I've been getting my ESCs and brushless motors from www.hobbyking.com in hong kong, expecting two orders to arrive soon even. I can see why people would be doing a belt drive, to take some strain off the motor's bearings itself, and to put something heavy duty at the milling head. I've got one of these on order: # and and ESC: but I'm not sure yet if it will go on my machine, or one of my RC jeby grael - Controllers
Just letting people in the greater Wellington area know that I've got most of the drivers written on my ARM 32 bit microcontroller based controller board, and I'm getting close to being able to run g-codes. If anybody's interested, this hardware base is pretty versatile and without many of the limitations of the current reprap generation equipment. I'm not doing any work to perfect the mechaniby grael - New Zealand RepRap User Group
You can build the mechanical parts yourself, especially if you are creative, but unless you have a small home machine shop, some of it's going to be very slow going. As far as the REPRAP electronics go, Zach has a lot of experience with generations 1, 2 and 3 he's now in makerbot. I'm doing my own project, with a 100 pin ARM that has pretty much more and faster of everything, but so far I'm doiby grael - Reprappers
I think it's a few steps closer to coming together. Literally ! I have my X and Y axis end limit detectors installed today. More progress in due course on one of the build threads, or my build blog.by grael - RepRap Host
Hi Viktor, The microcontroller has 128k Flash, so table memory is easy. It's also pretty fast on maths, so I'm thinking that calculating on the fly will work fine. Anything too complex, I can precalculate at the compile level, or as part of the boot process. At the moment, I'm using 4 different values for pwm phase states in motion and at rest(per motor), but here, I'm looking at the step inclusiby grael - RepRap Host
Hi, I've been pretty quiet, occupied elsewhere for a while, but I'm back, and keen to get going again. For those who don't know, I decided at the beginning of this 2009 year to design up a new machine using an ST Microelectronics ARM 100 pin 72MHz microcontroller. I got 15 boards built, and they are useable after a few jumper placements to correct a bad edit I made designing the board. The topicby grael - RepRap Host
The weather here is heating up, and I'm back working on my SW again for the board. The 5 high current outputs work much better with the correct MOSFETS ! Running radio control brushless speed controllers from the servo outputs expands the system to an eyebrow raising extent, the R&D that has already been put into BESC design, and the low cost of Kong Kong sourced RC gear makes motor drive cby grael - Controllers
Not sure why he wants 2 x USB, unless it's for USB experimental purposes ? I used the ST chip because it has a lot of PWM, and the pins are very flexible in how they can be used. I'm very pleased about the 5 x RC servo output I designed in, because it also give me an option of high current drive axis or tool head rotary power via brushless motor and brushless speed controller if required. Someby grael - Controllers
I think there is an inverse mathematical relationship between the size of the machine's motors versus the size of the motor driving the extruder.by grael - New Zealand RepRap User Group
"freeman" in the USA. Dow Corning and Topmark in NZ (that I know about)by grael - Plastic Extruder Working Group
Sodium silicate is used in the foundry industry as a binder for sand, which hardens almost instantly in the presence of CO2. It's a relatively viscous fluid compared to water. It is lacking in any significant tensile strength, but is hard. It's relatively cheap, certainly in comparison with silicon rubber or hydrocarbon resins. It seems to me, that it would make an excellent candidate for a rapby grael - General
I've been contemplating freeranging devices with precise orientation and location sensing, that can be set free as a team to build an object of larger size. The team members should preferably form component parts of an ecosystem, as too much specialisation reduces group flexibility. The spacial sensing technology is now commonplace already. Consider graphics tablets, silicon compasses, and GPS.by grael - General
freds Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Can you imagine the junk mail associated with this > capablity to do garage enhancements? I can, and it's very scary !by grael - Tissue Engineering
The key to this would be to run columns that tallied the results of previous x,y and z locations in their own columns as a simple cell relative position macro, and then tidy it up a bit by using things like an icon lookup table to represent g-code types. Excell can run VB macros, and I think openoffice runs python macros ? It wouldn't be too hard to run a CNC simulator off the same g-code outputby grael - RepRap Host
