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Discuss any sort of mechanical stuff here: positioning systems, gears, extruding methods, etc.
Re: Hi Temp Extruder Barrel - 16 years ago
I used to be a member of an amature rocketry group and we used uncoated nicrome wound round small threaded ceramic tubes as igniters... worked pretty well and could be reused quite a few times. Given that these had to put up with the heat coming out the back of a rocket engine, something similar might work pretty well for an extruder nozzle.by deadgenome - Mechanics
Re: Hi Temp Extruder Barrel - 16 years ago
could one of these be fiddled with... they run on batteries -by deadgenome - Mechanics
Re: The Canon - 16 years ago
we have many laws that state what we can read and write.... However relatively few people know what they all are and most of those that do ignore them. Also, the more laws are added to this list the better in some respects. I was asking a mate of mine what the law was like in India. I was told "There are so many laws that as a result there are no laws". On the subject of smoking... even if theyby deadgenome - General
Re: Neil Gershenfeld: The beckoning promise of personal fabrication - 16 years ago
I was trying to include the efficiencies inherent in specialised machines. Sorry if I wasn't clear. My point was for products that are different enough that each of the specialised machines has to be individually programmable anyway. With a thousand identical books being printed on a press, then of course it will be quicker than inkjet or laser printing. But if you required every one of those thby deadgenome - General
Re: Neil Gershenfeld: The beckoning promise of personal fabrication - 16 years ago
don't think it was me... but I'll happily take the credit if no-one else wants it --- my 2-cents worth.. replacing existing products exactly is not what this technology is about IMHO. It is more about finding analogues that can be built with this technology that achieve the same (or better) end result, hence my comment earlier about plastic nails instead of plastic hammers. On the subject oby deadgenome - General
Re: Neil Gershenfeld: The beckoning promise of personal fabrication - 16 years ago
Making plastic hammers is hard, but making plastic nails is an already existing technology. You fire them out of an air-driven nailgun, which could presumably be made of plastic. They have half the shear strength of stainless steel nails, but are also half the price.by deadgenome - General
Re: The Canon - 16 years ago
I wonder about Moore's Law vs Genetics. In theory, if computing power keeps increasing in the same way as it is currently (personally I think it might start doing some major jumps soon, rather than slow as some of the pessimists think - - ) then there might come a point at which the computational power of our artifice exceeds the computational power of biological viruses or bacteria, making ourby deadgenome - General
Re: Software fixed. Many new special bugs introduced... - 16 years ago
ahhh... the definition of software progress, now with new and faster bugs p.s. Hi Adrian, will have shiny engine bobbins posted online soon, hope u been doing well.by deadgenome - RepRap Host
Re: IR Thermometer Keychain - 16 years ago
use an elliptical or parabolic dish to focus it.by deadgenome - General
Re: The Canon - 16 years ago
nope, the name is because I am very unlikely to breed if my understanding of biology is correct (men sleeping with men not normally giving rise to many offspring), hence my genome is dead... Also a wider comment on the idea that our evolution is becoming less dependent on heritable genetics and familial ties. My specialism is in ubiquitous generics (yes, I did just make that up) though the firsby deadgenome - General
Re: STL Slice & Dice - Help Wanted! - 16 years ago
ummm.... the inside or outside of a given polygon is represented by the order the polygons points are listed. This is what is used to calculate the surface normal which is then use to calculate the dot product between that and the camera to work out the backface cull. If it is positive, the angle is less than 90 and the face is drawn, if it is negative, the angle is more than 90 and the face is cby deadgenome - RepRap Host
Re: Head swapping mechanism? - 16 years ago
oooo.... that is virtually identical to what I suggested after reading The Guy's electrospinning printer idea... & I swear I hadn't heard of this before, it just seemed obvious after reading about continuous inkjet printersby deadgenome - Plastic Extruder Working Group
Re: The Canon - 16 years ago
I wouldn't subscribe to it, but I do read some of their blogs, especially Bruce Sterling's. Mind you, the only magazine ever did buy regularly was New Scientist (until I was given an online subscription as a prezzie). I stopped buying other papers and magazines about 8 years ago.by deadgenome - General
Re: 240 mW laser pointer for $189 - what do you think about it? - 16 years ago
*edit* I really thought that I should add, if you wish to play with these things, your most expensive purchase must be a pair of laser safety goggles in the appropriate wavelength for the laser - $192 - - and although nitroxlasers do say at the bottom of their maglite laser page that they offer protective eyewear, none is listed on the laser safety section of their online shop. In fact nothing cby deadgenome - Laser Cutter Working Group
Re: The Canon - 16 years ago
While it seems silly to promote something that hasn't been published yet... Next month's wired - the free issue (probably not free on the magazine shelves, though they were offering a limited stock of free issues on their website to people in the US and Canada) *edit* sorry, just the united states, but here's the link for those dwelling on the appropriate side of the imaginary line - The Wiredby deadgenome - General
Re: The Canon - 16 years ago
