This past Friday I was able to snag a Motherboard and Extruder controller for the RepRap from the Makerbot site. They were in stock for less than 12 hours; apparently they get electronics in stock at the end of every month and boy do they sell out fast! Aside from the optical endstops (they were still out of stock at the makerbot site) I have a complete set of electronics. I am chugging away at the mechanical design – I have been so busy I haven’t touched the project for almost 3 weeks but today I made some progress completely redesigning a large portion of the frame I didn’t like. Expect some progress pictures and maybe even the completed frame design in the coming weeks!
(And of course pictures of all the electronics when they arrive)
I got engaged to the woman of my dreams this past weekend. I made her ring (why I haven’t posted any projects lately) – here are some pictures. Enjoy. Naturally there will be a build article soon.
(on a side note – I didn’t write my name in the box – it is from Shane jewelers, my dad just happened to have the box – a happy coincidence. Also the green ring that looks a whole lot like the gold one is the wax pattern that I carved that was eventually cast into the ring – it hadn’t been polished yet)
My first stuff has come. Three stepper motor drivers, a usb-ttl cable, 5 ft of insulated nichrome wire, a 100k thermister, and four nema 17 motors. Whenever they come back in stock I will have to get a motherboard, extruder controller board, and a few other miscellaneous things. I am working up a nice big shopping list for mcmaster carr and MSC direct as I design the frame. This is going to be an awesome one! I’ve got good ideas for the extrusion head too… Stay tuned!
On a side note I have to say that I am very impressed with the speed and overall quality of service with the makerbot store. They shipped my order like an hour after I put it in, everything was packed extraordinarily, and they had good communication. I give them 5 gold stars.
I began constructing the frame today in inventor. I am designing it to use skateboard bearings (8×22x7mm) throughout because of their incredible cheapness. Everything on it is subject to change, but right now it is looking somewhat more machining friendly than before, in addition to using the much cheaper (in the USA at least) imperial hardware. I’ll be working on it as time permits this week so stay tuned!
The guys over at the reprap wiki just put up a lot of information about the second generation RepRap machine called the mendel. It is far superior to the original one so I will definitely be building it. They host 3d model files – but no drawings, hopefully they will have some soon. I suppose it isn’t a problem if you are going to have the parts rapid prototyped, but if you’re like me and prefer to machine them then it really stinks. The problem is that the model files are in three formats “aoi” which is a really awful free artistic 3d modeler that makes you use boolean operations to model anything instead of parametric modeling, and if it can dimension I can’t find a way to do it so it is practically useless for me, Stl which is basically a bunch of vertices that I can’t do anything with (but the reprap and other rapid prototypers love), and the lovely solid edge format. I have solidworks, pro/engineer, inventor 10 but not solid edge. There isn’t a solid edge trial that I could use to quickly make some drawings of the parts before it expired, though there is a free “viewer” that does a great job of opening the part files, but it does a horrible job of displaying them (e.g. it doesn’t).
Because the parts are designed to be RP’d a lot of them are very complex and would be a pain to machine (if not impossible) so I see this as a good opportunity to redesign all of the parts with machining in mind. I will still be using the basic mendel form factor and dimensions, I will just be making the subcomponents machining friendly (and using imperial parts for US based builders like me) and hosting well dimensioned drawings for everyone.
I’ll probably begin tonight so watch over the next week or so.
I ordered the majority of the electronics today (aside from seemingly forever sold out motherboard and extruder controller) – I have to give the makerbot.com store some credit though they are FAST – I ordered at 3 and the order shipped around 4. Wow.
There isn’t much I like less than planning a project. All I want to do is jump right in and do something. I hate waiting for the UPS truck to come with the goods to get started. Nonetheless I admit that it is completely necessary, especially for something as complex as the reprap.
I will be ordering most of the parts for the mechanical assembly tomorrow (sans motors which are sold out) and hopefully electronics soon – they are currently out of stock but I will snatch them up the moment they become available!
Stay tuned because this one is going to be coming fast!
In my “about me” section of my site I mentioned that I dabble in just about everything – I think that this project is testament to that fact. Though I will admit I had one of the strongest motivators know to mankind (wanting to impress a girl) had a lot to do with my decision to pursue sewing a dress – without it I probably wouldn’t have ever decided to make one.
Anyhow, after sewing the kite for my kiteboard project, I saw a very expensive dress that I (and more importantly the girl I wanted to impress) thought was really cool. A situation where I see something very expensive that I want that there is a possibility that I could make make for cheap is usually the recipe for a new project to be born, which happened here. I figured that I could make it for less than $30, and in the process impress someone very important. Talk about bang for your buck! If I had just bought it I would have payed nearly 10 times what it cost to make, and lost the impressive factor – it was an easy decision to make!
Anyone interested in a “build”? It wasn’t very difficult. If there is any interest in the basics of dressmaking I’ll be happy to write an article!
Good gosh HDR makes my living room look AWESOME. I have to say it really isn’t exciting at all in real live.
It has been a while since I have done a big project – for the last month or so, I have been yearning to do something big. I have been keeping an eye on the open source rapid prototyping machine called the reprap. It is a machine that is able to reproduce most of its major components.
It is totally awesome – who wouldn’t want a desktop machine that can print just about any arbitrary object?
It is a good project with lots of room for innovation. I will be posting updates on the blog as I make progress, then when I am done I will make a complete build article (good build instructions seem to be hard to find these days).
I will be buying the electrical components assembled - though I will be doing as much innovation to the mechanics as possible, and obviously charting them all on here!
Time is very limited for me – being a full time mechanical engineering student and working 20 hours as a week research assistant = not a lot of time for projects. Though I almost always invariably finish what I start, it just takes longer, so if you are interested stay tuned because it is going to be awesome!
I was on youtube today and I saw this video I made a couple years ago. I was attempting to reproduce the effect that I saw in a HP commercial that I found to be simply… amazing. It just caught my attention, and there was a girl that I wanted to impress (she later became my girlfriend so I guess it worked) so I decided that I wanted to make it. For 20 seconds or so it took way longer than it should have. I’ll do a write of up how I did it if there is any interest. Let me know.
Follow the read link to see the one I blatantly copied (in the name of love and art)
This awesome wall built by Joseph is another example of the relative ease of designing and installing a home built wall. He used google sketchup to make the conceptual design (seen above). Google sketchup is a free 3d modeling application that allows conceptual designs such as the above to be made with ease. I highly recommend it for getting a good visual of what your project will look like, and an idea of scale (the guy he inserted is way too cool). I wish I would have thought of it! Nice one joseph.
The page for reader submitted projects is here. Look how empty and lonely it looks with just one project in it… wouldn’t you love for something you made to be in there? Send in your project and become famous!
I began constructing the frame today in inventor. I am designing it to use skateboard bearings (8×22x7mm) throughout because of their incredible cheapness. Everything on it is subject to change, but right now it is looking somewhat more machining friendly than before, in addition to using the much cheaper (in the USA at least) imperial hardware. I’ll be working on it as time permits this week so stay tuned!
