I wasn't sure what he was talking about either, makes sense for it to be fab@home though. There's no way that project can come close to reprap in cost, as he's using that expensive aluminium box section stuff. It seems a little strange he wants to do everything himself too, when so much progress has be done already with reprap.by greenarrow - General
I use a graphical frontend for ssdc called piklab . In fedora its in the repos, I don't know about ubuntu. It has an option in the preferences for the icd2 programmer and supports a whole load of compilers (including sdcc, some other c ones and some basic ones) This only gets you up and running with the compiler quickly, I can't be much help with actually learning the sdcc pic apiby greenarrow - RepRap Host
I was thinking the same, though I haven't read what zach was asking, just the last few posts here. all nopheads parts have been made with skeinforge, which are indisputably the best objects anyone has printed.by greenarrow - RepRap Host
This guy is bridging the two channels on a l298 to get a single 4A channel . You would need two l298s per motor then though. You can buy off the shelf h-bridge boards e.g.by greenarrow - Controllers
He's right. I should have mentioned before: you only need h-bridge motor drivers for bipolar stepper motors. Unipolar motors would run happily from 4 power mosfets, simply one for each coil. You would need some more output pins from the arduino (that don't exist), and to modify the firmware though.by greenarrow - Controllers
I've seen that before but not tired it yet as I don't have any arduinos. It probably won't make quite as efficient code, but often the advantages of development time and flexibility are more important.by greenarrow - RepRap Host
The one i use is about 36x27x13mm and has 12 panes. I think that is slight overkill because it never even gets warm.by greenarrow - Controllers
That was what I was describing above, but one step is not enough because the machine will not be completely perfect. Even then, if you switch the machine on when the axies are in their home positions, it is going to have to blindly run them all forwards for a bit, then run them backwards on at a time, then forwards again. It's a huge complication compared to using two arduinosby greenarrow - Controllers
If they are all wired together, then how do you know which axis is which? Just running one axis at a time is not really a solution because if and axis is already at zero, then another can't be detected. Ideally we want to add more endstops on the other ends of the axies. A workaround may we possible - e.g. reseting an axis, then moving it 10mm in, then reseting another, moving it 10mm in etc, butby greenarrow - Controllers
I don't know about the avaCADo developers, but I know once people show and interest in some software, it encourages me to find more time to work on it. I checked out the source code and tried to build it for scratch, but i'm getting a few errors, but i know nothing about java yet so thats unsurprising.by greenarrow - RepRap Host
Once you have a reprap then you can print parts for a larger one. The parts may need a little re-designing, and may need to make some other changes e.g. move to plumbing pipe instead of steel rod etc, but I can't see why it shouldn't be possibleby greenarrow - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
That would only allow the motor to be switched on and off (not reversed). In order to reverse a motor you need to control it from an h-bridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-bridge). One could be made using 4 irf540s but they can be tricky to get right, and an off the shelf h-bridge like the l298 has some nice extra features. Someone may wish to design a high power board, that is compatible withby greenarrow - Controllers
They are going for a simple easy to use interface a bit like aoi. I found it a few days ago, but held of posting until i had properly checked it out. I thought you would like it forest This page shows their priority of work: I'm almost tempted to do a little work on it myself, although i would have to learn java firstby greenarrow - RepRap Host
I found this project yesterday: avoCADo - It's in the very early stages of development at the moment, and I was only able to make a couple of cubes, but their goals seem to be very similar (pretty much the same) as our requirements. The projects seems alive and being worked on, the last update was posted in March. Also, re ldraw and mlcad: I used them many years ago, mlcad is a pretty good cadby greenarrow - RepRap Host
I think to really add anything to the Arduino electronics we need to move onto the two arduinio design, as almost all of the program memory is currently used. This will also add plenty of I/O pins. I think zach has already started this, or at least he's made the arduino firmware in a very nice modular way to make the task relatively easy. Having one arduino got tools and one for Cartesian would pby greenarrow - Controllers
As I see it, AOI may not be perfect, but it is the easiest 3d modelling program I have learned to use, and you can do pretty complex things with it once you learn the rather roundabout ways of doing them. We know how we would prefer it to work, but I have yet to find another program that is so easy to use and does exactly what we want. I have experimented with rounding edges in AOI. The (no so)by greenarrow - RepRap Host
Objects are designed as vectors, and the RepRap machine prints things as vectors. Rastering and re-vectoring is only normally a last resort because it is inherently 'messy' process.by greenarrow - RepRap Host
I've been using art of illusion for a while, and I like it. But what annoys me about it is that all operations are absolute once done. i.e. when you join two cubes you get a brand new object, and changing the original cubes has no impact on your new object. Do CAD orientated programs do this? It's really annoying when you want to make a slight change to an object and have to re-do loads of unrelby greenarrow - RepRap Host
I downloaded Open CASCADE. It had some strange java 'installer' that extracted lots of files. I sifted though the files it extracted and found a folder called 'ros' that had a makefile in, so i tried to build it but I got an error: ../../../drv/Dico/Dico_DictionaryOfInteger_0.cxx:51: error: 'Standard_Transient_Type_' was not declared in this scope make[3]: *** Error 1 make[3]: Leaving directoryby greenarrow - RepRap Host
STL is a vector based format, what is it that you are trying to do that requires a 3D raster? If you really need to plot it to a raster you could work with one layer at a time, and make sure the old one is deleted from RAM before you start the next one. Ru Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Admittedly, a multipage 2d vector image format > would be a sensible wby greenarrow - RepRap Host
Looking good, are you planning to use the same system of belts as in darwin?by greenarrow - Mechanics
These are a few things I'm planning to try making:by greenarrow - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
Like the stuff used for waste water from a sink? Steel tubing would probably work pretty well with the current darwin design, as I would have thought it would still be strong enoughby greenarrow - Mechanics
Is conduit an american name for pipe, or is it something else?by greenarrow - Mechanics
There are 10 solid magnets on the rotor and 8 coils with the intention on running them in opposite pairs. (4 sets). Do you know if there are any particular ratio of rotor poles to stator poles that work in stepper motors, or can it be pretty arbitrary? If I print them out on paper I could turn the rotor round to check the steps. Edit: I just did that, now I think I understand stepper motors a lby greenarrow - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
I don't think my design is very good for a practical use in a reprap (bulky, few steps per degree etc), but I designed it with the intention of simplicity just to see if I can get it working before refining the design. Here's a slight update with proper slots for the coils, and a channel for all the wiring to go through: The rotor in the middle can't be reprapped without support materialby greenarrow - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
I used to control my steppers direct from the parallel port, using a python module written in C, but then I switched to the generation 1 electronics. It worked pretty well without a realtime kernel but my machine wasn't capable of much then so its hard to tell how effective it was.by greenarrow - RepRap Host
I made a stepper design too a little while ago but have only just got round to drawing it up on the computer. Solid magnets are glued in place into the central rotor, then coils of wire are round round each of the metal bars in the outside section, then they are slotted into place. These could probably be made using fields metal, then have the reprap wind wire round it.by greenarrow - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
Did you manage to etch it all the way through? When I tried it, it would always stop working before it got to the end. I think it must be because there is too much covering the copper and stopping the process. It would continue if this were removed, but it would be hard to not remove the pcb masking at the same time.by greenarrow - Mechanics