i suggest only buying circuit boards, plastic parts, toothed belt and maybe motors from a faraway webshop, for me delivery charges costed fortune, its cheaper to buy rest of it in local hardware and electronics shopsby r2kordmaa - General
4. yes there are datasheets for all and any plastics you can commercially find - search the web 6. you cant do overhangs more than 45degree without support material, in essence its hard to make the plastic stay floating on nothing. 7. support material extruder isnt yet widely used and design isnt yet perfected but it will be one good day 8. yes there are endless future development ideas, we haby r2kordmaa - General
there was a idea to give serial numbers based on: _strain starters name_,child number, child number, child number etc so you get serials like for example a machine that my darwin will(hopefully some day) make: r2kordmaa,1 as most machines today are made of moulded or otherwise externally produced parts i think there will be many genealogical strains and the should be defined by the maker's nameby r2kordmaa - General
rj-45 connectors are widely available anywhere makeing them yourself is way more complex than buying them - i see little point in printing these also it might be tricky coz of the tiny details and you need metal parts(these really tiny ones)by r2kordmaa - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
heres some ebook with lots of ideas about solar cells,some of it sounds bogus but not all should you somehow get a watt or twou out of your cell you can try cpv tech, that is using large parabolic mirror to consentrate light on the cell, 2 suns make 2X more power that 1, you can easily consentrate 100+ suns on one point, the question remains how you are going to cool the cell, with copper cell iby r2kordmaa - RepLab Working Group
take some ideas from tape storage robots imho such storage robots are kind of overkill for keeping track of your mech parts, it might start making sense if you have like thousands of different tiny parts i think a bot moving on xz axis in front of your shelves full of parts with boxes labeled with barcode labels with the reader should do the job. it doesnt have to fetch your part i think, it sby r2kordmaa - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
and here we have a simple enouhg full design and i think its fully automatic as long as the trigger is held down. maybe i should model it ready ?by r2kordmaa - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
heres a simple enough design, it still needs a valve and trigger mechanism thoby r2kordmaa - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
in order to reprap to be widely used more important than cheapness and ease of construction is its usefulness, that is the designs you can download and print. for example paintball guns, fun things but expensive. you could probably build one out of mostly(screws nuts springs are needed and maybe metal barrel) rp parts. also it might be profitable to make and sell them. at the moment my darwin isby r2kordmaa - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
its far cheaper(calculate the cost of time and effort) to just buy plastic in granule form i thinkby r2kordmaa - General
i recommend shiny copper foil for making solar ovens, reflects heat well. also you can model it into needed shape easily. remember its more important to reflect heat than visible lightby r2kordmaa - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
printing in some fields metal wouldnt be such a bad idea, because of you need to keep the liquid hot anyway end result will be warm printing environment resulting in less warping(in theory). the printing ice idea doesnt look too promising tho, you would need to go cyrogenic for instant freeze resulting in uber difficult design. would be interesting tho to print in liquid nitrogen for example withby r2kordmaa - Plastic Extruder Working Group
if life gets too good you can always have a successful war or two that should take care of the following problems: boredom over population these other bastardsby r2kordmaa - General
i see one application where a pen plotter would be mighty useful, in our school first two years we had to learn manually drawing electrical circuits and mechanical drawings and such, we had a monster of a teacher that demanded near absolute perfectness and the subject was a pain in the arse. result was a business where some made the drawings for money, i bet first years still struggle with that sby r2kordmaa - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
hmmzzzz.... lets say 4-5 layer pcb-s, stacked like 10 of these on top of eachother.... why not you could technically get smth out of it lets start building pcb mass driveby r2kordmaa - Plastic Extruder Working Group
just compare the price of an average inkjet printer and a darwin. also i bet you cant achieve same quality with pen plotter than with inkjet printerby r2kordmaa - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
it pays off if you have to do lots of boards if you just want one or ten its way faster to build the thing yourself, i see the merits in distributing the reprap tho, as most people find it too difficult to assemble an electronics board, that way its possible to take the device to masses. then again if you are too ignorant to assemble a simple board i guess assembling the mechanical part of reprapby r2kordmaa - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
