QuotePossibly not. Well, yes and no. The cost of the electronics alone was slightly surprising (it seems to be about twice the cost of the same bits in the US; the usual premium we pay). I've just been looking at the cost of steppers too... I think I'm just living in the wrong part of the world A few thousand miles west and everything is half the price it is here, or cheaper still. A few hundrby Ru - Plastic Extruder Working Group
Quotepe cord (Dyneema) doesn't stretch From (but a brief googling will get you a more reliable reference!) QuoteUnder tensile load, UHMWPE will deform continually as long as the stress is present - an effect called creep. So you might not want it as a continuous load bearer... though it isn't like a reprap is going to put it under serious strain 24/7by Ru - Mechanics
QuoteYou have to remember that this isn't a machining tool. But wouldn't it be nice if it could? One of the potential advantages of the McWire over Darwin was that it was a little more rigid, and hence perhaps a little more amenable to doing light milling.by Ru - General
QuoteI did not believe that it would be simple. Perhaps I should stick to building a working repstrap first to have something to test with smiling smiley. That's pretty much the conclusion I came to with my own ideas Happily, I can still heckle on things where I feel I am on slightly more solid ground. Building a repstrap is going to be a long and expensive process I guess I should turn my hby Ru - Plastic Extruder Working Group
QuoteOh, I didn't mean you would use a standard extruder head. It would probably have to be some complex piece of equipment Not so good. Complex implies 'full of bits which you can't replicate', I'm thinking. It also suggests 'hard to build' and 'awkward to start using', neither of which are really desirable :/ QuoteHow about simply injecting a given quantity of a suitably viscous liquid into aby Ru - Plastic Extruder Working Group
Quotelooking back, I really don't see a problem about using a couple more bolts. Very trueby Ru - Mechanics
QuoteNot sure how you would tighten this. perhaps V1 is a better option after all I think adjustable tension is probably the killer here... I'm assuming you want fairly fine control over this so you can true up your darwin frame. The V3 doesn't really have this facility at all, and I'd be concerned that the V2's adjustabaility would be just too coarse. I guess you'd need to ask someone who's seby Ru - Mechanics
The cement sounds like a pretty sensible idea. Better hope you got that column vertical though... it might be a bit of a pig to adjust laterby Ru - Reprappers
QuoteThere are a number of avr chips larger than the atmega168; the alternative I've heard about uses the atmega644p. With the right config files added to the Arduino dev. software, it'll look like another board type (decimilla, lillypad.... with more memory and pins available.) So, this should be compatible at the arduino-sketch level, if not bit-for-bit firmware identical. Ahh, yes. I'm sureby Ru - General
QuoteApparently, the current firmware is right on the edge of being too big to fit, and some have reported that slight differences in the avr-gcc toolchain lead to sketch-images that are too big to fit current Arduinos What makes an arduino(or arduino clone) an arduino (compatible) is ultimately the firmware that runs on the uc. So are you referring to a new firmware that takes up less space? Aby Ru - General
QuoteGas lasers are very rugged I was thinking of the big glass tube. It is of course quite true that solid state lasers have their own problems, and are quite cookable due to operator error. QuoteIt is true that they are expensive. However, any laser with enough power to cut effectively will be expensive (until we can get a RepRap toolhead that can make glass tubes; that'd be cool). You're payby Ru - Laser Cutter Working Group
QuoteHas anyone suggested solder yet? Or any other metal? Wouldn't you have problems with there not being a handy viscous phase? It might be difficult to build vertical structures with solder if it melts together into a big blob, or flows before solidifying. And again, the usual important question, will the filament stick to it? I'm gonna hazard a guess here and say 'no', but feel free to corrby Ru - Plastic Extruder Working Group
QuoteThe question is, is it cheaper to produce blank boards or to buy them? I think I'd probably have to go for the 'buy' option there... making your own boards may well be cheaper, but at what loss of quality and durability? IT'll be one of those problems solved 'one day', but given the availablility of perfectly adequate raw material right now, I don't see the rush. It has just occurred to meby Ru - Plastic Extruder Working Group
I've seen some plastic mechanical bits lubricated with silicone goop on a small lathe. Assuming you don't use something vicious and solvent based, most things should be fine. I don't think that greasing moving parts can actually do any harm in this caseby Ru - Reprappers
I believe a couple of european reprappers purchased ABS filament from the rrrf, though of course you'll pay a bit extra for shipping from the US. There is a UK supplier, but they aren't very cheap and you'll probably have to pay quite a bit for postage from there, too. As for local suppliers, you'll have to search for those yourself, I suspect The product is called 'plastic welding rod'. You'llby Ru - Reprappers
