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General discussions. For specific printers / electronics / fabrication methods / softwares, please see other sections.
Re: Purpose of spring for heatbed? - 12 years ago
There is also the issue of parts that warp but are large enough that the layers cool down to the point of being solid. It's better to fix that particular problem, but at least with the springs it's a lot less serious when you get hit with this. The nozzle pushes the part down as it moves across and the print is able to continue.by kylecronan - General
Re: ATX Issues
- 12 years ago
Also I've heard some ATX PSUs don't like having a huge load on the 12v rail with nothing on the 5v, so you could try putting a power resistor or bulb across the 5 volts. Ah yes, here it is on the wiki:by kylecronan - General
Re: How to make a loop belt from straight one? - 12 years ago
I thought Nudel's description sounded familiar, then I remembered that I did this long ago for Darwin. You can follow those instructions:by kylecronan - General
Re: Software used to design printers? - 12 years ago
I tried Alibre a couple years back and although it has good capabilities for the price, I found it to be riddled with very frustrating bugs. I vowed never to use it again. My favorite CAD (for doing actual engineering) is SolidWorks. It's amazingly versatile, and not much harder to use than SketchUp (which, in my opinion, is great software but not suitable for engineering work). The problem iby kylecronan - General
Re: Books to Read - 16 years ago
That's great! This section is particularly interesting and topical: The virtually evolved robot crawler by Lipson and Pollack is fascinating! Being able to model real-world performance and then apply a genetic algorithm to the design space of 3d parts we can build and assemble-- becomes a really interesting source for 3d models! This was also interesting to me: > Stereolithography and rby kylecronan - General
Re: motor controller / possible power supply problem - 16 years ago
Ah wonderful, thank you, Alexandre! and thanks Zach, looking forward to trying out that update! -Kyleby kylecronan - Controllers
Re: motor controller / possible power supply problem - 16 years ago
Pc-alimentation as in power supply? That's too bad. But yeah, somehow I get the impression that operating the steppers while this problem occurs is none too good for the electronics... are any of your motor board heat sinks getting very hot when idle? My Z axis seems to get much hotter than the other two, and I wonder if I've already damaged it somehow. Then again, I may very well be conflatiby kylecronan - Controllers
Re: motor controller / possible power supply problem - 16 years ago
So I wonder then if the power supply does have anything to do with it. Well, as Jay said, any help debugging this would be awesome.by kylecronan - Controllers
motor controller / possible power supply problem - 16 years ago
Hi everyone. I've finally got my Darwin assembled (minus extruder) and it's all very exciting, but as I was wiring up the axes things started going wrong with the motors. I'm using the Arduino electronics. I hooked up the Z stage first, and it was working normally in the stepper exerciser, as long as I used the single arduino firmware. I didn't have any problems with the Y either. But by thby kylecronan - Controllers
Re: How many Arduino's? - 16 years ago
Any chance we can get updated firmware for the dual arduino setup? I'm ready to test my positioning system, but when I built a breakout board I followed the dual arduino setup. Figured it would be nice to have some room for expansion and further tinkering. Edit: Oh, it looks like 2 arduinos was only removed from the documentation? I'm going to give the latest arduino firmware a try today!by kylecronan - Controllers
Re: Hi Temp Extruder Barrel - 16 years ago
deadgenome Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > could one of these be fiddled with... they run on > batteries - > I have one of those (although I must say, it is pretty useless). They seem to work by creating a spark between two electrodes- you can often clearly see it. So I would think that the heat generated is incidental, and highly localized. Isn't niby kylecronan - Mechanics
Re: Parts Problems - 16 years ago
McMaster also sells a neat motor coupling that comes in parts so you can select two separate diameters. They're called spider shaft, or something like that. It looks like it's going to work fine for my Z and Y axes. Kyleby kylecronan - Reprappers
Re: 8mm Rod From McMaster-Carr - 16 years ago
It's so expensive from McMaster-Carr. Fasco Fasteners has the 8mm threaded in stainless steel, meter lengths. If you're in the US, you might want to call them and ask them who is a local distributor for you (in my case it was a marine supply store that did it as a special order). I think they have the smooth rod too, but since 5/16" is practically the same thing, in LA I was able to get a bettby kylecronan - Mechanics
Re: GCode Feedrate Help - 16 years ago
Hey Zach, To take your example, "G1 X30 Y90 Z55 F20", the line you're following will be sqrt(30^2+90^2+55^2), which is about 109.659 mm long and you want to do it at 20 mm/min, so it should take 5.483 minutes to move 30 mm in x, 90 mm in y, 55 mm in z. So just apply the fact again that it's linear motion to get a velocity and therefore a step frequency for each axis (I got 547.15 steps/minute eby kylecronan - RepRap Host
Re: Home-brewed plastic made from milk ... - 16 years ago
Yes that's true. But who knows, maybe Stratasys could just as well do some cheap way to make support material, aside from it's a lot nicer to make your margin on fancy polymers than a $10 bucket of glop. (Since they get a kind of monopoly from the other patents and, of course, you can't modify their product!) Anyway, it is that $10 glop we need... Still, I guess I could try getting some of thaby kylecronan - Polymer Working Group
Re: boarduino breakout pcb - 16 years ago
Oh and since I forgot to say, GPL on the files so Zach or anybody, feel free to tweak the design, sell it, whatever. We could just make a couple changes for a double-sided one. It would be slightly smaller in that case (this one is 3"x4.5"). But first, hopefully I will be able to confirm soon that it has everything needed for Darwin. I'm ready to assemble and wire mine as soon as I get my pacby kylecronan - Controllers
Re: Home-brewed plastic made from milk ... - 16 years ago
It looks like Stratasys uses a water-soluble plastic called poly(2-ethyl-2-oxazoline), or PETOX, mixed with an "inert filler": Possibilities for the filler are listed in the patent: "calcium carbonate, glass spheres, graphite, carbon black, carbon fiber, glass fiber, talc, wollastonite, mica, alumina, silica, and silicon carbide". I found PETOX from a supplier called PolySciences for nearly $by kylecronan - Polymer Working Group
boarduino breakout pcb - 16 years ago
Hi everybody, So I'm building a Darwin! Has been a blast so far. Anyway, I hope to help out wherever I can along the way. Here's something that I hope will be useful to others: I made a breakout board for the dual Arduino configuration. It has two sockets that fit the Boarduino and .1" Molex KK headers for the connectors. The spare ports on the Arduinos are also broken out to three differby kylecronan - Controllers