News — 3dPrinterHacks

If you want to experiment with pneumatic devices, you’ll likely find yourself in need of custom inflatable bladders eventually. These can be made in arbitrary 2D shapes by using a soldering iron to fuse the edges of two plastic sheets together, but it’s obviously a pretty tedious and finicky process. Now, if only there was some widely available machine that had the ability to accurately apply heat and pressure over a large surface… Realizing his 3D printer had all the makings of an ideal bladder fusing machine, [Koppany Horvath] recently performed some fascinating experiments to test this concept out in...

If you want to experiment with pneumatic devices, you’ll likely find yourself in need of custom inflatable bladders eventually. These can be made in arbitrary 2D shapes by using a soldering iron to fuse the edges of two plastic sheets together, but it’s obviously a pretty tedious and finicky process. Now, if only there was some widely available machine that had the ability to accurately apply heat and pressure over a large surface… Realizing his 3D printer had all the makings of an ideal bladder fusing machine, [Koppany Horvath] recently performed some fascinating experiments to test this concept out in...