Reprap Forum - RepLab Working Group

RepRap offgrid (no replies)

mo22 — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 20:42:33 -0500

Hey,

i just thought it might be interesting to someone to bring RepRap offgrid with a open source solar solution.

I had a solution in mind that would be able to charge LiFePO4 Cells as they become cheaply available over the past years.

As such a controller needs some speed I would recommend to use the ARM cortex M0+ which is the microcontroller of the new zero board from arduino and also seems to be pretty interesting to the whole RepRap project.

I have a conrete design in mind, does anyone is interested to bring RepRap offgrid?

Building a large 3d Printer for pattern making (1 reply)

Charles Fried — Sun, 03 Nov 2013 16:31:51 -0500

HI there,

I'm a furniture designer currently on placement in London, learning to program Cnc Machines (Flexicam) to make high end furniture.
I've almost finished building a mendal but I find the scale of it a little limited and I'm looking to build a bigger printer with a printable area of at least a cube of 1m.
The Idea would be to print parts with wax which could then be used to cast aluminium parts.

At this stage I'm looking for as much information as possible from people who have tried to do anything similar.
If you live in London and are interested in the project perhaps we could meet?
I also have full access to a cnc machine, which I am planing to use to make most of the mechanical stuff.
I have very little experience in electronics but I'm hoping to use the same components as the Mendal?

Any help/advice is much appreciated!

Many Thanks
Charles Fried

Bearing vs. Rod Fitup (1 reply)

rcullan — Fri, 30 Aug 2013 09:05:00 -0400

I wanted to get into 3d printing and so I bought a solidoodle, and i'm having some issues with it.

The rods in it were actually 8.02mm in diameter and quickly (30 hours of run time) wore out one of the 8.00mm bearings on the x-axis. So I am endeavoring to replace the carriage assembly. I ordered 4 Chrome Plated VBX Rods on Amazon.com and two sets of (8) LM8UU bearings (8 needed for my repair (off McMaster) and 8 for a future printer build (off Amazon)). Most of these bearings are VERY tight on most of these rods and they vary somewhat from 7.97mm in dia to 7.99mm. I have found a combination of smaller rods to bigger bearings to that fitup nicely to finish about 3/4 of my machine.

The rods I bought are chrome plated and I think that was my failure.

My question to the RepRap community. Where do you buy your shaft material and is it ground? Also, could I be getting better bearings?

Cool Print (no replies)

Mr. Medvet — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 11:42:21 -0400

Print on a cold table with ABS plastic.

videos
[www.youtube.com]

MicroLab (no replies)

Emmanuel — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:30:35 -0400

I'm far from having it, but after the folding RepRap I dream to fit a fablab in two luggages of 23kg.
To be able to set up a temporary fablab anywhere, and use it to build/replicate the bigger machines of a permanent fablab.

In that way I think this idea is not far from the "replab" spirit :) (thus I'm mentioning it here)

Future development will probably go on that page of the fabwiki : [wiki.fablab.is]

printable ink as in homemade (no replies)

