After a lot of messing about- burning out circuit boards, learning and not understanding JAVA , setting up UBUNUTU PC's, learning linux and command lines, assembling bits, ordering endless bits form Zak, Ian and EBAY, I have just printed out some hollow squares and I am feeling very pleased with myself so I thought I would share it with anyone who is interested.

I built a 3 axis milling machine from Ebay plans and steppers and controlers from motion control in Bournemouth (UK) and I run it using EMC. I built the extruder as per the wiki, broke 2 solarbotic motors so stripped down an old cordless drill and connected it to the extruder drive shaft and heated the heater using the PMW card running at full blast.

I programmed the square in G code, switched on the drill, downloaded the g code file and pressed go and hey presto a wobbly looking square.

Next steps I think-
1. Drink some wine.
2.Build a holder for the fillament so that it does not all twist up
3 get skeinforge working so that I can import G code and make some objects
4 make a shot glass
5. Drink more from shot glass
6 get the extruder runing at a constant speed
7. Programme the audrino so that it controls the temperature of the extruder
8.get the host software, the electronics all working.
9. make the rep rap machine work
10 make another reprap!

Thanks for all the answers to the questions that have helped me get this far and look out for more!

Andy

Hi Andy,
I thought you were building a Darwin. Did you switch tracks?

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

nophead Wrote:
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> Hi Andy,
> I thought you were building a Darwin. Did you
> switch tracks?

You set a powerful example, Nop!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/02/2008 06:41PM by Forrest Higgs.

Quote
Forrest
You set a powerful example, Nop!

It is true...both of you do. I wanted to jump in headfirst into a darwin but I am repstrapping now. First because I want my repstrap to be able to hold and use a dremel for milling too. And second because at the time I was expecting to be able to come by a set of darwin parts from a member with a working darwin.

C'est la vie.

Now I'll be able to make my own darwin from my own strapper.

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Robert Carpenter
[www.robertcarpenter.net]

The Darwin can do light (as in dremel) milling my mate Tony posted on the forums the PCB milling he was doing, built correctly the Darwin is an unexpectedly rigid frame. With the weakest point being the bend in the 2 X carriage bars. But this can quite easily be stiffened, although for printing this is not required at all.

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Ian
[www.bitsfrombytes.com]

Ian Adkins Wrote:
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> The Darwin can do light (as in dremel) milling my
> mate Tony posted on the forums the PCB milling he
> was doing, built correctly the Darwin is an
> unexpectedly rigid frame.
>

Thanks for the confirmation of that, Ian. I was almost certain that it would. It's really nice that somebody has proved it out now.

I have got all the Darwin bits but I also wanted a CNC milling machine and I wanted to tackle one thing at once as I have also struggled with getting electronics and software working never knowing whether it was the programme or the electronics that I had installed/soldered together incorrectly.

Now I will work with the arduino to contol extruder speed and temperature and then look at getting all the electronics working.


(And of course the results that you get do inspire me!)
Andy