Hi Sean, ... a longer belt-drive was my first thought too, but this isn't the optimum yet ... If i use the original micron-screws, then i have the higher accuracy with 1 millimeter per revolution, but only 25 millimeters maximum way for X and Y (Z has two rails, both a bit harder to turn, so i have to insert a complete new axis). When i remove the 25-mm-micron-screws and insert a linear-steppeby VDX - General
Hi all, ... how can i best motorize the micron-screws in an oldstyle measure-microscope? Two images are applied - the screws goes in and out, when turned, so i have to deal with this too ... My first idea was to fix belt-gears at the outer ends of the screw-heads and simply drive them with a tooth-belt and a stepper-motor, so the belt can swoop over the disposition, but maybe someone has a beby VDX - General
... here i have some images of my '20-years-old-but-still-working-prototype' 2-28V/12Amp-powersupply and the second-generation-pcb for 8xLM317T. With more LM's parallel i can add the currents - i think with a good heatsink there's {N}x1,3Amps without limit - as much N's, as you insert LM317T and shunts ... The other images are from my 2xIMT901-finestep-motordrivers and from an MC3479P-prototypeby VDX - Controllers
Hi folks, ... what's about building a very big reprap (maybe 2 x 2 x 2 meters) with wood- or better bamboo-sticks for dispensing some centimeter thick trays of construction-foam? This would be a real eye-catcher at fairs or presentations and this sort of reprap could build really big (but coarse) objects, as for example scanned 3D-data from visitors, really usable furniture or other mega-sizedby VDX - General
... i build a power-supply with 8 parallel LM317T and shunt-resistors for balancing the differences (as in an old project from a electronic magazine). With this i drived a laser-plotter with two 2Amps-per-phase-steppers an the supply of a RF-CO2-laser. The power-supply is regulated and can output from 2 to 28 Volts at currents until 10 Amps (max 1,5 Amps per LM317T, so 12 Amps would be the abs.by VDX - Controllers
Hi Andy, ... you are right - for real 3D-printing you need a second extruder with support-material for overlapping and nonplanar geometries ... But there are other ideas, beside of extruding plastics, for building 3D-objects, so there sould be forks not only in the use of electronics, but in every aspect too. I throw in the discussion noncartesic mechanics with a very simple assembly, dotprintby VDX - Controllers
Hi nophead, ... pigtailed means, that a fiber comes out of the laser-housing. A laser-diode is mostly a bar of active material (sometimes many aligned bars) with a very poor optical output-quality - the laser-diode emits a conical 'plane' of light, instead of a sharp laser-beam, as in a gas- or solid-lasers with the much longer and better resonators. With a special cylindrical lens there is aby VDX - Laser Cutter Working Group
Hi Zach, today i've got a 1,1W-pigtail-diode-laser (see image) with a 50 micron-focus-tube for testing and playing around and i made first tests with gold- and glass-pastes (solved with dexpanthenol) and some burning/cutting ... First infos: the gold-paste (as mayby every other metall too) would dry very fast, but didn't sinter or melt to a solid because of heat-dissipating in the mass ... Theby VDX - Laser Cutter Working Group
Hi nik, ... sounds very good for testing with the design - what's the price for all needed parts? On the other side, if it should be a straightforward reprap, then it should be able to do this work too! Maybe with a LOM-(Laminated-Object-Modelling)-building approach, where i stack sheets of self-adhesive (or glued together) paper or other material, and with a 'high-power'-cutting-laserdiode fby VDX - Laser Cutter Working Group
... acetone is very low viscose and is drying very quickly, so plastics solved in acetone could go (maybe with an extra drying idle time per slice). Maybe sand as body-powder and ABS-acetone-solvent would be a good try ... Another idea: maybe it's possible to 'print' droplets with a dispenser instead of an ink-jet-head, when the dispensed fluid is outputted above the powder-surface in discreteby VDX - Mechanics
... for ink-jet-printing you need viscosities equal or lower then water! There are very expensive hot-wax-ink-jets, which print 3D, but the actual powder-3D-printers use normal ink-jet-heads with a glue-liquid, which is thinner then water for koagulating the powder. I think the 'objet'-printers use a very low-viscose epoxyde wit UV-curing to hardening the wet droplets on the surface ... Old thby VDX - Reprappers
... testing the needed torque of the motors can be easy made with a string wound around the axis (or a bigger roll on it for easier calculating), straightened horizontally and feed over a fixed roll and then append a weight on the string (maybe a small bag or cup for stepwise increase mass with heavy parts). So the motor can turn freely around and you can calculate the torque from radius of theby VDX - Mechanics
... what's the trouble with direct driving all motors from one controller without hanging on syncing different driver-boards? When i first build a pen-plotter with steppers, i used a 6502-EMUF (german short for Single-micro-processor-board with universal-fixed-programming ) and a lot of discrete transistors, so the main advantage was to have many I/O-pins ... The next run was then with a PIC-cby VDX - Controllers
Hi nophead, ... i disassembled the head a bit more (see the image) - there aren't wire-windings, as i meant, but two aluminium-blades separated by a kind of metallic-ceramic-blade as heater I think, the hint with the gluestick-gun is aimed to experiments with higher extruding-speeds (for example a lathe-style extruding on a roll or so). The small 7-mm-guns have much lower power, so this typeby VDX - Mechanics
