Fixbot build :)

This weekend I finally got the last of the parts I needed to build my FixBot.  I did decide to make a minor change, mine won't have any Sugru.

I printed the parts and in the process decided that instead of the 'finger' that it comes with normally it needed a gripper :)  After a quick search on Thingiverse I found an appropriate gripper to use.

After printing it and assembling it I found a few things I wanted to change.  The first is the servo tray is too small to fit the servo I have.  So I ended up scaling it a little bit larger to fit my servo.  The other thing was that the gripper arms are in two pieces because they originally were made to be cut on a laser cutter or CNC.  A quick bit of work in OpenScad and now the gripper is double height and a single piece.

I'll be printing the new gripper tonight, and doing some assembly tomorrow night and hopefully have it up and running.

FixBot Frame with Servos

Gripper Hand Small Version

Testing different slicing software

Well after reading a post about a problem that's occurring with Slic3r 9.2 creating some random banding in certain situations. Sound is right on top of it and is testing the patch already, but in the mean time I decided to see what else is available and how well they work. 

I've chosen Slic3r 8.2 (which is one of the best versions even though it doesn't have support working), Slic3r 9.2, KISSlicer, and Cura. I've chosen a model of an owl that I like because it has a lot of variation from square at the bottom to a very small point at the very end with the ears and a lot of complex shapes going up. 

I sliced the model with the same settings with each program and I'm printing them with the same printer, filament to provide a consistent test between the slicers. 

I should finish the prints tomorrow, and then I'll be taking some photos of the different areas that show differences between all the programs. 

Back again

Well after some changes in the things I've been working on I'm back to posting here.

Quick summary of what's been happening since I finished my Prusa:

1. Tweaked and got it running really good

2. Did some modifications with the Z-axis, and the Y-bed to make it run smoother and heat faster

3. Switched to Borosilicate glass with Window tint on it.  PLA prints directly on the window tint and for ABS I'm running slurry which works really good, sometimes too good.

4. Purchased a Ramps set and a control panel to upgrade the prusa.

5. Built a new Mendel Max machine, first with the default Y-axis, and recently upgraded it to use MakerSlide, more details to follow.

6. Z-axis on the Prusa has died, so it's waiting for the Ramps upgrade now instead of troubleshooting the Sanguinololu.

7. Just upgraded the hot end on the Mendel Max to a new J-Head Mark VB and I'm extremely pleased with it's performance.  I also went ahead and moved back to a .5 nozzle because I really didn't need the .35, and it was tougher to maintain and run.

8. Got most of the parts for a laser cutter, which is going to be my next project.  But I am going to do two things before I work on the laser cutter.  First I need to setup my workspace at my house in my old computer room, the second is I want to get my CJ-5 running again, I really miss it :)

I've started to experiment with some timelapse videos which you can view on my YouTube channel.  I'm enjoying the videos so much I'll be using another webcam that allows an external trigger and hook it up to the arduino and use the M243 command to trigger a capture at each layer change.  That should make for some much more interesting and consistent time lapses.

I also have purchased the components needed for Wildseyed's hot end and may experiment some with that.

It is alive!

Got a lot accomplished this weekend, but not without a few struggles.

Friday night I started working on wiring up the controller. I have to say that I don't think I've had so many problems trying to assemble connectors than I had Friday night. One minute (actually more like 60 minutes) I think I've got one of the cables installed in the connector and I move on to the next one. Then all of a sudden the first one pops out of the connector.

I finally decided after a very long night to use a different method to connect things to my Sanguinololu. I first was going to try deans micro connectors but the offset was going to be an issue. My next option was to use another micro connector that is pre-terminated with wire leads. I bought enough to wire up all the stepper motors Saturday and put them with the printer until I had time to work on it Sunday.

Sunday afternoon I got over to the hackerspace and started to wire up the motors. I first just wired up the z-axis to prove out the choice I had made. After three attempts I had motion on the z-axis and I went ahead and connected up everything else except the heated bed and thermistor. Late Sunday evening I was ready for a full test of everything, had a little trouble getting it to connect to the USB port, but once I got it connected everything was moving and heating up!!

Of course I had to load a strand of ABS into the extruder and make a bunch of .5 mm threads of plastic, much excitement was had by all :)

You can see the videos of the first power up testing, along with the goofs I made while doing it on my YouTube channel. Http://www.youtube.com/ncbob27409

I've ordered some SS threaded rod for my z-axis as I have installed the upgraded supports for them and needed longer rods anyway.

For now things are on hold until that comes in, then I'll install the new rods, re-align everything, then finish up the build with the heated build plate and start calibration and final testing.

Mechanical is almost finished

Ive made some good progress lately After having a minor issue (cough i melted my Arcol hot end) I ordered a new hot end from MakerGear Ii REALLY like it because it has very few pieces, is very modular and uses ceramic instead of fire cement which is easier to work with.
I got the hot end assembled, now I need to mount it on my extruder,
and put the extruder on the x Carriage and install the belts for the x
carriage. That will complete the mechanical on the hippie.

Tonight I brought in my Laptop and Sanguinololu into FabLocker and got my software
toolchain working, was able to get Pronterface up and connected to
Sanguinololu with David's help with Python. (Thanks David)

Going to work on hooking everything up this week, so I'm shooting for
being able to start calibration and test runs next week.

And yes, I have plenty of plastic and PLA, I've got 3 lbs of ABS and 1
lb of PLA. Mmmm, that isn't much now that I think about it, might
order some more this week.

Lots of progress

I have gotten quite a bit done this past week.