terramir — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 05:52:34 -0400

Some person accused me of reinventing the wheel, but what I'm really saying is this if we could use a mixture of carbon powder and copper powder (or silver but that costs more) suspended in a water alcohol solution with a cheap natural binding agent and there is where I am stuck because I dunno chemistry that much we could print the tracks and traces with a printhead ( there is that piezo electric one) maybe with an adjustable mixture (hey we could determine the resistance of the tracks and save on resistors) and then with a syringe we could bond the chips to our tracks with our own printing solution. No need for solder could use several layers printed (cool function for the water alcohol mixture to evoporate) print next layer could have multilayer tracks enclosed in plastic this way and the only thing exposed would be the chips which are put into place manually and then use a syringe of the copper mixture to bond the legs (yes you'd need steady hands and a magnifying glass) simple traces are already being printed on paper it would just be us taking it a step further the vias would consist of multiple layers of this stuff deposited in holes of our board material.
Requirements: bonding agent would have to desolve readily in a water alcohol solution (and I dun mean the drinking stuff would be too expensive isopropyl (rubbing alcohol or simular) should do.
B. the bonding agent would have to have reducing properties (I hope I got this right (chem was ten years ago to keep the copper from corroding)
C. the printhead must be able to extrude a paste like substance (copper and copper carbon mixture content will exceed 90% of the final dried mixture in order to ensure it will be sufficently conductive)
D most parts need to be printable
E. the bonding agent must not only be preferably non toxic but most importantly readily availible and dirt cheap.
Also a note here on chips like the allegro stepper drivers the copper mixture could be extruded under neath for several layers if not all the way through to create a decent heatsink. then take syringe one drop in the center of the copper solution place chip in way a few minutes and it shouldn't even move basically a natural homemade copper glue and is almost as conductive as pure copper when needed but less conductive when needed as well.
Just would like some input on what could be done:)
terramir

How much material to print a prusa ? (1 reply)

tmahring — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 09:05:02 -0500

Hi
I googled around and searched the wiki but couldn't find an answer to my question:

How much material (by weight) does it take to print all the necessary plastic parts it takes to build a Prusa Mendel ?

I'm going to build one and maybe I can print the parts for it on somebody elses printer, so it would be nice to know how much plastik i need to buy and how much it will cost me.
As it's possible to vary with the percentage of fillment, pls also tell me how much is recomended for printer parts.

3d printing and 3d scanning now on egypt (3 replies)

engalsapagh — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 15:19:44 -0400

Dear all
i'm Mohamed alsapagh work as technical support engineer on freeway company that deal with high technology 3d scanning technologies & 3d printing and other high tech 2d printing
for more visite my page on facebook
http://www.facebook.com/pages/3d-printing-3d-scanning/129932243768159

Overview of printable FabLab-tools (1 reply)

MarcusWolschon — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:11:02 -0500

Doe anyone have an overview of the current state of
tools that can actually be printed as of today?
I remember the 2 lathes on Thingiverse, my own context for an XY-table that found little interest, my experimental vice.
Printabke Dremel, Dremel-flexshaft and pen-holder too-heads for various printers.

Nothing more comes to mind.

Did anyone e.g. do a light-duty drill-press like the Dremel workstation?

Unified tool head grip (24 replies)

Wed — Mon, 23 Dec 2013 06:21:40 -0500

I propose a grip for tool heads that make interchanging easy.

I realize that it is difficult to foresee the needs of the masses, as modifications are ongoing. I also want to avoid boxing in or excluding those with wild ideas. But it seem a bit messy just to upgrade the extruder, or change to a laser, inkjet, mill or drill setup.

The grip could incorporate connectors for electrical power and data on specified locations and thus allow for kit-less remote designers to chip in with new or upgraded heads, following a universally accepted grip.

A quick search didn't yield many inputs in this area.

One fits inside the other (2 replies)

ErikDeBruijn — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 23:38:33 -0400

A slightly up-scaled Darwin or Mendel can fit a mini-mendel inside. It would mean that we could one day print a mostly assembled machine (frame)!

Printing electronics: (1 reply)

ErikDeBruijn — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:25:12 -0500

Solder with some iron in it can be inductively heated and allows you to control were it ends up more precisely. It also creates mechanically stronger tracks because the metal is magnetically aligned.

Yale University scientists have developed a magnetic solder that can be manipulated in three dimensions and selectively heated

[opa.yale.edu]

Wiki update (no replies)

SebastienBailard — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 03:14:34 -0500

Hey all,
I've been having a go at the RepLab wiki page
[objects.reprap.org]

and set up this page for RepLab people:
[objects.reprap.org]

I'm hoping to have the forum also be a mailing list by the end of the week. It depends on server stuff.