are you a bonzo's fan by any chance? - hmmm, tunes to play while making repRaps.. '21st Century Digital Boy' & 'I Want to Conquer the World' - Bad Religion 'Where's Your Head At' - Basement Jaxx 'It Takes Time to Build' - The Beastie Boys 'Readymade' - Beck 'The Times They Are A-Changing' - Bob Dylan 'All Systems Go' - Chris Liberator 'Complete Control' - The Clash 'Cut Here' - The Cure 'by deadgenome - General
Re: STL Slice & Dice - Help Wanted! - 16 years ago
blue, no green... arrrgh!!! I'll go hide again now...by deadgenome - RepRap Host
Re: The Canon - 16 years ago
arrrgh!!! the ghost of Kropotkin rears it's head... As long as you keep it personal and don't go to the anarchists federation AGM and help plan "The Date By Which We Will Achieve Organised Anarchy And Ban Money (TM)" then it's ok by me... In one place I lived, one of the organisers of the british anarchist federation told me that I must read Kropotkin before I was allowed to live there as thatby deadgenome - General
Re: STL Slice & Dice - Help Wanted! - 16 years ago
before I hide, just noticed the new post above mine (must have posted the same time as me) I agree with ru, STL is nasty. It also does not do everything that we may need in the future. I know I have banged on about it a bit, but an xml based format for the system (such as x3d) covers all bases as far as I can tell. This does not prevent us from using existing STL objects, it just means we needby deadgenome - RepRap Host
Re: STL Slice & Dice - Help Wanted! - 16 years ago
I only want to have a go at building some slice and dice code for my own education/entertainment, not to tread on anyones toes or to reinvent the wheel. I think I can do a good job at it as well with something like the process I have outlined above and will happily nick any existing code that helps and ditch any that doesn't. Anything that I do on this I will post with links to my source. Gonna hby deadgenome - RepRap Host
Re: The Canon - 16 years ago
I can second the Reynolds stuff, it's brilliant... Was thinking about comics... would people think that 'the League of Extraordinary Gentleman' is relevant, because to me the reprap is a pretty steampunk bit of kit.. I can imagine a pre-transistor version of it all too easily, with the object definitions being punched holes in strips of rolled copper...by deadgenome - General
Re: Objects.RepRap.Org - Any volunteers? Let's build a file library! - 16 years ago
I'm pretty convinced that a mediawiki doesn't meet our eventual needs, but it will definitely do for the moment and will buy us some time to build that which does... I also see no problem with every object being a separately referenced 'project', it just depends on what we mean by that. Personally I would make every different version of every different part of every different object be the basicby deadgenome - Administration, Announcements, Policy
Re: STL Slice & Dice - Help Wanted! - 16 years ago
ignore povray... to slice up an object horizontally into a series of closed paths is mathematically pretty easy... I'll try to code something up over the weekend if I have the time. was thinking further about the idea of using x3d.... it also gives the option of using any of the major 3d packages to study the path data at any point in the process & frees us from the constraints of using a cby deadgenome - RepRap Host
Re: STL Slice & Dice - Help Wanted! - 16 years ago
I've written a couple of 3d engines already (in flash and haXe) and have written a file parser for x3d for one of them, so I could probably help out... my thoughts would be that if x3d (or another 3d format with an xml tree, but hey x3d already exists) was used internally by the system you could do some neat things along the lines of - convert object { stl >> x3d option to run save datby deadgenome - RepRap Host
Re: This might help reprap - 16 years ago
ooo... etched linear motors.. gimme now... gimme now... I want NOW!!! ahem.... sorry, went into 4 year old in a toyshop mode for a second, normal service will be resumed shortly, meanwhile here is some light music...by deadgenome - Plastic Extruder Working Group
Re: The Canon - 16 years ago
I didn't expect this thread to take off quite this well all of you, be careful in waffle houses, especially in Fyffe, Alabama.. gonna add some blogs to the list >> Beyond the Beyond - - Bruce Sterling exposing himself in public (and I thought there were laws about that sort of thing) Dezeen - - an excellent design magazine Treehugger - - green design, technology and consumer stuff aby deadgenome - General
Re: Why Java3D - 16 years ago
funnily enough, I just suggested a squeak/croquet implementation with the 3d graphics handling being kept seperate from the basic driver software to the people who run croquet (which is also more or less the same people who are behind squeak and OLPC).. I have posted the email I sent them on the following thread -by deadgenome - RepRap Host
Re: floppy drive steppers - 16 years ago
seeing the steppers you are using makes me think that I'm not being as ridiculous as I first thought tho... and the benefits of being able to contol them directly from a parallel port with two wires per floppy controller and nothing else are huge in interfacing terms. for my next trick I was going to port the x3d parser I've written in flash/haXe into a bash script and then try to write some moby deadgenome - Mechanics
Re: floppy drive steppers - 16 years ago
that looks almost as small as the ones in these floppy drives the reason I'm looking at fat steppers for my main machine is cos I want the ability to do light milling as well as fdm work..by deadgenome - Mechanics
Re: floppy drive steppers - 16 years ago
cool link... ty however for the junk based machine, I'm trying to be strict and only used stuff that is available from skips.. I might go rip open some old VCRs maybe.. I am considering it a sort of semi art project that I hope will be functional as well but will still be fun if it doesn't go according to plan. Ordering fat steppers for my 'real' repStrap..by deadgenome - Mechanics