maitri982 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I like eiffel...would be nice to see eiffel made > with t-slot with linear motion handled by rack and > pinion perhaps... That sounds a lot like CubeSpawn: http://cubespawn.com Except Cubespawn is conceived of from the beginning as a modular system, so they can be linked together to form production chains. The cby Sam Putman - General
Actually, on the subject of plastic T-Slot, Erik de Bruijn made some 15mm variants on the MakerBeam design which he printed on his Darwin. By all reports it was reasonably strong, certainly strong enough to hold a bracket and screws and probably rigid enough to form the framing elements of a non-contact tool like a RepRap. 25mm, a more usual size, would be time consuming to execute but quite strby Sam Putman - RepLab Working Group
Brilliant thread. The RepLab project considers a powder-bed printer one of the basic technologies, mostly for working with water-bound powders in ceramic, glass and metal with kiln sintering. The best notion so far has been combining the HM3DP inkjet hack with a CandyFab gasketed powder dredge bed and using Open3DP formulas for ceramics as the test medium. This seems to be pretty much the conseby Sam Putman - Powder Printing and Selective Laser Sintering
Er, wow! What great discussions. Lawrence, I know the RepLab list would love to have your observations and knowledge about RepTab. There doesn't seem to be a ton of information on Marcin's blog, perhaps you could stop by and answer some questions about the control geometry, motors, software, backlash issues and most importantly, how do we build one? :-) I'm kind of terrified of the notion thatby Sam Putman - RepLab Working Group
Marcin's emphasis is different from that of the RepLab project at large. His goal is permafacture, replicable village-scale creation of all the comforts of a high-tech lifestyle, from agriculture and housing to machine tools and their products. I think it's a beautiful vision and one where even partial realization can produce great economic and social benefit. RepLab is more focused on generalby Sam Putman - General
Recursion matters, it's crucial in fact, but recursion is also old hat. Machines make all products including other machines. It's automated recursion that has interesting consequences, with Type 3 replication the most flexible kind. It's the Type 3 general replication that is new, and combining them is already changing everything. Consider: all one needs to write software is a computer and some sby Sam Putman - General
Since the RepLab concept owes so much to the RepRap project, it seems natural to have a discussion about it here. Marcin Jakubowski of Factor e Farm recently raised the topic of open-source FabLabs as part of his larger project of a full suite of sustainable open-source technologies for village scale, resilient high-tech permaculture. Erik de Bruijn replied: "I propose that we call this effortby Sam Putman - RepLab Working Group
Replication, and specifically self-replication, is a big topic here in the RepRap community. I've written a bit on the subject, as part of clarifying the goals for the RepLab project. I believe these distinctions have some relevance to the RepRap project also. Specifically, I'm saying that for a recursive, non-self-assembling replicator, the degree of automation of the replicating act matters fby Sam Putman - General
This is a great idea, although I don't have a use for one yet. Will you be open-sourcing the design, or replicating an existing OS design in a new material?by Sam Putman - General
Don't use CO2! You'll end up with a brittle mess. You probably didn't need me to tell you that though. :-) I'm quite excited that you're working on this. I'll be keeping an eye out for where this goes!by Sam Putman - Plastic Extruder Working Group
Oh. Nev'mind! Shows what I know abt. the state of home 3-d printing,,,by Sam Putman - General
What's needed is some generalized tool, a panel in Skeinforge or similar that automatically calculates a support framework based on a given 3-d model. Obviously it can be crafted by hand, but to qualify as a real solution it needs to be as transparent to the design process as possible. Simply design a model, prep for printing, and the support framework is generated by the software based on nozzby Sam Putman - General
Curlrup, That's an incredibly good idea and I'm really surprised that no one has commented on it yet. If I understand you, you're proposing a software fix: adding a bunch of thin filaments built into a raft-type structure designed to be easily snapped off and trimmed with a utility knife. That's brilliant, that's doable and should completely happen. One could calibrate the extruder by designby Sam Putman - General
Direct Metal Laser Sintering requires buildup of powder, layer by layer, followed by fusion with a laser. In other words, it's a laser cutter with a powder bed. This should be hackable by combining an off-the-shelf laser cutter with Fab@home or even CandyFab technology. From there it's all about finding the right settings. It may be necessary to work under a nitrogen or carbon dioxide atmospheby Sam Putman - Plastic Extruder Working Group
Ant, modems have existed for a looooong time. I'm certain there are tiny Assembler modem codes out there, I don't know about 1 kilobyte but realistically 5 to 10, the trick is finding them, as they would be older than the WWW by many years.by Sam Putman - General
On the receiving end it's basically a modem. The trick would be encoding the modulation signal correctly into an mp3. Someone could hack this. The instructions would 'play' in their entirety before printing began, with checksums etc. to make sure the transmission was correct. It's all quite feasible.by Sam Putman - General
Rosin, perhaps? It is fluid at temperatures as high as 130C, and dissolves in alcohol. It's brittle in its solid form, however, and causes enough friction that it's commonly used for this purpose. If the extruder issues could be worked out, it's cheap, renewable, can be manufactured on a home scale from pine trees and would serve the purpose.by Sam Putman - General
It's not a bad model, necessarily. Not at all unlike this project: Although I'm not sure they're really giving value for their pledges so we'll see how the next 9 days goes for them. Their model is idealistic, and I hope they succeed. Am I right in thinking that the electronics and extruder are also in short supply? I think you're better off working with the people who have 3-d printers alby Sam Putman - General
I like where you're going with this, and look forward to seeing working prototypes, diagrams etc. Do you have a site where you're aggregating your work? The servos you're proposing in particular intrigue me. A suggestion if I may: a machine designed for the other six billion should use the computer they're most likely to have access to. Include an RCA stereo jack, and make the GCode programmabby Sam Putman - General
There are pigments that are made of finely-ground ABS plastic, used in most of the vivid modern tattoo inks. These should dissolve in acetone nicely and would chemically bond with ABS models.by Sam Putman - General
Icomtois, that's an interesting idea, and one I'd be willing to explore. MakerBeam has an invite left for an open-source hardware project, and we could also simply host the project. Could you give me more of a sense of what you have in mind? I picture distributed printing of the plastic parts; are you also talking about getting a batch of the electronics created? Kickstarter works well for prby Sam Putman - General
Hi RepRap community! I'm working on an open source project with relevance to the RepRap project. It's called MakerBeam, and it's a miniature version of T-slot, which is used in many larger-scale CNC machines and other machine enclosure/automation purposes. Mini-T is 10x10mm in profile; existing T-slots start at 20x20mm and tend to be proprietary systems. When we launched this project we had oby Sam Putman - General