Also, I think it would be good to do a blog announcement on the main RepRap blog announcing the project and the RepLab wiki and forum resources. But I think it would be good to give the relevant part of the wiki a good tidying first.

RepTab (2 replies)

marcin_ose — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 20:55:50 -0400

RepTab, the open source torch table, a distant cousin of RepRap, has been featured in MAKE zine. Please check it out:

http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?p=1424

Thanks,
Marcin

RepLab: The Open Source, Replicable FabLab (22 replies)

Sam Putman — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 02:29:46 -0500

Since the RepLab concept owes so much to the RepRap project, it seems natural to have a discussion about it here.

Marcin Jakubowski of Factor e Farm recently raised the topic of open-source FabLabs as part of his larger project of a full suite of sustainable open-source technologies for village scale, resilient high-tech permaculture. Erik de Bruijn replied:

"I propose that we call this effort “RepLab”. This is to emphasize the symbiotic relationship with the FabLab ‘movement’ that already has significant momentum and fabber projects including the RepRap, but also derivative and alternative projects (Makerbot, Fab@Home, CandyFab, P3P, Contraptor). I don’t see self-replication of parts as a condition on the short term, but either efficient fabrication through mass production (standardized common parts, e.g. nuts & bolts) or custom fabrication (preferably with tools available in a RepLab)."

The project goal is to produce a fairly comprehensive suite of automated, general-purpose fabricators which work in a variety of media. With enough development, the entire suite can display significant recursion, much like a RepRap does. This has the same promise of geometric growth and economic changes, but at a larger scale of object and a wider variety of materials.

The discussion is taking place at the group; the home page for the project is here. Hope you'll join us!

Vacuum Former DIY (2 replies)

RyanHendrickson — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 07:21:02 -0400

I was thinking about making a legit sized vacuum former. I can scavenge and old oven heating element and purchase enough 90 steel to build all the brackets I need. Can anyone think of a problem with this?

Building an inflatable wing: I need ideas where to source materials (8 replies)

RyanHendrickson — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 02:10:04 -0500

I am trying to find mylar and a couple different types of two part foam.

The plan is to make a spar out of a cylinder of mylar and foam to put braces on. Any suggestions would be very nice.

Aluminum Castings (5 replies)

naylorfoundry — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 01:50:20 -0400

I work in an aluminum foundry, I'm curious how well you guys think aluminum reprap parts would work. Obviously I'm not printing aluminum, but making sand castings instead of waiting for printed parts or restraping.

I might just buy the bits from bytes version 3 if I can't get parts this way.

I doubt the extruder head parts would be a good idea the added weight can't be a good thing. But for the rest of the parts maybe. I'd have to drill them all. I would need 1 pattern for each part needed. The patterns would need to be 102% original size, to end up with the same size parts. And 3 degrees of draft on the outside edges.

I would be happy to send some aluminum parts to the person that prints the patterns for me.

About opensource fablabs (a plug on openfarmtech.org) (9 replies)

elmom — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 20:59:22 -0500

A bit of interproject advertising. I think there are people reading this forum that aren't aware of the work done at openfarmtech.org. I hope this isn't too OT...

Official advert:

We're building the world's first, replicable, open source Global Village. What's so unique? We are using a bootstrapping approach, so we can make it replicable. We're questioning each technology choice, and selecting that which is appropriate for modern off-grid living. To do this, we select, simplify, optimize, reduce cost - to create high performance, open source, replicable infrastructures for living. Can this lead to unprecedented quality of life? We are convinced that it can, if we apply ancient wisdom with modern technology. If we seize the power of effective production - an essential part fo this Global Village Construction Set - then we remove ourselves from global geopolitical compromise. The best part is - if we have an open source fab lab for production and an agroecology base, then the entire package is not only replicable - but self-replicating! Fantasy? No, it's just the destiny of a world cracking at the seams, in the computer age. We know we can all do better, and the world is ready to do it. Welcome to viral village - and world transformation.