I used the jig and re-aligned my frame, then started on the z-axis.  I didn't like the clonedel parts so I ended up downloading the Scad file and modifying it so I could make one on my CNC machine.  I'm very pleased with how it came out, and I was able to proceed with assembling the Z-axis.

The next step was to work on my extruder/hot end.  I got the hot-end built, and it's spewing out little threads of plastic, so that went well.  But when I went to mount it to the extruder (this is the one that came with my Hot-End kit that was supposed to be a perfect match) nothing seemed to line up.  Not to mention this also didn't seem to match up to my x-carriage.  So I'll be taking it to the Fablocker tomorrow night and get some advice of what to do next.

So I started on the electronics, and built my opto-end stops.  No issue at all there, they went together very quickly.

I then built my TinyUSB ISP so I could burn the bootloader to my Sanguinololu controller.  That went well, and I didn't have very many issues burning the bootloader.

The firmware is a total other matter.  It seems that there are many different versions of the firmware I wanted to use (Marlin) even though they are labeled with the same revision number.  I tried downloading several of them and couldn't get them to compile, much less load on my Sanguinololu.

Again, this will be something else I'll take up to the Fablocker tomorrow night and hopefully I can get it straightened out.

Rechecking the frame

I went ahead and cut a jig so I can verify the alignment of the frame.  I thought I had gotten it close enough, but the jig shows that it is still off by a little bit.  The better the alignment is now the fewer problems I'll have down the road.  I know this from the Bluumax CNC.  The Bluumax was made to be very adjustable, but the Prusa is not that much different.

I tried to put together my hot end last night, got as far as test fitting the power resistor.  I then pulled out the fire cement, and apparently the bag is not airtight because it had completely set up.  So a quick search on Amazon and some new fire cement is on it's way. 

The new x-carriage is ready, Neil printed it up for me, and now all I have left to get printed is the z-axis stabilizers which Neil is working on.  So by Wednesday I should have everything in terms of parts and ready to start assembling everything again.

I can almost smell the plastic already......

Prusa build continues

Well I've gotten the frame all aligned and tightened.  But after discussing with Neil I am going to cut a template jig with my CNC and go back and double check.

This won't really slow me down due to the issues I've run across with the Clonedel parts I started with on my RepRap.  So far they have been ok in building my Prusa, but when I got to the X axis parts I started to have quite a few concerns.  The first one is the design is very different from the printed parts. The bottoms are very very thin (like 1mm in spots) and they do not have the support around the z-shafts like I would be comfortable with.

So since I'm an official member of the Fablocker Hackerspace (yay me!!) Thursday night Neil gave me one of the x-axis pieces (the motor piece) and we printed out the idler, and he also had two gears for the belts that were much better than the clonedel pieces.  We also worked on installing the toolchain on my laptop, and I got that working fine today.  At least to the point where I can take a SCAD or STL and run it through slic3r and then load it up in Pronterface and it looks good.

Monday I'll be working with Neil to get the configuration setup on my laptop to work with the Prusa at the Hackerspace so then I can print the rest of the pieces I'm going to need myself.  This includes Z-axis stabilizers, z-axis couplers, and the x-carriage that will fit my Arcol hotend.  I might even print new z-axis brackets, better now than when I have everything all put together.

I got my parts for my Sanguinololu board today, and boy am I happy with them.  From the wiki page there is a little link to the project file on Mouser's website that has every single part you need to assemble the Sanguinololu, including alternates for the how you want to run the power.

I was a little concerned in soldering the FTDI chip, but I do have a very nice soldering iron with ESD and digital temperature control so I figured I'd give it a shot.  The first time I tried to test it I didn't get a response, so I went back over the pins and soldered them just a little bit longer (using my magnifier, sheesh those pins are small) and sure enough the second time was a charm.  I then installed the rest of the components, and I now have a ready to go Sanguinololu 1.3a board (well at least it's recognized by my Mac, and the light goes on, firmware and bootloader to come).

I think that tonight I may cut the jig, and then tomorrow I'll be assembling my hot end.  Or I may reverse that :)

Finally!

Decided after going to a meeting at the Fablocker space on Thursday to get started on my RepRap. If I waited until I 'have' the spare time I'd never get it done.

Started with the visual guide for Prusa and setup my drill press and got out the Dremel to clean up the parts as I go.

I finished the frame (not fully aligned yet) and only had one issue while putting it together. My top vertex holes I made a little too close together when I drilled them, so I had to adjust the y axis brackets just a little to get them to go on without having to beat them into submission.

So I've got the frame assembled, next step is to square it and tighten everything down. Then it will be on to the X axis installation.

Sharepoint 2010 and Silverlight

I had a little bit of down time, no bugs to work on and no new features, so I decided to take a look at Silverlight support in Sharepoint 2010.

At first it seemed like there was a lot of videos, webcasts and walkthroughs on how to create a Silverlight web part. But after digging in to them it always seemed like there was a little something extra that was missing or added that I really didn't want to use. I finally decided to just start with a Silverlight app that just had a button that did nothing, got it working in Sharepoint then slowly added more functionality that I wanted.

The end result was I have a Silverlight version of a webpart that I created the 'normal' way that did some AD calls, some WCF calls and then displayed some user security information.

The performance perception difference is dramatic. The other webpart was taking about 8 seconds to load, and with the Silverlight it appears to pop up instantly, but even all the data loading taking the same amount of time. But when I showed it to our testers they felt like it was so much faster.

Now if I could just get permission and approval to use Silverlight in our web parts. And yes, I know that it's already used by out of the box Sharepoint, but again it's a matter of perception.