Or you could make a really cheesy frame, and simply compensate with the programming. When I get to the point of making my metal cutting machine (I expect in a year or so), the programming for that will allow for compensating for sag in the frame, and bends in the frame, and a bunch of other stuff. That machine will have a fairly rigid frame though, to allow it to cut steel. It will not be an aby Ant - General
We can easily make a profit selling them at $50 each in high quantity. Lowering the price increases the quantity of sales, which often means more profit. I would expect to make a lot more money at $50 selling price than at $200. Not that money is what interests me, money is only a means to accomplish my plans. As to how this helps end poverty... Imagine a poor person who comes up with an idea foby Ant - General
Are you saying people are poor because they are lazy? The problem with that theory, is whole countries are poor. There are a lot of hard workers in those countries. In fact, often survival in poor countries is pretty difficult and requires a lot of hard work. Another problem with that theory, is that Poverty goes from generation to generation, almost 100 % of the time. Laziness on the other hanby Ant - General
You use a fly cutter for taking off cubic inches of material. I mentioned a 5/8 inch fly cutter can cut a straight wall down about 3 inches. You just cut maybe 0.050 deep per pass, and keep stepping downward. When the cutter gets dull, you resharpen it and keep going. End mills are for finishing, creating complex 3D shapes and stuff. Tonyby Ant - General
Even high speed steel cutters last more than a few inches. You must be doing something wrong if you only get a few inches. Carbide cutters typically last about a half an hour or so, depending on all sorts of factors. When cutting hardened tool steel, a good grade of carbide will last a long time and a bad grade will last only a few minutes. As for price, 1/8 inch diameter and smaller carbide cuby Ant - General
Should be able to cut even hardened tool steel, but we won't know for sure till it is made. Hard steel cuts pretty easy if you got sharp cutters. To keep the cutters sharp, you need speed. I once cut hard steel with a boring bar that was .025 diameter and about .250 long, and it cut without any deflection. There can't be hardly any cutting force on a cutter like that. People think carbide cuttby Ant - General
It's sort of a sub project of the bigger project. Just want to get something out there quicker. A lot of the electronics and programming will be the same. This project will also be open source, and it'll have a USB port, so anyone who wants to can make a program to allow it to be controlled via Internet as well. Some people think control via Internet won't work, 'cause of the delay, but the delaby Ant - General
It'll have a computer built in. No keyboard or display, but it could still be used by people who don't have a computer of their own, if they have access to a computer somewhere. That is, if it gets programmed to work that way, which I imagine it probably will eventually. It'll have USB, so we should be able to program it to access a flash drive or a memory card. Put a G-code program on it, and itby Ant - General
I haven't do it in a very long time, so I've long since lost any programs I made. Tonyby Ant - RepRap Host
Opps, a little misunderstanding about the servos. When I say "servo", I mean closed loop electronics with DC motors and accurate position sensing circuitry. Not those "servos" they use for remote control vehicles. And, yes, I've seen the multimachine, thanks. The motors in this case are in the $1 to $3 price range. I've got a molder friend who's willing to invest the tooling needed, which is pby Ant - General
I'm working on a machine that once it is in high production it'll sell for about $50 I think. At first we'll probably sell them for $100 to $200 though and lower the price over time, as we can. My objective is to bring tools to the poor, to help eliminate poverty. This is only part of a much greater plan to virtually eliminate poverty in the world. The machine will be open source, but it'll alwby Ant - General
A long time ago I bought a CNC machine, and didn't have CAM software. I was able to create 3D shapes on it using a spreadsheet program. There's no visual when you program this way, so you have to do all the visualization in your head. You can do cutter compensation and everything in the spreadsheet. You just make formulas for everything you need to do. As long as the shape you want to make isn'by Ant - RepRap Host
Arm chair designer??? I'm seriously about to give up on the people in this forum. Not for that comment, but rather for the unwillingless to consider new ideas and the unwillingness to help one another. From what I have seen in this forum, there is very little helping other people, which is typical in forums. People in forums hardly ever have any interest in helping anyone else, which I believeby Ant - General
The RepRap idea is based on first make a machine, and that machine can make another machine, and so on. The speed of that is at first very slow. It might take a RepRap several months to produce enough parts to make a clone of itself. Down the road, when there's millions of RepRaps out there, it'll take several months to make millions more, so the process speeds up over time. Mass production canby Ant - General
Techshop is a place that has machines that people can use. My friend tells me it costs $50 a month for membership, and then you can use their machines. Here's the kind of equipment they have. Menlo Park, CA Portland, OR Durham, NC It says "The cities in which TechShop locations are currently being built include San Francisco CA, Sunnyvale CA, Marin CA, Sacramento CA, Los Angeles CA, San Diegby Ant - General
