about the same. The come in a nice wooden box and all and go from 10mm up to 20mm. They have imperial sizes if you want as well. Next step is bolt all the boards tightly together and drill out the last 3 holes. Time for an advertisement. Check out my Wild Harry site and buys heaps of the best made leather goods in Australia. Well........ I cant post any more pics than this in the one posting.

Just like a bag but cut out the front and back.... Ha ha Sorry just could not resist that one

Hi Robert, I had a quick google check and found this manual. You can see all the pages on line --https://www.manualslib.com/manual/1226154/Consew-206rb-5.html I have a lot of different machines but not that one sorry. I would study the hell out of it particullarly with regards to the timing. Take some pictures of any parts you have trouble with and post them on here. That will often give the best feedback. Brian

Yeah that's the teflon tape and will help a lot if you can make it stick where you want. Clean the steel well and give a little sand or scotchbrite first. Have fun Brian