Dewayne, I'm about to get started again, after seeing some youtube videos of sodium silicate sand core moulding it's got me quite excited about leveraging the power of a CNC machine to real world production tasks. I've not made a decision yet about open sourcing the project, there are pros and cons on both sides. So far, I've borne all the cost of the development. I feel I have a good pin assiby grael - RepRap Host
Not sure why you reposted my old message cHUMPY, but I do have my own board now. although I've been having a holiday from the software phase while I work on another project, but I'll get back to it soon.by grael - Controllers
I haven't given up, just been slow. I agree about the mosfets, but I want a compact solution for the stepper drivers. I've been working on a couple of RC jet boats, this one's my latest: Brushless motor/speed controller and LiPo batteries have unbelievable power to weight ratios. This is my second brushless jetboat design, the first one was very overpowered. I will be back developing this inby grael - RepRap Host
Hi Peter, I'm still inexperienced at C programming. How do you create the jump table that your "action(phase & 3);" would presumably refer to, and do you need an alligned vector table ? The case statements in C aren't as good, timewise. -------------------------------------- Anyone following this, I've taken over a month holiday from the Software, I started a very small RC jetboat design,by grael - RepRap Host
I've got this on the board I designed, but I'm still trying to get it to work. I'm using an STM32103VBT Arm Cortex M3 processor, and to optimise pin usage, my pin assignments are somewhat different than those in the starter kits. What you want implemented, is known as the USB "MSD" (Mass Storage Device), and it's a nasty piece of software implemented in a large number of C and H files. I haven'tby grael - General
Yes, I'd go for a replacement of the AVR chip too. That's solved problems for me in the past, I've had several AVRs fry on their programmers and development kits. Nice micros to work with, but not particularly robust in that particular hardware scenario. The STM32 ARM seems pretty robust so far, even for a 3.3 volt chip.by grael - RepRap Host
There's no assembler library for the ARM cortex that I'm aware of. That's why, for the first time in my life I've switched to using C for embedded programming. In C, all you need do is something like this: If (GPIO_ReadOutputDataBit(GPIOx,PinNo) != 0 then {your required action} However, you need to search on STM's website for the "STM Firmware Library". If you're using an ARM Cortex made by sby grael - RepRap Host
ankit jain Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > can we have have access to individual pins like we > do have in atmel > like PA9 =1 ;????????/ > and if yes then how to find address of them. The pins on STM's STM32 ARM Cortex are arranged into 16 bit wide ports. I have been using the firmware libraries, which makes some things easier, but some more challenby grael - RepRap Host
I started assembling my second PCB last weekend, still short on most of the parts, but I used an old electric frypan to toast on the SMD Polyswitch fuses and the ARM microcontroller, worked well. I was doing it by eye though... I wouldn't want to leave it unattended ! I used part of a syringe of solder paste I'd kept in the fridge since about 2003, worked fine !by grael - Controllers
RS232 isn't intended for daisy chaining, for that, the equivalent spec is RS422 or RS485. USB or ethernet are the more modern equivalents. Some of the newer designs are coming out with USB, I think Zachs does, and my design has USB, RS232 and RS485, but I'm still writing the software for my design. Practically, a lot of people seem to be spending around 7 parts designing to 1 part building, soby grael - Controllers
Bodge it , KiCad can output in gerber and postscript, and various format drill files. The only awkward thing, is that I don't know of any good PCB manufacturers who can use KiCad's native output, which would be easier for them, when it comes to things like panelising and setting up alignment markers. But, as said above, there are some free conversion programs, for gerber to gcode, so it's not toby grael - Controllers
I don't know if anyone in this forum is doing it, but in the industry, it's quite common. DC motors can rev a lot higher and require less attention to detail. As far as the encoder side goes, there's a really simple implementation where you take one of the encoder lines and wire it to an edge sensitive configured interrupt pin, the other wires to a standard input. Every time you get an interruptby grael - Controllers
Establishing a "Name brand" requires something you can copyright. Whether Makerbot are trying to do that, is not for me to say... but it would be logical.by grael - General
Adding a pigment or paint layer separately would probably reduce strength of the finished object. However, as has been pointed out above, a marker pen works to an extent. So, it might be possible to introduce pigments to the main injection flow from separately controlled reservoirs, or from smaller pigment filiaments. Monofiliment sewing thread migh be a good candidate for the latter, else youby grael - General