My take on it (reused from my post on Forrest's blog):

Regarding your interest in automatic building construction: [openfarmtech.org] They are creating and testing open source equipment for creating replicable sustainable villages/communities (with fullblown fablabs) from local materials. See the end of the page for the CEB press, which creates structural elements (walls) from dirt. It still needs labour, but is a practical step towards automation. See also the CNC torch cutting table on the wiki! They also have ideas about metal extrusion from scrap etc. Please consider becoming a donating member (a True Fan) with 10$/month

...

I'm not sure about their technical background, what's important is that they are really producing results. They only need money and a few more developers. And they are really doing just what many of you (and Reprap) are after: local automated fabrication for the masses, and in the same peer to peer spirit that drives the reprap community. ... Can you at least appreciate the open source tractor they have prototyped, which costs about one tenth of of the closest commercial competitor? The same for a sawmill for local timber from local forests. All the equipment you need to create susteinable villages from scratch for some 10 000$, including labour. With that (plus a small group of teachers) you could jumpstart an African country after a war by teaching the poor to make the tools for themselves and others around them. That would cost a fraction of the amounts of money that is dumped in the developing countries. I won't bother you anymore, but see the video presentations on their frontpage at least.

Most importantly, they emphasize opennes, collaboration and real work (as opposed to just theorising).

From a proud supporter of both projects, cheers

Online tool for generating Gear Templates (4 replies)

Squintz — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 02:52:41 -0500

[woodgears.ca]

While researching how to properly make my own gears I came across the above website. It allows you to set some paramaters:

Tooth spacing (mm)
Contact angle(deg)
Shaft hole dia. (mm)
Gear 1 teeth
Gear 2 teeth
Printed page width (mm)

It shows you what your gear will look like as you enter new paramaters. You can then print out the gear and use it as a template for making your own from wood, metal, or whatever other material you may want to make your own gear from.

I imagine that gears are pretty important to the accuracy of the reprap machine. So I will probably end up purchasing the laser cut gears instead of making my own.
It would be nice to find some type of gear making Jig. This guy has one (http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/marbles/machine2.html#gears) that he made from an old stepper motor. I'm not sure I understand how it works though.

Point to Point wiring (4 replies)

freds — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 03:21:12 -0400

Lots of dicussions lately on SMT so I thought I would throw out a topic for discussion.

How about reverse SMT?

1. You lay the compents down on a sticky sheet or a dab of hot glue and then fill a plastic channel around them.
2. You then quickly flow solder a bare wire with solder transfered off of a soldering itron tip/element and pull it to it's destination or around a peg to do dog legs.
3. Build a raft layer for insulation and continue on to the next layer of point to point wiring,etc.
4. Tell current PCB layout software that you are building a fourty layer board.

LED Legos (2 replies)

Kitep — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:53:53 -0400

Just saw this webpage about sticking LEDs into Lego people [www.evilmadscientist.com]

I thought this would inspire me to think of a 100 things that could be reprapped with plans to have an LED inserted, but other than Christmas ornaments, I'm coming up blank.

Oh well, at least the webpage is nice :)

die cutting (5 replies)

Anonymous User — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 05:37:22 -0400

hi this will be the new intro for the die cutting page on thomasnet, what are some opinions.

Die cutting is a type of manufacturing used to create a large amount of objects of the same shape, the process can be analog or CNC. A die is the tool used to cut and shape the object, they are sharp blades bent to the desired shape. The operations are often named after the die that performs the job, such as blanking , shaving, broaching and trimming. Rotary die cutting is uses a cylindrical die and steel rule die cutting uses a bandsaw or laser cutter. Die cut materials can range from paper, rubber and wood, to metal and glass. The blade is the most meticulously crafted piece of die cutting equipment, the die must be shaped precisely to cut effectively and generate minimal scrap waste.

