Wade: Interesting that you used surplus guide rods. From what I can tell, your printer is very reliable (noting that you've managed to print off a Darwin set with very little trouble). The fact that they're highly polished probably reduces friction quite a bit. I've had a lot of trouble with friction on the Y axis and was able to mitigate it a bit using some steel wool. I wonder if some additionaby degroof - Mechanics
This is just speculation on my part... I'd expect to see a Mendel design this year and probably even a prototype. I don't expect that to translate into a Mendel kit being available through BfB or RRRF this year. I wouldn't be surprised, though, to see some of the features for Mendel being made available to Darwin. Something along the lines of "if we do this and this, then it'll work for both Mby degroof - General
Hmm, I wonder if you could do something similar to the laminated paper fabricator using sheets of plastic mesh instead.by degroof - Plastic Extruder Working Group
In theory, you could use monofilament "invisible thread" as stock. You can get that down to 0.1mm, so you wouldn't need to extrude, just place and weld. It tends to be nylon, though, which isn't easy to melt. It's also likely to be more expensive by weight than larger diameter filament. One idea I toyed with at one point was a two-stage extruder. Take the 3mm stock and extrude it down to 0.5mm oby degroof - Plastic Extruder Working Group
Huh, you're right. I got the same total when I added it up. You'd think the full kit would be slightly cheaper.by degroof - Controllers
Nice. Great artwork. I'm guessing the ships would be 3D objects with hexagonal bases?by degroof - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
If I've crunched the numbers right, that works out to $120US for a 5lb roll. That's more than double what RRRF sells it for here.by degroof - General
Let's see... The RP parts use about 150m of 3mm plastic, so about 20 of them? How much were they quoting?by degroof - General
One more picture. Painted with acrylics:by degroof - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
OK, here's a rudimentary SNAP interpreter: I haven't tested it exhaustively, so it might not work under all conditions.by degroof - RepRap Host
Here's some documentation to help sift through the debug info: RepRap SNAP comms: Extruder commands: SNAP docs: I'm tempted to write a javascript app that interprets SNAP hex codes.by degroof - RepRap Host
That null pointer exception seems to be a glitch with ver 0.9. Doesn't seem to be fatal, though. The "non-existent extruder for PDMS" is likely because your preferences have 2 extruders defined in the preferences. Changing the number of extruders to 1 should get rid of that. Beyond that, it's kinda hard to see what's going on, short of picking through the hex codes. Cursory glance shows that itby degroof - RepRap Host
There's probably a good market for extruder parts, since they're used on all flavors of machine. Everyone needs at least one and a spare's not a bad thing to have. Probably even a good demand for built-and-tested extruders.by degroof - General
I was able to print a fairly decent sphere recently: I also tried a more complex shape, with limited success: In theory, you could use the same technique to do other overhangs. A chess pawn shouldn't be too bad. As for the actual build volume, it's probably closer to 200x200x90 on my machine, once you take into account the size of the carriage and the depth of the extruder.by degroof - Plastic Extruder Working Group
Funny you should mention board games. I did a game board Instructable a while ago . One thing I needed for the game, though, was a set of game pieces. A 3D printer would've come in handy at the time.by degroof - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
McMaster-Carr now has 3D models of some of its products available for download . It'd be interesting to see how these could be imported into RepRap.by degroof - General
To run the latest host within eclipse on the same laptop, I did this: - use eclipse's svn perspective to connect to - grab trunk->reprap->host - switch to java perspective and add all the jars and zips I could find within the project - run org.reprap.Main Just for good measure, I deleted reprap.properties and let the app generate a new one. This version of the host has known bugs. I woulby degroof - RepRap Host
My laptop is running Ubuntu 8.10. Here's what I did to start the host (0.9)... 1. get the host zip from here and unzip into /usr/lib/reprap 2. use synaptic package manager to install rxtx and libvecmath 3. get the linux java3d zip from here drill down to j3d-jre.zip and extract the .jar files to /usr/share/java and the .so files to /lib 4. get the .jar files from here here and here and putby degroof - RepRap Host
Now if I can just get my Y axis to stop jamming...by degroof - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
I scaled up the model to 55mm and re-printed. Fresh off the printer. Some of the pseudo-support material. Moderately flexible. Cleaned up a bit. Underside.by degroof - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
Not yet. I'll upload some when I get home.by degroof - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
Last night, I designed and printed one of these: I had to create a support object to keep it from sagging. That was done in Art of Illusion by tracing the outline of the toy, extruding upward to the height of the wings, then subtracting the shape of the toy. You can't see it from the Thingiverse pic but there's landing gear underneath. I used a single-head support technique I've been playingby degroof - Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)
> I just checked and 3/8 - 16 is nowhere close to M6. M6 is closer to > 1/4 - ?. I'd have to double-check; but, I think M6 is even smaller > than a 1/4". According to this table: the nearest equivalent to M6 is 1/4-28. Looks like about 5% larger in diameter and about 10% finer pitch.by degroof - General
I do something similar. My routine goes like this: 1. open the extruder exerciser and turn on the heater 2. open the model and position it on the build area 3. home the Z axis and make sure it's the right height 4. home X and Y 5. run the extruder for a bit to get it pushing filament 6. print I've found that the two things that are most likely to ruin a print are a) not having the nozzle close eby degroof - Mechanics
For Darwin's Z axis, it's the thread pitch and step angle that determine steps per mm. Pretty sure the pulleys don't factor into the equation. Using the toothed pulleys from McMaster for X and Y and M8 threaded rod for Z, my settings are 9.8 steps/mm on X and Y and 320 on Z. The calculations I use are: X or Y steps/mm = 360/((tooth pitch in mm)*(step angle in degrees)*(number of teeth)) For mby degroof - RepRap Host
pumpernickel2 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > i have had decent > results with re-filling the extruder on-the-fly, > by manually feeding in a filament as the old one > is drawn into the extruder (mkII extrduer). there > doesn't seem to be much of a hiccup in the > transition from old to new filament I've done this too. Worst I've gotten is a bby degroof - Plastic Extruder Working Group
True. Just because it's currently manufactured by very large, expensive machines doesn't necessarily mean that that's the *only* way to do it.by degroof - Plastic Extruder Working Group
My Y motor went the wrong direction too. Actually, both X and Y were backwards. Never did work out why. But, yes, just reversing the order of the pins worked:by degroof - RepRap Host
Correction: Both GenericRepRap and Simulator have this problem.by degroof - RepRap Host