... OK, i read the comments ... Is some particularly wrong with them? In the local tool-store i have seen 5 or 6 different vendors with varying techspecs (and prices). My disassembled Glue-gun is from PowerTec, has 78 Watts and i used to disassemble it because of the weak housing and transport ... An "esco powertronic" with 500/40 Watts (heatup and constant?) and a much better transport runsby VDX - Mechanics
... i don't know, if someone already tried to use a gluestick-gun for melting plastic. In the appended picture there is a extracted heater of a gluestick-gun, which runs with 240V AC. With adapting of the inlet to 3- or 4-mm-sticks (my thicker Gluesticks have 11mm, the thinner ones 7mm diameter) and changeable nozzles (more expensive Pattex-guns have changeable heads, but others sometimes too .by VDX - Mechanics
... it's not so hard to make ONE straight edge - in all motors runs parallel, so for example say motor M1 and M2 are the both aligned motors in the back and motor M3 is the longer one in front ... Then it should run in a similar mode: X = M1 = M2 = M3 - if all tree motors run synchrone, X is straight X ... Y = (M2 - M3)xAlpha1 + M3xBeta1, where Alpha and Beta are trigonometric calculated valueby VDX - Mechanics
... some soldering-tools have a tube-heater with a hole of 6 to 8 millimetres throug them. There are lowcost 12-volt-solders in use too, maybe it's worth to look, if the heating-heads are hollow, and then try them as extruder-heating? Viktorby VDX - Controllers
... if someone has a thermo-transfer-printer or -FAX, then he already has an 3D-capable setup! In the thermotransfer-process a transfer-foil coated with a thin sheet of coloured thermoplastic is aligned with the paper and a moving printer-head with heatin resistor-pins melts the outputted pixels through the transfer-foil, so the melted thermoplastic can stick to the paper ... If i repeat this pby VDX - Tissue Engineering
... as with the tripod-structure from the thread "Magnetic joints and self-assembly..:" there could be constructed several 3-axis-systems with different approaches, here for example with wire-feeding over fixed rolls. In the appending image i have a concept of a 'stringy tripod', which has only 3 gliders as moveable parts, which can be moved throug beltdrives or linear motors. The toolhead canby VDX - Mechanics
... at home i checked the tecspecs of my old 'Summasketch III Professional'-tablet: - active area = 12 x 18" or 305 x 457 mm - resolution = 2540 lines per inch or 100 lines per millimeter (=10 micron) - accuracy = 0,010 In or 0,254 mm ??? The tablet has a stylus and a 4-button-mouse, which would do better. (I found an Aiptec-HyperPen-tablet too, but the active area is only 10 x 12,5 mm and the sby VDX - Mechanics
... as appendix to the discussion with my 9-years old son, what to do with a reprapper, we found some very expressive samples. One is building separable slices of a human body with coloured inner parts from gelatine (slices separable with sheets of wax-paper). The other project would be a birthday-cake in form of a castle with interieur and some action-figures, made from chokolade, melted shugaby VDX - General
Hi folks, ... an idea for easy reading the absolute coordinates of the XY-motors or of the tool-head absolute position in general ... If someone has an old digitizer-tablet (best an inductive with crosshair-mouse) laying around or can buy it cheap at ebay or so, then it's worth trying, if it could be fixed under the reprap and the digitizer-mouse mechanically syncronized to the moving reprap-heby VDX - Mechanics
... for building fitting lego-bricks you need an accuracy near to 10 microns, but the problem is more the material and the smooth surfaces, you need ... My prototypes and giveaways from commercial high-end 3D-printers have accuracies from 0,2 to 0,01 mm (STL-epoxy), but none of them is capable of building 'real' lego-bricks, because of the surface-finishing or the durability of the material. Onby VDX - General
Hi mimarob, ... for bigger objects i can cut thicker sheets, so the amount of stacking is variable. Maybe in coarser regions without overlapping i use 1 millimeter and in finer segments 10 micron thick laminates ... The slices are cut out from the sheet and laminated/stacked one after the other. For high accuracy in the slices are fitting-holes, in which i insert small sticks - e.q. 0,3 mm thiby VDX - Mechanics
... yes, it's limited of free length, but why not fixing the z-bed directly to 4 vertical steel-strings, which comes from two closed loops, that runs over a single motorized roll, instead of 4 screws which are synchronized with a (bit more elastic) belt? In the plotter i drived with 2 stepper-motors (which sat on the same plate) two wire-loops, which moved the rail (in X) and the toolhead (in Y)by VDX - Mechanics
Hi mimarob, ... you can make a slip-free system without gears or beads. I build my first penplotters with 0,5 mm thick steel-strings over rolls, i made from plastic-coated ball-bearings, in which i lathed a v-grove. Two steppers drived bigger rolls, over which i had 2 to 4 rounds of the string and at one end i had screw-spanners (?), which apply some amount of stiffnes in the loop ... There wby VDX - Mechanics
... here the link to databases with mechanical stuff, which is interesting for some mechanical ideas: There are downloadable STL-files for the parts , so people would be able to reprap examples and play around with technical questions ... Maybe we should start with a similar CAD- and STL-database too? Viktorby VDX - General
Hi reece, ... yesterday i had a short discussion with my 9 years old son, what he would do, if we would have a capable reprapper. He grumbled a bit, then said, he would build lego-bricks for his actual favorite sites, or maybe a cool shaped pencil-sharpener ... Then i self thought around, what sort of needs i have. It sorted out, that my home-reprapper must be able to build with thermoplastiby VDX - General
... here are the data-sheets of the IC's with connection diagrammes ms3479p: IMT901: [1].pdf Viktorby VDX - Controllers