QuoteI have a vague recolection of a refridgerator being an option on the Volkswagen Van Campmobile back in the 1970's. Gas powered fridges have been about for a while... they're quite a cunning system. No moving parts.by Ru - General
QuoteIt uses 4 axis to cuts the 3d part out of wax. I like this machine, but it looks about impossible to make. Even if you could build it. The next big dilemma is the program Generating toolpaths for multiple axis machines is tricky, but not impossible. Certainly not if you're willing to spend money on it... commercial products exist to do 4-axis milling for perhaps only a couple of thousand doby Ru - Mechanics
A few quick notes, in no particular order... QuoteShore Defences to prevent erosion. Use a tough plastic base unit, with locally quarried rock, that's available every time your harbour is dredged. What's the impact limits of the materials you've been using? I don't see what plastic adds to this, and certainly not what a reprap could contribute. In fact, using any sort of plastic in this contextby Ru - Reprappers
How else can plastic be pushed out of the extruder? It's too viscous to just pour out usefully under gravity. The drive screw grips the filament well (so it won't slip), and provides a fair bit of mechanical advantage; other mechanisms for feeding filament into the heater (such as pinch wheels) are simpler but don't generally seem to provide enough force.by Ru - Reprappers
Making the powder behave like a liquid is potentially a bad thing, if it results in the part moving. From my extensive knowledge of cheesecake manufacture, I recall that in a mixture of large and small fragments of the same material, agitation causes the larger parts to rise to the surface. The top layer could potentially contains some very fragile areas indeed... the beginnings of a part with aby Ru - Powder Printing and Selective Laser Sintering
QuoteI think perhaps the best option for a RepRap laser cutting head would be a carbon dioxide gas laser. I could be wrong, but I believe that this is the usual sort of device used in laser cutting systems. The problem is, they are expensive, delicate, and rather bulky hence the interest in assembling something using solid state laser diodes instead which will be an order of magnitude cheaper anby Ru - Laser Cutter Working Group
QuoteDoensn't glass block UV-light BTW? Yes, mostly. It seems most things do. You can mitigate the problem somewhat by doing longer exposure times or using a super-powerful light source. Some glass will of course be better than others in this regard, and you're likely to get different effect from different wavelengths of UV, but this starts to drift out of my limited area of knowledge (I briefby Ru - General
Hi! I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I really think that rep-rap should get two Ps when used as a verb... reprapper, reprapped, etc. Rep-raping seems somewhat inappropriate Extruded parts will cease to be a production bottleneck for everyone at some point, which then leaves the expensive (if easier to obtain) mechanical and electronic parts. I'm not really a poor guy (I have a reaby Ru - General
QuoteA stepper driven rotary table shouldn't be too hard to make (worm gear transmission) Easy to make, hard to make without backlash The more I learn about the construction of machine tools, the more I despair of ever assembling a practical one myself!by Ru - Mechanics
Well, scrap isn't necessarily useless whereas crap implies a serious lack of quality or worth. In this context, I guess they're interchangeable, though crap is a little less technical or politeby Ru - Mechanics
QuoteUse some sheet of crapmetal for example What a splendid material name. I shall try to use it in conversation more often. Typo or deliberate?by Ru - Mechanics
QuoteVMware might be a good solution. I have it working in vista with no problems. Not sure how well it lets the guest OS access ports, etc. though, which is necessary for RepRap. It is possible to attach USB devies to a virtual machine. I've only ever done it with mass storage though, which isn't really that useful in this context, but in theory any old thing can be passed through. I didn't seby Ru - RepRap Host
*edit* D'oh, of course I've mentioned all this to you before. I'll quickly rewrite all this and hope no-one noticed. Hurrah for funky animations to prove a point. Maybe I should try that approach Someone (I forget who, sorry) mentioned that a counter-rotating roller is better than a blade, as it will compact the new layer somewhat as well as smooth it all in to place. Scorch's z-corp-alike useby Ru - Mechanics
I would suggest using vmware server, it being free and useful and all. But I have absolutely no idea how well, if at all, it works with vista. As for using knoppix rather than (whatever)ubuntu, I have two things to say... 1) I'd be surprised if they used a radically different driver set, both being common-hardware-oriented debian-based linux-on-cd thingies and 2) if you felt that the live CD shoby Ru - RepRap Host
QuoteI don't know if the driver shipped with knoppix is crappy or unreliable, Everytime I gave it a try it worked, no issues nor errors. And yet, here is a problem QuoteI must admit, that I hate Ati cards, having nothing but troubles with those (loooong time ago, but every once in a while I read about crappy (windows) drivers and such, the ati firefox issue for example; not too long ago) Itby Ru - RepRap Host