Part dimensions and drawings

Hello. I'm just starting to research what I will need to do to make the reprap 1.0. I have access to a full machine shop and I was hoping to machine most of my parts from scrap metal for the Cartesian Bot and the extruder and whatever other mechanical parts there are to save on cost and to make it a little more robust than the plastic. I have found the stl files and downloaded them, but I am unable to get any dimensions from those files. I was wondering if anyone new where to find drawings with dimensions. Solidworks files would be ideal for me, but any drawings that are dimensioned would be greatly appreciated.

You should be able to convert the files into Solidworks somehow.

From what I can tell, one unit in the stl file is 1mm. It's been a while since I checked that though. You can check this by converting the things you know are a certain size (the stl files for the screws and nuts).

If you don't already have an stl converter for stl into solidworks, I would probably suggest milkshape3D which only costs $50 USD and has a free plugin to import stl then export as obj or any other file (as opposed to the stl plugin for solidworks which I saw starting at $200 USD).

That's what I have done so far and it's worked well for me.

You can use the MYRIAD 3D Reader [www.myriadviewer.com] to get dimensions off the .stl files

This may be what you are looking for [reprap.svn.sourceforge.net] but its 8 months old so some parts may have changed

There is also a zip file somewhere on the forum called converted+files.zip cant remember where, it has all the parts in .igs format

The .igs files are at [www.mediafire.com]

you can also get the most current .stl files from the code section of source forge

Bruce W.

Quote

I was hoping to machine most of my parts from scrap metal for the Cartesian Bot

Some of the bits (corner brackets spring to mind) have internal detail that will be hard to reproduce with milling. I'm not certain that you can just zap them all out of solid hunks of metal, thought I could be wrong.

The STL files for darwin were designed to be reprappable. As you don't have a reprap or rapid prototyper handy, you might be best off making a different sort of cartesian robot, such as the McWire.

will someone *please* do as he asked and post up standard engineering drawings of the parts for Darwin? I'm a mechanical engineering major at college. During the school year I have access to a standard machine shop, and during the summer I have access to a bridgeport mill and lathe, and a CNC router through my high school robotics team. If need be I could potentially have access to an EDM through a machine shop I worked at 2 years ago, but that's doubtful.

I use pro/engineer daily and want to model everything and create drawings so I can build a reprap this summer. I have a few friends and engineers I know interested in building them too, so I'd leave at least one behind and take one off to college too.

however, the .stl files open in pro/engineer as a single feature id, meaning it's just a bunch of polygons and I can't get a dimension on anything. I use myriad occasionally at work and the .stl file opens in myriad, but I can't get a dimension there either (the dimensions it lets me display are, to say the least, crude and unhelpful).

I can get dimensions from the .dxf files like the McWire repstrap has. If I was able to get dimensions, I could model/draw everything, and make PDFs of the drawings.

Well I am not sure where I found them I will look for the link a bit later but i found the .AOI files which if opened in Art of Illiusion can be saved as .obj which Pro/E like a bit more than .stl files. I haave similar plan my self this summer So far I am still in the process of geting Pro/E for my own personal use. Our school uses Soildworks which hates .stl files and cant open .obj either. Also the Igs files i dont think include the extreuder and I am not sure if they are up to date. Just some thing you might want to be mind full of, but they should at least give you a head start on geting the dimensions.

Okay here is the link

[reprap.svn.sourceforge.net]

PLEASE NOTE: The object files on here maybe "too new" and by that I mean that the fiels might have been just edit by one of the Core Reprappers and not be tested and not supported and may have wrong measurements...

That being said I have not really seen any of that but do realize that these files are not as neatly as organized as the zipped .stl files. However if you get Art of Illusion you can save them as non binary file format.... In my spare time I have started on making some of the soildworks files for the extruder. When I have it all modeled I will try and the the PDFs of the drawing posted somewhere.

I think what we should do to make things less confusing is to make sure that we add the date and Revision number of the object begin modeled on the drawings.
We can work on a Special BOM for the drawings later. So that people will know how many of each part to machine with out having to look it up else were and get confused.

slade Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> will someone *please* do as he asked and post up
> standard engineering drawings of the parts for
> Darwin?

Bruce posted a link to the IGES files above, and that's about as close as they come.

The Original Cartesian Robot parts were made using Solid Edge using an academic license. The parts for the extruder were made using AOI. I can convert the solid edge files to any thing solid edge will convert to for you.

