Chime in...

Hey, all.

I'm a Technical Officer over at the National Institute for Nanotechnology, and I'm planning to essay a RepRap once they declare 1.0 frozen and closed. I'm a foster parent as well, so my time is limited - I'd be more than happy to collab with someone and make two together instead. I have access to micro-CNC up to 4"x6"x2.38" envelope, and various other tools, so I can provide some (all?) of the RepStrapping of the machineable parts, though it make take a while - I'm not highly comfortable with the machine yet. Electronics ain't my expertise so if you're good at that, troubleshooting that half would probably be handy.

If you're in the area and interested, chime in here in this thread and we'll arrange contact info (I'll treat you to lunch!) via PM.

- Eric Finley

Hi, Eric,

I'm in the Edmonton area (out in Spruce) and am interested in building a RepRap. If by electronics you mean electrical, same here, although I can use a soldering iron when I need to. Software is more my thing. I won't be able to do anything until at least January. December is pretty busy around here. If you are still looking for someone, please PM me. Thanks.

Hi Eric!

I am at UofA, and I am also interested in building a RepRap. I'm not particularly good at electronics, but I can at least solder PCBs. Let me know if you are still into this idea!

Yes, Pablo - I am!

Keith and I tried to make plans to get together and discuss it, quite some time ago, but the real world intervened (no surprise there).

I'll PM you and we can try and set something up, and I'll dig up Keith's email and see if he's interested in joining us for lunch or something.

- Eric

I'm an electronics hobbyist who is playing around with 3d fabrication, you folks still floating around Edmonton?

How's the Edmonton Reprap group going? I'm in Calgary and starting to think about making one or at least a rep-strap. I've access to a CNC mill at work so I'm thinking I should be able to make a bunch of the parts for a repstrap. I'd rather just go straight for the darwin version though so if I could source the troublesome parts locally that would great. I also had an arduino for a while. I also have a motor shield although I'm not sure if I can sub it in for the ones specd' on the reprap site.

I would be very interested in creating multiple reprap machines

i would like to find more people who are interested in building a reprap too, but i am in a small town SK an hour south of moose jaw. but i would love to at least be able to communicate with other people that are interested in building one

---

[mike-mack.blogspot.com]

Eric

I am a mechanical engineer. I am willing to do design work if you or anyone else need it.

Email me mr.bradstewart@yahoo.ca

From edmonton looking for other enthusiasts who would like to combine our efforts to build a reprap and then children of it

Hi there. Any of you guys get one of these units going yet? I am looking at getting into building one of these. I have training at NAIT for plastics processing and experience working in plastic injection molding so I am hoping to use some of my knowledge running/building one of these. I am going to try making a simple extruder to make my own feedstock as well. Send me a message if any of you are getting anywhere with your machines.
Loren

Hi.

Graeme Smith here, from ENTS

We are beginning to get a bit of a group together of 3D printing enthusiasts, and looking forward to making more of them, we were discussing the idea of cleaning up a set of parts and seeing if we can't build OOMOO type molds of them once we get the Mendel working.

My Partner and GF and I have been experimenting with an idea that we got off the internet about how to make cheaper molding silicon based on bathroom and tub calking (GE Silicon I) We think we are close to a two part silicon similar to OOMOO but without their mark-up. However neither of us are actually chemists, and there might be methods of reducing the costs even further if someone actually understood the chemistry involved.

A couple of the members have managed to get some vacuum pumps etc. and we think we might be able to hack together a vacuum evacuation chamber eventually, to improve the quality of the molds without having to get the silicon to run like water for the bombs away method. Recently we at ENTS were looking at getting a bigger hackerspace, so that we would have the room to do things like this, but the particular deal fell through, when we realized that the space we were looking at was an old world war two hanger with its attendant problems, and the estimates of renovations were about 1/10th of the likely costs. That industrial strength concrete isn't going to just melt like butter dontcha know.

A couple of weeks ago, Aphodic Jester brought out his Prussa-Mendel built from his working RepStrap and was able to show us a few stock figures as test pieces.

I just bought a couple of Sanguinololu boards from JoeMosFet@gmail.com They cost $11.00 plus $17.79 to ship via UPS (he chipped in the second board because he had planned on selling them in the $11.00 to $14.00 range with shipping but had not taken Canada into account.) This is a generation 6 or 7 design, the boards are about 2.25" by 4.25" (probably a metric size) and are designed to fit Joes future Step-Strip design which is a pololu clone based on the A4988 chip. Since they are supposed to be pin compatible with the pololu modules, if pololu ever restocks them, the design does not need to wait for joes stepstrip board to be ready.

Essentially the ATMEGA644P chip, and the Pololu drivers are mounted on headers, and every bit of board realestate is utilized to reduce the size of the board. Because the important units are header mounted, the room underneath is utilized to reduce board realestate, with small electrolytic caps, resonators, and jumpers for setting the microstepping mode hidden underneath the modules/chip. In many cases, in the interests of saving space, they even doubled up the interfaces, of the board so that alternate installations were possible if needed. For instance if the FTDI 232RL chip is installed you can install your own USB interface, if not, you can use the standard breakout board.

Of course, I don't know if the parts are available to build out these boards, if only because I have heard rumors that ATMEGA is running out of its world supply of through hole chips, since it did not know that the Arduino revolution was going to insist on using them to exclusion of the more popular SMD versions. However a 40 pin breakout of the SMD version of the 644 is certainly within reach if it isn't available in its popular P configuration.

Edmonton and surrounding area enthusiasts are welcome to contact ENTS via the directors at directors@ents.ca, or me at grysmith@telus.net for the latest updates.

Nice project Graeme! I was contemplating making some molds myself but you are way ahead of me on this one. Your hackerspace looks pretty awesome too. I just recently got my lasercut mendel up and running. Let me know if you need anything.