Derp advertising on forums... I chose 3mm because that was the go to filament for Wade's. When starting out, I think it's easiest to choose the hardware with the most support though I honestly don't think it matters a whole lot because it's easy enough to switch. I know Makerbot's new extruder (basically copied from up!) no longer supports 3 mm filament, but I haven't seen a similar switch froby chrissketch - General
What you're describing is patenting, which takes time (the backup is a couple years now) and money (~$1000 to file for just the preliminary patent). Patents give you commercial protection but force (or in this case allow) you to release the method to reproduce the invention. If RepRap or Makerbot were closed source the only thing preventing me from copying their idea would be my skill in reversby chrissketch - General
I would use ABS. ABS may not be as stiff as PLA, but it's tougher. This makes it less likely to fracture. A more extreme example would be the stiffness of a ceramic vs the toughness of a metal. I'd say metal gears are more common than ceramic gears. PLA also creeps until it's beta phase transistion temperature1 (-45 C, the negative isn't a typo), so it's not really a good material to put under cby chrissketch - General
Wikipedia is probably worth billions of dollars by those measures yet they're constantly asking for donations and no one would ever pay for the domain.by chrissketch - General
To say it in a less confusing way. I don't think people are completely sincere when they say they're happy for Makerbot. From reading threads it seems like people feel that Makerbot stole a bit of RepRap's thunder.by chrissketch - General
thekendall Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > May I ask why everyone seems to dislike makerbots > here? I understand the main goal of the RepRap > project but couldn't a makerbot be considered a > kind of Repstrap? It's like when your little brother beats you at something. You have to feel happy for him but you're a bit upset you're not number one.by chrissketch - General
> Again, that's not entirely fair. You're comparing > two different methods of additive manufacturing. > FDM really SHOULD tend to be less accurate than > SLS... It's entirely fair. If you're trying to get a high quality model you don't restrict yourself to one way of doing it, just like I don't waste my time telling you what the best spoon is to dig a hole when you can afford a shovby chrissketch - General
It's one of the first steps foretold by the new church of the singularity. We make our machines reproduce then they take over. At least as far as their firmware takes them haha. Honestly anyone who fears robots taking over anytime soon hasn't programmed a robot. On a more serious tangent, CNCs have been able to make some of their own parts for a while, but they didn't. Now we're using CNC like mby chrissketch - General
Andrew Diehl Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Let's be honest. In the long run FDM is going to > be far surpassed by other technologies. > > We're talking near-long-term of 3-7 years. Well sure eventually every technology is surpassed, but last I checked people still use through hole components despite being surpassed by surface mounts. The technologby chrissketch - General
-fittoextrude I've heard that pp3dp's up! uses a paint on their bed which I can only imagine is some type of liquid ABS paint described on Makerbot (#14). I printed a whole set of Prusa parts in ABS with a bed at 105-110, but cranking it up to 125 helped a lot. What type of power supply are you using right now? Almost every power supply recommendation I've seen has been to increase the currentby chrissketch - General
Go through the build videos once before doing anything. I know it might be boring but it's helpful. It gives you an idea of how everything is going to be used so you're less likely to forget something. You'll be thankful when you don't have to wait for shipping on that one critical piece holding you back. I agree with not going cheap the first time you build these. If you ever want to build anotby chrissketch - General
So I heard that 3DS acquired Z-corp. That's big news compared to the small companies they've been snapping up left and right.by chrissketch - General
You might be able to make it a bit cheaper if you print it in red with a few yellow stars =Dby chrissketch - General Mendel Topics
My mistake, I thought I had read Sanguinololu didn't support heated build plates. I realize there's an argument against using surface mount components, but I thought sparkfun's tutorials seemed simple enough and I noticed Ultimachine started using some surface mount components on their RAMPS. I can appreciate keeping the boards simple, but I'm willing to sacrifice some simplicity if it makes itby chrissketch - RAMPS Electronics
Has anyone tried to put RAMPS onto a single PCB? The proposed electronics would be like Sanguinololu but would use the ATMega2560 chip, so that a heated bed can be used. Lady Ada's Boarduino is a good example of breaking down the electronics of the standard Arduino that'd be possible (though more difficult) with the Mega. I've checked out all of the working developments on the wiki and found nothby chrissketch - RAMPS Electronics