You might even get away with something this silly, use any NPN-small signal transistor. V+ | / \ 1k / \ |------------ C | / | / A -/\/\--|/ |\ 10k | V | \ | | --- -by mimarob - Controllers
I cant help to still think my idea is pretty cool, its a modification/refinement of an instructable (http://www.instructables.com/id/The-Saltwater-etch-process/) how about having a CNC-needle plumsing about in a pool of saltwater containing the pcb covered with some color or plastic coating. The needle would need some kind of feathering to it so it can compensate for uneven pcb's If you wantby mimarob - Mechanics
You better hurry, there is a rather strange debate going on right now among the enviromental ocultists (i.e. public media) on putting a ban on the plastic bags for enviromental reasons. There is a ban in some 3d world countries since plastic bags seems to clog up the suers. They of course refuse to realise that the real problem is a total lack of waste management :-(by mimarob - General
Hmm, the vias aren't that consuming, you solder a bunch of vias just as fast as an IC with several legs. I was thinking more in the line of turn-around times than in DIY ethics. With the my suggested small alterations (or rather design suggestions), it would be easier to get the new boards out to people and thus shorten the time before the core team gets feedback on any new construction!by mimarob - Controllers
Hello! I just fiddled around a little with the UCB 1.2.1 in kicad Being a PCB-geek from an early age (11) I will try to make this board myself. Only problem though, when you make your own boards, you end up without platings in the holes. This is normally not a problem since you can always solder the components on both sides. Same goes for vias. However certain components like IC-sockets and coby mimarob - Controllers
Great Initiative! Being a half-assed technichian and rather good at teaching (it runs in the family) I might be useful in "spreading the gospell". Once I understood something fully myself I can teach it to a rock if I must! /Erikby mimarob - General
I did it the other night, what I did was to insert plumbers flux inside the drive screw and place a piece of solder wire in there so it could not escape. Then just heated up the drive screw so the solder flussed nicely. Then I took the wire with a lot of flux and this was a pain since the solder seemed to melt and then got blown away by the fire... But anyway I managed to get some of the soldeby mimarob - Reprappers
... but noone can afford the wire-wrap sockets...by mimarob - General
or... since we have the plastic extruder... just put a drop of plastic on each wire for each bend, thus avoiding wires to cross future solder points.. we would need a solder tool of some kind, a roll of wire with a cutter and an extruder head!!by mimarob - General
or maybe since we are reproducing a known construction it might be possible to solder the rats nest in the "right" order so no shorts are created by aftercoming soldering. Sounds like a tricky place-and-route algorithm with a really large computational complexity...by mimarob - General
Mystery solved! I obviously had to luxurious taste for this project. I got a hot-zinked wire at half the price of my previous stainless one, much easier to solder!by mimarob - Reprappers
Actually it is not wire-wrap in this instructable, its more like "solder-wrap". It was a technique in which you use coat copper wire and solder in at certain places, creating lots of toxic hazardous fume which we all used to love. I used this in the dark ages trying to put together some 74SL244 and alike to make an I/O device for my Sinclair ZX81. You could back then actually buy a kit with wire-by mimarob - General
Hello! Yesterday evening I had my first attemt to set the house on fire, thought the fire brigade might be more prepared during Xmas :-) It seems quite possible to make the plumbing solder and fluss stick to the drive screw but I found it impossible to "wet" the 40mm wire part before torching it. I feel a little confused, in the instructions for the extruder they warn you about going to heavyby mimarob - Reprappers
I was lucky enough to get a set of molded parts! Excellent work! Got a blow-torch today to play with :-Eby mimarob - General
I was thinking along another path, having done my own pcb's from the age of eleven or so. If we are still going to use ready made PCB material, why not use ones that are already sprayed with photo resist layer? Instead of spurting ink we could use a fiber of UV-light going around until the pattern is exposed. resolution should be descent Saving time would be to design the PCB patterns so thatby mimarob - Mechanics
something that will increase the area of the extrusion seems like a genious idea, then use a motor to set it in the right angle. Great brainstorming everyone!!!by mimarob - General
One would probably have to be very thourough with cleaning though, I remember from the old "making of a CAPA stick" instruction that even dirt under your finger nails might clog the extruder..by mimarob - General
How about a "binary" set of extruter heads each with double nozzle sizes so that you can always print a certain line-width up to 2*MAX-1 using all heads one time each and on average only use half of the nozzles. Alternatively, one adjustable size nozzle.by mimarob - General
Just don't forget that ordinary plastics is a really high-tech industri by itself, not only does one need oil as usual, with all that comes with it. Also the plastic manufacturers still will have great centralised power. BTW How is the PLA experiments coming on, that could be a solution...by mimarob - General
But I though DXF was "our" standard format used to feed the reprap printing in 3-D? (Sorry if I'm asking stupid questions)by mimarob - Mechanics
Hello all! Is it possible to read these files with Art Of Illusion I tried but it said something about files not being in gzip format? If its all 2-d maybe a dxf file is a bit of overkill, is it possible to convert to something I could print out and glue on my playwood and then use conventional wood-working tools to fiddle with? Also I wonder which files contains the extruder parts, since theyby mimarob - Mechanics
cool! Maybe one day the dozen-or-so useless CD's coming with each motherboard will contain one with a set of STL files for printing one of several standard models for a case :-)by mimarob - Reprappers
hmm but what happens if the pump snaps and rotates in the air without feeding any material...? Do I really dare to have this thing running unattended in my home?by mimarob - General
I think patent and copyright issues will face the same faith as we see in the music industri today... Of course anyone suffers the risk of being clubbed by some big-corp. laywers hitting at random to statue an example, but they can't stop the development as such.by mimarob - Polymer Working Group
wonder what sort of precision and resolution you need to do that, legs have spacings of 0.5 mm today, maybe you can help the machine a little with a large magnifier and a keypad for small corrections?by mimarob - General
Another thing I want to try is the bellows idea I discussed in a previous thread (Bellows would keep the temperature only on the extruder and part being made, thus saving the rest of the machine from melting. It would be interesting to buy this thing just to see how much electricity it draws if you want to keep it at an even 60 C. Using it at winter would simply help heating my house. Maybe aby mimarob - General
Just taking any surface mount component and intermix it in my own layout with as many layers as I want at my home for a small cost would be a dream for any Electronics Enginering guy. Adding the capability of removing parts and material and rebuild when you've screwed up the design would also be useful!! Suppose you could just place a BGA chip on its back and then start to coat its "legs" up layby mimarob - General
Otherwise I think that the molds produced in the blogs lately might turn to an alternate path. Maybe parts could be cast in some material that can take heat and then the printed objects would only be used as templates and for things outside the reprap machine itself. Sort of like a two-phase reprap. The technique of making molds go back several thousand years, what we could add is a way for anyby mimarob - General
More seriously, couldn't it be used to extrude over various background temperatures in order to see if that sorts out (or betters) the problems seen in hdpe printing! /Erikby mimarob - General
After reading Victors thread on selective sintering I finally understood what you are trying to do, approximately. Very interesting work! So is it the UV light that triggers the exothermic reaction? How fast do you expect a "layer" to be finished? How thick will the layers be?by mimarob - Paste Extrusion Working Group