You can get 0.040 outside diameter tubing, for use in hole poppers. A hole popper is a electric discharge machine which burns holes in steel. The hole is for water flowing through the tube. Inside diameter of that tube would probably be around 0.020. I did a quick search, and I found a ceramic guide for a hole popper which is .3 mm, so the tubing for that would have a outside diameter of .3mm andby Ant - Plastic Extruder Working Group
Cool. Thanks for the link! I agree, machining is very important. I'm working on one that'll do machining with small cutters. Tonyby Ant - General
Seems like wax turns into a liquid too, so it might work really well. Turning into a liquid is a big advantage. It'll cool instantly when it touches solid material, so paste like mode isn't necessary. Wax also has an advantage that it could be extruded under water, and that'd allow the water to sustain the weight of it... sort of. 1100 degrees doesn't scare me in the slightest. In fact, it is quiby Ant - General
There's a laser cutting service that charges $0.15 to $0.50 for various plastics 1/8 to 1/4 inch. I think it is $30 minimum. I found this in another post, but I can't find it at the moment. I've searched quite hard for gears, and oddly this is around the best price you can get on gears. A 8 pitch 20 tooth gear .795 pitch diameter 14.5 pitch angle - comes to 4.685 cut inches, at $.40 (1/4") coby Ant - General
Anyone do any thinking or progress on making a head for 3D printing of metal objects? Seems to me that metal flows much easier than plastic, so it ought to be able to print finer detail than plastic. Some metals aren't to bad heat wise. Aluminum for example, should be a possibility. It may be necessary to have a gas filled tent to prevent oxidation. Something like Argon or Helium. I think they uby Ant - General
Also, if anyone is interested in investing,providing funds to pay for tooling costs, making production tools and molds for the parts we need, let us know. We could estimate a pay back plan, to pay back 5 times as much or so as the initial investment or so, if that helps. For example, if we make a mold capable of 500,000 parts, and the mold costs us $5,000 to make, we could pay the person who putby Ant - General
I'd like to know if anyone has production machines or semi production machines, like CNC mills and lathes, screw machines, second op lathes, lathes, milling machines, punch presses, plastic molding presses (what types?), spring benders, and any other machines that might be of use, and what are the specifications of those machines. I'd also like to know what people would accept as an hourly rateby Ant - General
In order to outlaw RepRaps and "enabling technologies", they'd have to outlaw all 3D printers and CNC milling machines and any machine that can make something. Nothing to worry about. Tonyby Ant - General
I've heard it is illegal to download songs and movies and all that crap too. That doesn't stop people from doing it. Nor does it make it immoral. Patents have always been a waste of money. They waste poor inventors' money, which could have been used on developing their work. They patent tons of things which shouldn't be allowed to be patented, and block progress. Many companies won't think twiceby Ant - General
Has anyone actually measured the accuracy of the machines, or are those guesses? A stepper motor's accuracy is plus or minus one half step. If you micro step it to 100 micro steps per step, the accuracy is still plus or minus one half step. The more freely things move the more accuracy you have. The more power your steppers have the more accuracy have (which is a waste of energy of course). Servby Ant - Plastic Extruder Working Group
There's lots of other sites out there with 3D models as well. One thing I recommend, since sites tend to come and go, I think you should put some sort of a message on there stating that people are free to put the models on their own websites, and also advise people uploading models that people are free to put them on other websites, and also you should keep a local copy of all the models and ifby Ant - General
It is very important to have confidence in yourself. If you don't think you can do something, you can't do it. If you do think you can do something, you can. It is really that simple. Take for example Machine Language programming. An 8 bit microcontroller typically has about 50 words in its language. It is much easier than learning French or Spanish or whatever, which have hundreds of thousandsby Ant - General
For the linear encoder we are likely going to use a mouse chip, which is basically an 18x18 pixel video camera. It costs $1.60. To that we add a microcontroller, $0.62 to $0.90, and some communications circuitry for about $0.30. If we need more speed, we might need to add a regular optical interrupter as well, but probably not. The mouse chip has pretty good speed, but if we try for extreme resolby Ant - General
I'd be willing to trade part or even a whole machine in exchange for having work done. I'm making a whole new design, new electronics, new mechanics, new firmware and new software. New everything. This will obviously be a fair amount of work, so I'd like to have some of the work done by other people. I could split up the tasks, and if any of you wanted to you could take one of the tasks and do iby Ant - General
Here's what my current design looks like. That might change though. It is welded steel construction, so not so many plastic parts. The sheetmetal is attached in the direction of the force, so it adds a lot of rigidity. It uses roller skate ball bearings for riding on the bars, one bearing fixed and the other bearing pressed against it with 70 lbs of pressure from a spring. The firmware will compeby Ant - Reprappers