Starting from scratch

Hello everyone,
I am a newbie to RepRap and am hugely excited to get going. I want to build a Huxley, but am finding it very difficult to locate the plans. Could someone help me please, to get all the info required?
I do all my work in Inventor, but if I could get any format that is accepted I would be most greatful, even pdf would be fine.
Many thanks,
Tony

Tony

Stupid question, but have you checked out the Huxley page on the wiki?

yes I have, but all I can find are things with .cfg and .stl which I cant open and therfore mean nothing to me.

Try here:
[reprap.svn.sourceforge.net]

Unfortunately, theres nothing there thats easily importable into Inventor. There is a .stl import plugin, but its not cheap.

At least one of the open source CAD programs can open .stl and export STEP. HeeksCAD or FreeCAD, or maybe both or neither. I know I saw it though. A free trial of Alibre might do it for you too.

Thanks, I am sure that will be a good place to start.

Ok, had a look at these free CAD packages and they all seem to be able to write an stl file, but none of them can read one. It looks to me like stl is simply a file to make it easy to print, so I would imagine that is why it is in this format in the first place ie. 3D printing.
How did you guys start? what did you do to get your first machine built?

How will you be building it? i.e. why do you need the CAD files?

If building out of wood, there are easier designs to build in wood than a huxley.

Also, the instructions for huxley are not as well developed as some of the other designs. you might have to refer to the mendel instructions from time to time to get a general idea of how these printers are assembled.

Aka47 is building/has built a huxley, so if you haven't checked out his blog, head over there to read his comments.

Wood is the primary material I will be using. The goal is to build a Huxley, but what ever designs or advice Anyone can give will be greatly appreciated.

It is unfortunately non-obvious, but I just worked through a part in FreeCAD, from .stl to .stp, then successfully into SolidWorks. It even merged co-planar facets into faces for me.

In FreeCAD, go to File, Open, with "Supported Formats" as the file type. It can see the .stl files when I do that. Once it opens the .stl, select it in the "Combo View" thing on the left, go to the Part menu and select "create shape from mesh". A new object appears in the combo view. Select that, go to the Part menu, select "convert to solid". Go to File, Export and make sure to specify ".stp" in the file name.

Sounds like you need the following advice:

First, What tooling do you have? A "real" mendel is difficult (some would say technically impossible) to build without access to a 3D printer, or otherwise getting the printed plastic parts. Thus, build a repstrap, and that page is an overview of general repstrap types, evaluating which is easiest to build depending on what tools you already have.

Second, building a mendel is probably cheapest non-repstrap method. (i.e. it's cheaper to buy the plastic parts than try to duplicate them and build a wooden mendel) see [repraplogphase.blogspot.com] which oulines the non-build-it-yourself approaches to getting a 3D printer.

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I'm building it with Baling Wire

Very helpful, thaks very much.

I am starting to doubt my abilities????????? FreeCAD explains to create a folder, download, unzip preserving subdirrectories, this is something I have never come across in 20 years of working on computers. There is nothing in windows XP help about this, so I cannot figure it out. Secondly after unzipping I find that there is no .exe file. Now I dont know if this is anything to do with the preserving issue or not, but I am wondering why it all seems sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo non-user friendly. All I want is the damn drawings!!!!!!! Am I alone in this or should I just give in??

It sounds like you accidentally got hold of the source code files instead of compiled code in an installer. Here's a page with and .msi file. It's not current with the latest version, but it's good enough for what we want.

Give in? No, this is just part of getting used to open source. Especially something so early in development as open source CAD. More mature projects are much easier to deal with. It is, however, the cheapest tool for doing what needs to be done. There might be a better way to do this, but it's the only free way I'm currently aware of.

Ah, the voice of sanity! Thanks for not giving up on me, I promise to try and be more pacient. I will give your link a go thanks again.

tony woollacott Wrote:
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> I am starting to doubt my abilities?????????
> FreeCAD explains to create a folder, download,
... etc etc
> sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo non-user friendly.
> All I want is the damn drawings!!!!!!! Am I alone
> in this or should I just give in??


Tony

If you are already asking if you should give in then I really think you should.

Building a reprap is a struggle the entire way. It is also an expensive struggle.

