I think this is probably bump-worthy: Experimental windows binaries are now available. Please test, especially rru-gcode-dump.exe; the win32 serial comms API is rather unintuitive, and I can't easily experiment on it here. rru-gcode-gen.exe should work fine. Remember that the tools must be ran from within a console to be very useful. If anything goes wrong, post the full command line you enteby Ralith - RepRap Host
I've long been frustrated with the high resource requirements posed by the Java control software used on the official software stack (and at least one unofficial stack, in ReplicatorG), ad my machine has only 512MB of RAM. This ultimately means I can't run both Java and my web browser in parallel; frustrating at best, and often counterproductive, such as when I want to refer to documentation. Aby Ralith - RepRap Host
A granule extruder does not need to be large or heavy; in fact, I have yet to see a design proposed that is either, certainly in comparison to the current filament extruder (or the experimental pinch-wheel extruders with their large motors, although I suspect the final versions will be lighter). The auger concept leads to a relatively simple design, and no granule extruder needs to have a very lby Ralith - Mechanics
Looking over the builders' blog conversations, it looks like things are all good and well intentioned. Kudos to Ian for making this happen!by Ralith - General
The load on the developer community is going to decline? With the level of disconnect between the "Rapman" and the RepRap that there seems to be, I'm not sure this will have any effect on the community beyond Ian himself. Then again, I suppose getting more rapid prototypers into people's hands is never a bad thing.by Ralith - General
Hey, at least it's relevant.by Ralith - General
Why the abandonment of the RepRap name? Also, any plans to credit the photos used in the "RepMan samples" sidebar? Exciting to see the RepRap being picked up commercially, although I hope that the open source nature of the project won't be downplayed to the customers; it would be a shame for Unimatic to succeed in widely distributing these to users who never realize the existence of, let aloneby Ralith - General
I imagine one could use uninsulated magnet wire, wrapped (carefully) around a furnace cement (or similar) coated barrel to circumvent the first issue, while drastically reducing losses thanks to the thermal insulation offered by the cement. I'm not sure what steel's Curie temperature is, but judging by your comparison of it to the melting point of copper I imagine it's plenty high. Specificallyby Ralith - Controllers
Interesting! This nicely removes the issue of electrically isolating the heating element from the barrel. We already depend upon the PWM driver to operate the heater, and in practice, this circuit might not be that much worse (although less adaptable to other uses). After all, you only have to build it once. If the frequency determines the energy output (and thus the rate of temperature increby Ralith - Controllers
Samuel, As far as I know the Sanguino can't address external memory at all. In fact, it seems that such capabilities are extremely rare in low-end microcontrollers such as most AVRs; for one thing, it requires so many I/O pins as to completely consume the number available to a reasonably sized DIP chip. Finally, even among micros that *can* address external memory, I'm not sure that memory desby Ralith - Controllers
Uh, scratch this question. This is embarassing. I didn't check where the arduino software begins counting pins, and was using pin '1' (physical pin 2) instead of pin '0' (physical pin 1); turns out everything works fine.by Ralith - Controllers
After a moderate amount of hacking, I managed to get the arduino software (version 12) to function on my FreeBSD laptop. I connected the Sanguino (which sat there happily blinking its debug LED) via USB/TTL cable and tried uploading some of the example sketches, such as Blink and BlinkWithoutDelay modified to output on pin 1, which I believe the sanguino's debug LED is connected to. With everyby Ralith - Controllers
The KL23H51-24-08B stepper motors offered by the RRRF are out of stock both there and from the manufacturer, so I was wondering if the KL23H256-21-8B, offered by the same manufacturer, is an acceptable substitute? What changes to the controller would I need to make? Datasheet for alternate motor: Torque-speed curve for alternate motor: Datasheet for standard motor: Torque-speed curve for staby Ralith - Controllers
Wouldn't our effort be better spent on a granule/scrap extruder? That's basically what a filament production system would *be*, after all. It also lowers requirements, since we don't need to fit the product through a rigid barrel.by Ralith - Plastic Extruder Working Group
Datasheet for the atmega644p, the chip behind the Sanguino. Includes pinouts and more software docs than you'll know what to do with. Edit: If you're using avr-libc, you should note that avr/io.h (iirc) will pull in definitions for the bit offsets for the various pins, so you should never use magic numbers. For example, to set Port D pin 6, you could do PORTD |= (1 << PD6); unless my memoby Ralith - Controllers
If knoppix works so well for booting on a wide variety of hardware, perhaps we should be using it as the basis of the livecd? It has the advantage of said ability being the purpose of the distro, whereas (k)ubuntu does livecdness as a handy extra.by Ralith - RepRap Host
