Hmm, I'll just throw the concept of a differential windlass (aka Chinese Windlass) in here, I can see it giving mechanical advantage at the expense of greater complexity of attachment to the moving part of the axis and having to have some form of return mechanism.by BigDoug - General
I don't think you need rapid switching for a heated bed - the temperature should be fairly stable particularly with a sheet of glass on top. I've set a tolerance of +/- 2 degrees in firmware. I'd imagine it much more important to keep the hot end temperature stable. I guess we're looking at the wrong issue here. The real issue is why the correct device (a mosfet) is failing when it is supposedby BigDoug - General
For my heated bed, I used one of these... It has a 360 ohm coil resistance, so you can wire it directly across the mosfet output and it'll only draw a tiny current. The spec of the relay says it's capable of switching 277v, but I'm using a 12v psu. So it's over specified, but they're cheap enough. I soldered the relay onto a bit of stripboard - remember to cut the track that lines up with thby BigDoug - General
Bed heater or extruder heater? I've had the mosfet controlling the heated bed fail twice (the mosfet gets dead hot and ends up gray & toasted - eventually burning away the track...) It's strange, because it's well within the rated capacity for the mosfet - and after I had one fail the first time I stuck some decent heatsinks on. My solution was to use a relay controlled by the mosfet to swby BigDoug - General
Skeinforge has a Vectorwrite plugin, it outputs .svg files for each layer. You can tell it to just output the perimeter - you should then be able to assemble these svg files into efficient pages for printing (or something more exotic like vinyl cutting) Cheers, Dougby BigDoug - General
An integrated toolchain comprising.... A machine comissioning procedure Calibration procedure Material calibration database Shared online object repository Parametric Modeller Plate layout tool Slicing engine which can use different configurations for each object on a plate Jog control Printing host All presented in a one click OS agnostic installer. In other words, somone builds a machine, doby BigDoug - General
Just in case anyone gets the impression that all is resolved... I'm still waiting for a refund of 327 euro for an order I made on 11th April. In spite of having exchanged several emails recently I've still not got my money back and no goods have been shipped either. On balance, I'd have to say "avoid like the plague" Which is a shame. Doug.by BigDoug - General
The springs in that maplin kit are a bit weedy, they work fine on my z axis with one small warning. They can wrap themselves around the z axis rods. If they do you will find you are missing steps. I opened mine out a little. Cheers, Doug.by BigDoug - General
There have been quite a few updates recently, check out They are looking at shipping boards in November, two different models, $25 and $35 In terms of IO, the spec looks a bit tight, but do-able IIRC 16 GPIO pins. I think it would be an excellent addition to a 3D printer. It would allow you to get the printer on the network, it should have enough processing power to do slicing (though not asby BigDoug - Controllers
That was all jolly good fun. Four people, three repraps - though we didn't get to set up Max's, we'll have to do that some other time. It's quite inspiring to see other peoples printed parts. It really shows what is possible. Also, there are benefits which just can't happen online - like seeing Hamish's machine was almost silent compared to my rather noisy machine. I've clearly got some sortinby BigDoug - West of England RUG
They've all probably not seen it yet Anyhow, all welcome - hopefully we can get something regular going. Cheers, Doug.by BigDoug - West of England RUG
This doesn't seem to be gathering much momentum, so let's give it a kick along... Hey guys, does anyone fancy popping round to have a play with my rather poorly calibrated Prusa. Let's say a week wednesday, so that's Wednesday 7th September, don't turn up before 6pm or I'll still be grumpy from work. Don't intend to stay after 11pm or I'll kick you out. It's in Bristol, in Bishopston a mile oby BigDoug - West of England RUG
droftarts Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > BigDoug Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > No parts. No refund. Been waiting months. > > Of course, your mileage may vary. > > I stand corrected. Have you tried calling them? > What was it for, an Orca? If so, I'm not surprised > you're still waiting, tby BigDoug - General
No parts. No refund. Been waiting months. Of course, your mileage may vary.by BigDoug - General
The sooner the better I say. It also might be an idea to plan something for the same weekend as this workshop in Bath. Cheers, Doug.by BigDoug - General
@geoffd I'm in exactly the same place you are - it looks like we must have done very similar research and ended up making the same decisions. I'll second what you said about the quality of nophead's parts, mine arrived this morning and they're quite inspirational. If I can achieve similar results then I will be very pleased indeed. Cheers, Doug.by BigDoug - United Kingdom RepRap User Group
I'm based in Bristol. Just about to start my build this weekend - RP and mechanical parts arrived today, hopefully the electronics and extruder are not too far behind. This looks like it'll be a lot of fun. Cheers, Doug.by BigDoug - United Kingdom RepRap User Group