well yeah getting out of atmosphere before starting to gather orbital speed would indeed greatly reduce fuel/cargo ratio and launch cost. that aside growing carbon nanotubes is still in experimental not industrial stage and promises to stay that way for quite a while, unfortunately. todays launch cost arent that high because it requires so much fuel anyway, fuel is rather small percentage of lauby r2kordmaa - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
printing the engine in one piece, making a mould based on that and casting in alloy of choice is a vision of mine. that would enable to make the flow systems, engine itself etc without joints that would compromise strength and weight, make the changes in engine design fast on the 3d model and give the ability to make more complex designs without increasing the construction difficulty also the priby r2kordmaa - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
could you possibly link the ic-s you used in your arduino, im planning to build my own aswell but i have trouble finding the right ic-s i did find the usb converter easily enough but i have trouble with the ATMEL8 AVR microcontroller. not sure wich one if any is the correct oneby r2kordmaa - Controllers
its indeed highly accurate but its building height is limited. anywho im planning to do some r&d in the robot arm design direction and see what results i can come up with. first i need to get my darwin doneand functioningby r2kordmaa - Mechanics
i kinda see the flexibility of the arm as an uberbonus, these things arent used in car industry without a good reason, you can even access within structures etc. the difficulties to build it and program it are simply something to overcome. its next gen stuff one way or another. about the hydraulic structures im really suspicious about the positioning accuracy, although its really interesting ideaby r2kordmaa - Plastic Extruder Working Group
well of course the robotic arm is more complex to control and build therefore the next gen idea, im not saying we should go over to that design tomorrow. something like that is way in the future. the welding robots are quite widely used tho, i think its best to not to reinvent the bicycle we can always take over designs and software from the industrial robots. i bet its not too difficult to achieby r2kordmaa - Mechanics
look here... the idea is not to build a multi kw consuming robot arm. the arm would be much smaller and driven by motors alike to ones used in darwin and a mig welder is just a toolhead you would use if you need to print in steel, you can put a plastic extruder on it or milling/drilling head or whatever even a pencil or a cat toy for all i care. idea is to achive reprap design capable to build obby r2kordmaa - Mechanics
scara bot is a good idea but doesnt have the merits of: 360 dergee work radius ability to access details from side if the arc welding 3d printing could be implemented stronger matwerials than plastic could be used. with steel frames there wouldnt be a need to worry about arm strenght. solution to move the joints remains. anywho theres a thread under mechanics section for the robot arm designby r2kordmaa - Plastic Extruder Working Group
[20:41] er.. i think i failed to get the point across [20:41] point one [20:41] the robot arm would hold whatever toolhead you need [20:41] plastic extruder or whatever point 2 the robot arm doesnt have to be the same as the one in the article one would build one according to the needs, smaller/bigger whatever so im not telling you have to have something like that on your desktop the ideaby r2kordmaa - Mechanics
looking at this article it seems like welding robot type reprap would be much more useful: it can print objects larger than itself ergo an itself in full eliminating some or all parts of manual construction process LOTS of work area, enough room for holding different toolheads, drill bits etc for automated changing you can turn the toolhead in different positions, it doesnt have to be verticalby r2kordmaa - Mechanics
you can make overhangs, read the entire article, you need to turn the object during the process tho anywho looking at this article it seems like welding robot type reprap would be much more useful: it can print objects larger than itself ergo an itself in full eliminating some or all parts of manual construction process LOTS of work area, enough room for holding different toolheads, drill bitsby r2kordmaa - Plastic Extruder Working Group
i dont think tv-s positioning system is meant to work on such small scale the positioning accuracy nor beam focusing is that smallby r2kordmaa - General
sounds like inventing anti-grav unit for me. anywho nothing wrong with little global warming i like the warm winters these last years around here. btw carbon isnt super strong material take graphite for example: quite soft and breaks easyly but 100% carbon. its all about the crystal structure. depending on what you can get pencil leads or diamonds. about the vacuum balloon: * 50% of the atmoby r2kordmaa - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)