Bruce Wattendorf

I'll try opening the IGES files in pro/e when I get to work on monday.

I'm just looking for a way to get started, and I need an extruder for that. I can then attach it to a CNC machine or just build a repstrap, but the extruder is the roadblock. buying the parts isn't really feasible, because the only place that sells them is in the UK and the shipping time would be as horrible as the exchange rate.

any help would be appreciated. I have enough tools that I could build the extruder out of delrin, aluminum, wood, etc., I just need a 2D dimensioned drawing (preferably pdf) of the parts or some other sort of help. I have AoI installed and it'll open the .aoi files from sourceforge, but I can't figure out how to get any dimensions. I have no idea how AoI works as of now, I'll try finding a tutorial.

actually, the IGES files don't really help me at all. I need a way to make the extruder, and it looks like none of the files for the extruder are there, just the rest of darwin. I need some way of getting the dimensions for the parts on the extruder, that would be a lot easier than re-designing it myself.

slade Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> actually, the IGES files don't really help me at
> all. I need a way to make the extruder, and it
> looks like none of the files for the extruder are
> there, just the rest of darwin.

[reprap.svn.sourceforge.net]

okay, but those are .AoI files. I can't get any dimensions from them, or at least I can't see any way to do so. any AoI tutorials I can find are geared toward animation, not engineering so none of the tutorials are any help...

I just need a way to get dimensioned drawings for the extruder parts.

The grid is in cm, irrc.

okay, I got the grid to display, and it looks like it's mm, not cm. but this doesn't help much. how do I find the dimension when a line isn't snapped cleanly to the grid? how do I find the dimension of the center of a hole? all this allows is rough approximations...

I gather you're not real big on digging through the user's manual for AoI. Okay then, I'll tell you how to get it done just this once.

Open your object's AoI file in AoI.

Find the view that you want to get the measurements for.

Pull down the Scene menu and select Grid.

Type in the grid resolution you want and click the "Show Grid" box and leaving the "Snap to Grid" box empty.

That will put a grid under the object. If you need to see through the object to see the grid, select the Scene menu again and from there select "Display Mode">Transparent. That will let you see grid lines through that view of your object.

If the grid is too coarse for the dimension you are trying to measure then increase the resolution until you get it.

If you are like I am and have more thumbs than fingers you may want to do some print screen/pastes to Paint and print them out. You can mark on those with a pencil rather than getting your screen greasy with fingerprints.

While AoI is pretty intuitive, a few hours spent futzing through the user's manual will reward the investment in time.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/06/2008 07:23PM by Forrest Higgs.

that's the best AoI can do? I did look through the manual, and I got that far, but I was hoping for something like dimension lines or an analysis where you can find the distance between two surfaces, from a surface to a hole axis, etc...

oh well. Thanks for your help. I think I'll be avoiding AoI as best as I can after this.

slade Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> that's the best AoI can do? I did look through
> the manual, and I got that far, but I was hoping
> for something like dimension lines or an analysis
> where you can find the distance between two
> surfaces, from a surface to a hole axis, etc...
>
> oh well. Thanks for your help. I think I'll be
> avoiding AoI as best as I can after this.

Yeah, your messages had a strong flavour of crying for the moon rather than trying to get the job done. Here's a news flash for you. This is an open source research and development project. If you expect that things are going to be as slick and easy as they can when you've invested $30-50K in a commercial 3D printer and $3-5K in top-of-the line commercial 3D modeling software you're not going to be happy working on Reprap.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/06/2008 08:38PM by Forrest Higgs.

Well if you open up the AOI file and export as obj you can open it up in a fair number of other programs. You can try sketchup (I think the free version can open them just not save them) or any other number of modleing programs. Many of these other porgams have a tape measure or dimmensioning tool.

Forest - yeah, it's open source. I know what that entails. it's a bleeding edge project. AoI and the control software aren't going to be in a repository or in .rpm or .deb packages. the hardware/software and documentation are going to be frequently revised. problems with the hardware and software are going to spring up fairly frequently. some things are going to be inadequately tested. given that, I still can't believe that the chosen software is for animation, can't display dimensions, and doesn't have reversible/redefinable operations, and there are no drawings available, even hand made. it's almost like they're trying to make you buy from bits from bytes, which isn't exactly in the spirit of the project. it wouldn't be much more work just to redesign the extruder from scratch...

ronanwarrior - thanks, I'll try that when I get the time. pro/e and myriad seemed to have a problem with files that were polygon maps of surfaces, hopefully sketchup will be better.