Water Jet Cutting (28 replies)

Joshua Merchant — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 06:58:36 -0400

The posts about Big Blue Saw's free parts day (http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,14888 and [forums.reprap.org]) led me to Big Blue Saw's site, which has information on their laser cutting and waterjet cutting [www.bigbluesaw.com] methods.

Laser cutting seems to be getting some attention here already, but the waterjet cutting looked really cool. I'm thinking that it may be cheaper to implement some simple water jet toolheads than to use high powered lasers. The industrial costs of water jet systems seem to disagree, but I think we can come up with something.

A cheap (<$500) water jet toolhead would be great for RepRap. As far as I know, you don't need a sturdy cartbot as you would with mechanical cutting (milling). I imagine that it could find various implementations, parallel to a laser-cutting head's uses. That is, it could be used for cutting individual layers which are then stacked and bonded together (LOM), cutting entire objects (perhaps necessitating further mobility of the head or build object for cutting into sides), or perhaps even for smoothing out rough edges created by additive fabrication (like for gears and stuff). It should be noted that cutting depth can be controlled.

Any comments? I'll probably take a deeper look into this later.

Third world solar cookers (no replies)

mimarob — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 04:44:29 -0400

"It all seemed like a good idea at the time, why not use the sun as the source for preparing the food instead of walking for miles with 20-40kg of firewood on your back..."

I just found two wonderful articles on third-world technologies that I wanted to share:

"DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING OF A REGENERATIVE RECHARGEABLE SOLAR STOVE SYSTEM".
From what I understand it was developed at a Univeristy in Ethiopia.
[www.esmeet.org]

I especially love the part where they mention that solar cookers in their original form, apart from being unpractical and dangerous, created a sense of "apathy" around the whole meal :-)

I would love to test this during the summer months but the thought of five kilos of CaO (quicklime) in a box kinda scares me off :-E
Maybe I'll try gypsum instead!

And another one which it references, its from 1984.
Fuel-Saving Cookstoves, Aprovecho Institute
[www.gate-international.org]

I especially like chapter 1. "How not to develop a stove"

The kind of cultural problems you can bang your head into with something as seemingly simple as a stove :-)

Home-made solar panels (9 replies)

Kyle Corbitt — Fri, 31 Oct 2014 07:36:51 -0400

Saw this link on hackaday. It sounds completely impractical, but still, a cool experiment and in the spirit of RepRap. ;)

[scitoys.com]

Plasma Cutting (7 replies)

aka47 — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:05:58 -0500

Dumb ass question time, (Sorry)

I have a tig welding machine with hf start.

I have studied the specs for plasma cutters and tig machines and they look so similar (Apart from the torch) notable exceptions are the initial open circuit voltage looks to be lower on a tig machine.

Is it possible to swap the tig torch for a plasma cutter torch, couple up a compressed air feed and use the tig machine to plasma cut ??

I can's see a reason why not, that isn't to say that I actually really know what I am doing with welding though, just learning.

Can anybody help with this and an explanation ????

I realise this is'nt a welding forum, I am though contemplating adding a plasma cutting head to my Tool Head wish list posted on the mendel wana have forum.

aka47

Cricut Automatic Paper Cutter - Hackable? (265 replies)

jcabrer — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 08:46:38 -0400

I just picked up a Cricut Paper Cutter a couple of days ago, and I'm convinced it can be hacked into a general CNC very easily, with the right expertise, which I lack!

They're on sale until the 30th at Michael's for $139.00 if anyone is interested.

There is a USB port, which Windows XP recognises as an FTDI FT8U2XX Device (USB to Serial), which leads me to believe that there is the possibility to access the stepper controller via the USB.

The device uses font/shape cartridges that contain an ATMEL ATMEGA16 and some type of Flash Memory that I have not yet identified. If anyone is interested and capable of reading the contents of this cartridge, I can lend it out.

My goals are to determine what CNC language is being used to define the shapes, and to figure out if control via USB is possible.

Beyond that, I can see the potential to adapt the guts of the machine to a RepRap frame.