CNC?

Hey, assuming that I had access to a CNC mill, could I fab my parts from chunks of plastic with that? Thanks

Yeah, Nophead has done that and I'm doing pretty much the same thing these days.

Check out his blog at

[hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

Thanks, that's make it a lot easier for me to get the parts made.

Sorry to disagree, the answer is no, you can certainly make a 3 axis CNC positioning system as Forrest & Nophead have done but they are not Darwin repstraps, the Darwin design cannot as standard be made in a conventional machine shop the BfB design and the Ponoko design could both be cut in a mchine shop but would probably be cheaper laser cut unless you have cheap access to the machine shop.

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Ian
[www.bitsfrombytes.com]

Ian Adkins Wrote:
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> Sorry to disagree, the answer is no, you can
> certainly make a 3 axis CNC positioning system as
> Forrest & Nophead have done but they are not
> Darwin repstraps, the Darwin design cannot as
> standard be made in a conventional machine shop
> the BfB design and the Ponoko design could both be
> cut in a mchine shop but would probably be cheaper
> laser cut unless you have cheap access to the
> machine shop.
>
I guess I don't understand the distinction that you're making, Ian. Nop is making Darwin parts on his Repstrap and I could, too, if I wanted to. It seems to me that there is no such thing as a "Darwin Repstrap", only Repstraps.

If you have a milling machine and a lathe you can make an extruder. You can then attach the extruder to the milling machine and make all the rest of the Darwin parts. That is what I have done.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

The point i was making is you can make all the BfB parts on a machine once it has been made as in make a complete set of spares for it just as with a Darwin so rather than print out another design you can print a copy of the original laser design.

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Ian
[www.bitsfrombytes.com]

I guess I still don't "get it".

As far as I understood Ian is talking about let's say the cornerblocks of the "official" darwin, due to their shape and inner holes they're not machinable with a standard mill, not even in full 3d.

What IS possible indeed is to MILL an extruder (well the parts for an extruder of xourse) and then use the cnc as a cartesian for EXTRUDING the rest of the machine (cornerblocks )

Or am I wrong now?

'sid

The corner blocks are complex because they have captive nuts, but that is only because you can't put set screws into plastic. If you make them out of metal you can just tap holes. That makes then just blocks with lots of holes drilled though them, some of them tapped. I think there is even a pdf with drawings in the Darwin cartbot release on Sourceforge.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

MY Son and I were able to make a machine by reading off of the STL drawings?

[repstrapping.blogspot.com]

granted there are some things I would have done differently.

We have been working on other parts of Reprap for the time being so we have not printed much lately ( we need to finish since we are about 1/2 way to a printed machine. )

I have some drawings of most of the parts just send me a personal email from the forum carpenma.

Oh and by the way, we used a scroll saw and a drill press to make all of the parts. My goal was to be able to make a Repstrap with common tools.


Bruce and Nick Wattendorf

Sounds neat. Ya, if you don't mind, those drawings would be a big help.

If you can upload the PDF files it would be a great help particularly the extruder parts.

Many thanks

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Bodge It [reprap.org]
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