Well said. BRL-CAD is in some senses in much the same position as Darwin right now; the fundamentals are great, but there's still quite a ways to go in terms of accessibility -- a distance that both are likely to traverse. I'll even go so far as to suggest that implementing a new interface for BRL-CAD is much easier than designing a widely accessible rapid prototyper. Should the current effort faby Ralith - RepRap Host
It looks to me like you did the right thing with update-java-alternatives. What does it seem to do wrong? Could you provide details on the java3d package install issues?by Ralith - RepRap Host
Forest, Your opinion of modern Linux seems strange to me; this is the day in which it is available preinstalled at brick-and-mortar stores, and even (so I hear) pitched heavily by the salespeople to new computer users. Barring serious hardware support issues, an up-to-date Ubuntu install can give most users an easier time than the competition. Also, you're doing that popularity == quality thingby Ralith - RepRap Host
As a completely new user with similar oldschool experience (this is what'll probably save you, as the editor, although it has gui bits for most things, is really meant to be controlled with textual commands), it took me about an hour's continuous work (I have to approximate here cuz I was switching to and from other stuff constantly) to make it through the extremely clear tutorials in the Introduby Ralith - RepRap Host
More than 30? Wow. I didn't realize they'd gone *that* far. I guess that just shows how simple their editing libs makes adding new convertors. Or maybe how dedicated their developers are. Or maybe they've just gotten really good at writing parsers? Judging from my experiences in the tutorials, the format stores *everything*; at no point is there any simplification done, because, at least so farby Ralith - RepRap Host
Sebastien, Ah, that makes more sense. It's a very powerful interface, but, having made my way through the first few tutorials, I agree that as-is it's probably the most awkward out there for a new user who's not willing to spend hours familiarizing himself with the documentation. However, based on that same experience, I'll say that it's nevertheless a very powerful interface, and worthy of itsby Ralith - RepRap Host
Kyle, I know I'm starting to sound as if I have a stake in this system's success (I don't), but BRL-CAD's native format fulfills the ideal you describe, which, among many other interesting features, makes it in my opinion an ideal choice for the reprap standard. Writing converters to/from it is a straightforward and well-documented process, with examples for many existing formats (including STL)by Ralith - RepRap Host
Sebastien, I'm not sure where you got that impression; it's about as mature as CAD suites get. Admittedly, there's no question about its lack of user-friendliness, but that's being actively remedied by a GSoC project. BRL-CAD's original focus included things like radar profiling and ballistic vulnerability assessment; things like "will this artillery barrel explode or not?" are much more compliby Ralith - RepRap Host
Just throwing this out there: I wonder if it might not be simpler to adapt an existing open source Gcode generating program, instead of writing our own? One such seems to exist: , although it will require some degree of extension (probably not too much) to add support for thermoplastic extrusion machines such as the reprap as well as the CNC mills it currently supports.by Ralith - RepRap Host
Ru, That's part of my point. Data which simply cannot be retained by a mesh is trivial to keep in CSGs. I believe slicing might also be simplified as there's no worry about 'holes' as you can have in a mesh; any volume is guaranteed to actually be a volume. Richard, I'm pretty sure Gcode can only represent portions of circular arcs. A somewhat intelligent pathing algo could use sets of these tby Ralith - RepRap Host
Forest, That would make sense if BRL-CAD were some run of the mill garage project. It's not. I suspect that the U.S. Army alone provides more than a critical mass, and the website suggests that it's got multiple users in the industrial sector, too. There's more to this project than website visitors; until recently, it didn't even have a respectable internet presence; for most of its history it'sby Ralith - RepRap Host
Forest, I'm actually a major Blender fan, but here I'm going to have to say that it's technically inappropriate. It's meant for CGI, not CAD, and its features reflect that. It is relatively polished, and very popular amongst opensource CGI people, but that's not really what we're looking for, and I think we'll only lose in the long term if we go for something like that. I'll steal your wonderfulby Ralith - RepRap Host
Viktor, Imo, the problem with most of those programs is they're not solid modellers -- they're designed for working with meshes, which don't even have to define valid volumes, and tend to sacrifice a lot of quality, e.g. where a cylinder which was intended to be smooth would be manufactured with facets, simply because that's how mesh cylinders are. Also, as-is, BRL-CAD's modelling interface, mgby Ralith - RepRap Host
I think (and this is not an entirely original sentiment) that for the moment, at least, the bigger issue is a standardized file format. Using something obscure like AOI's native format has in practice many of the same problems as a proprietary format, insofar as it's unlikely that anything but AOI will be able to handle it. Instead, perhaps we should focus on choosing (or creating!e) a format capby Ralith - RepRap Host