3 or 4 hours looking for files is a walk in the park compared to the grief you are going to feel down the way.

I know I have often felt like giving in and I might have if it was not for the £700 or so I have spent. On the other hand I have also learned loads and am generally having fun. The rewards in the form of the achievement when you figure out a problem can also be pretty big.

Be very clear on this before you start. You are going to have some really frustrating times if you do this. That is guaranteed!

Someone has already done a complete set of drawings for the Mendel parts.
It is on his webpage I just don't know the URL.

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Bob Morrison
Wörth am Rhein, Germany
"Luke, use the source!"
BLOG - PHOTOS - Thingiverse

The sort of frustration you are talking about is what I deal with on a daily basis. I have been a design engineer for over 30 years so am very used to things not doing what you may expect of them and so having to rethink etc. It is my first experience with open source and I am actually looking forward to the challenge. I think it is wonderful that people from all over the world can collaborate in this way to reach a common goal, if only it could work in the political world.
Thanks for your input. May I ask if your frustration has been rewarded with a machine that works?

Hi Tony

After starting pushing plastic on friday evening (and immediately having an extruder failure in the feed process) I managed to get a fairly decent print by sunday evening. Worked all weekend dismantling and rebuilding the extruder, with most of Saturday daytime trying to get to grips with Skeinforge, then saturday evening and Sunday trying to print and again dealing with my extruder problems.

So I have had 1 succesfull print after 2 failed rafts... but now need to calibrate the printer to give me decent results (the part should have been 20x20x10 but came out around 20.5x19.5x8.8 or somewhere around that. What currently confuses me is the climb for the z axis is not constant. First 10mm is about 8.8 or 9.1mm and the 10mm from 50-60 is about 9.5 - weird... ??

It has taken me about 7 months since deciding to build a reprap to get to this point, but to be fair I moved house in between and stayed 3 months in a rented room where I did not unpack my printer parts.

I can also be fairly anal sometimes so probably spend way more time than neccesary doing things.

It is a very new environment for me and I have learned a load. If I had to do it again I most certainly will

This forum has been *very* helpfull with my problems. I am always surprised when I see someone post here, with it being their first or second post, saying they have built a machine and then whatever the post is about. I am amazed that people are able to build without getting help.

Thanks for sharing.

Hey Tony,

I noticed you said you were going to make a majority of your parts out of wood. I have been down your path: I wanted a cheap way to make a 3d printer and used the reprap project as the foundation for my endeavors. At first I thought as you did, duplicate exact mendel parts out of wood. After going through what your going through now in finding the dimensioned files, then going through each part and imagining myself making the parts out of wood, I realized that there are a lot of things that are more trouble than its worth to make. Mendel parts are designed to be made with a 3d printer and so something easy on a 3d printer would be extremely difficult with wood (pretty much anything that's not a 90 degree angle in my opinion).

Personally I ended up designing my own repstrap out of wood and it is printing nicely for me. It also cost me very little. So the question you should ask yourself is what you really want at this moment? A cool looking, stylish huxley made out of wood so you can show it off to other people with plastic versions, or a functional 3d printer. I graduated this past May with a mechanical engineering degree and am going through the frustrating and painful process of finding a job. So if someone like me who cant even find a job can design a functional printer, Im sure you with 30 years of design experience can dream up a blue print in your sleep. Besides, its a lot more rewarding when you've gone through all the work and something you designed is working.

So, this is my opinion of how you should approach this project from someone who was in your shoes a couple months ago. Stick with it, when your finished and get your first print to work nicely, it is a fantastic feeling indeed. Suddenly you are empowered with the ability to solve every day problems by simply making new parts to replace broken ones.

Waiasaur,
Sorry it has been a while since I have checked for responses to my post. Thanks for your input, I have in fact done exactly what you have suggested, and the design is looking great. One question I would like answered if possible is, what sort of speed do you run the extruder ie. how many mm/min on the plastic wire.

I'm going at a modest 24mm/s pace right now

Is that the speed of the raw material or the extruded material? And what is the diameter of the raw material and where do you get it? I have almost completed the design of my extruder, but would like to know what everyone is using for heaters and thermo couples.