I uploaded some screenshots which I took quickly in AoI to estimate the part dimensions. I'll see if I can get something better from sketchup or pro/e, and I'll upload drawings after I have decent models.

[www.mediafire.com]

I managed to make an extruder with a milling machine from dimensions I got from AOI using the grid. It is painful but it does work.

I posted dimensioned 2D drawings here: [hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

But BEWARE the extruder design has moved on since then.

---

[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

slade Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Forest - yeah, it's open source. I know what that
> entails. it's a bleeding edge project. AoI and
> the control software aren't going to be in a
> repository or in .rpm or .deb packages. the
> hardware/software and documentation are going to
> be frequently revised. problems with the hardware
> and software are going to spring up fairly
> frequently. some things are going to be
> inadequately tested. given that, I still can't
> believe that the chosen software is for animation,
> can't display dimensions, and doesn't have
> reversible/redefinable operations, and there are
> no drawings available, even hand made. it's
> almost like they're trying to make you buy from
> bits from bytes, which isn't exactly in the spirit
> of the project. it wouldn't be much more work
> just to redesign the extruder from scratch...
>
> ronanwarrior - thanks, I'll try that when I get
> the time. pro/e and myriad seemed to have a
> problem with files that were polygon maps of
> surfaces, hopefully sketchup will be better.
>
> I uploaded some screenshots which I took quickly
> in AoI to estimate the part dimensions. I'll see
> if I can get something better from sketchup or
> pro/e, and I'll upload drawings after I have
> decent models.
>
> [www.mediafire.com]


Great, I know many of us will appreciate that. If you make models of the extruder pieces in a sane (non-AoI) program, I think that you will have many thankful people. I for one would appreciate a model of the extruder as a STEP file, so I can mill it (assuming I get my mill working, of course!) The other bits are available as an IGES file, but the extruder was created directly in AoI.

slade Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Forest - yeah, it's open source. I know what that
> entails. it's a bleeding edge project. AoI and
> the control software aren't going to be in a
> repository or in .rpm or .deb packages. the
> hardware/software and documentation are going to
> be frequently revised. problems with the hardware
> and software are going to spring up fairly
> frequently. some things are going to be
> inadequately tested. given that, I still can't
> believe that the chosen software is for animation,
> can't display dimensions, and doesn't have
> reversible/redefinable operations, and there are
> no drawings available, even hand made. it's
> almost like they're trying to make you buy from
> bits from bytes, which isn't exactly in the spirit
> of the project. it wouldn't be much more work
> just to redesign the extruder from scratch...


Bitch! Bitch! Bitch! If you spent 10% of the energy and time actually doing things that you spend whining about how things don't suit you you'd have been printing things months ago.

I think you've spent more time complaining about me than I've spent "bitching"

slade Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think you've spent more time complaining about
> me than I've spent "bitching"

Possibly. OTOH, since this flamelet war started, I've got Tommelise 2.0's USB link between the PC software chain (which includes AoI) and the Pic 18F4550 controller board's EEPROM buffer running slicker than a greased snake.

I'm also teaching myself precision Blender work using some really nice tutorials that Kaizer...

[educatingvids.blogspot.com]


put me on to...

[www.rab3d.com]

over on my website.

[www.3dreplicators.com]

You?

nice tutorial. I always meant to learn to use blender.

since you asked, since this started I designed a fixture for running thermodynamic tests on $7.5 million of radar equipment. Tomorrow and Friday I'll be making a prototype. But right now I have to go to an annual "ethics retraining" session .

slade Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But right now I have
> to go to an annual "ethics retraining" session .

Bummer! I guess the only consolation is that it isn't a gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation sensitivity indoctrination course.

phew, close call... good thing I'm only posting here during lunch and breaks, or this would be an ethical violation .

heh, and I'm sure that course will be next.

Yeah, those day jobs will eat you alive. Mercifully, I run my own tiny consultancy, so I don't have to do that kind of feel-good, PC "training" courses.

Right now I'm having to hotwire the Stanford Linguistics parser to do some things I want in visual studio. The damned thing is 3.4 million lines of Java code, so I'm not real excited about putting a wrapper on it and accessing from Visual Studio that way. I've got a French app that does that except the damned thing is written in Visual C#. Now I haven't got anything much against C# except that Fran

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/09/2008 03:41PM by Forrest Higgs.