It’s been a long time since my last post already. It seems like I’m always making the same excuse that I’ve been busy at work, but you never run out of things that need to be done with complex software. Despite the fact that I’ve spent most of my time working, I have found some time to make forward progress on my RepRap. As you can see from the menu, I’ve also added a RepRap page for people who only want to look at RepRap posts and not the rest of my ramblings.
At this point I’ve completed the mounting of the steppers for all axes. You can see what it looked like after I completed that here:
an astute observer will see that there are 2 steppers that control the z-axis, these will be run in parallel. Then there is one stepper for each of the x and y axis. These are belt driven and move the extruder and build platform respectively.
Here’s a close-up of the stepper that drives the x-axis:
once I got all the axis put together, I moved on to the extruder + hot-end.
It is really overwhelming to look at the available information on hot-ends and extruders. There are so many variations and combinations that I really didn’t know what to do. So I ended up just basically picking some parts, reading through a few things and putting them together. Hopefully this works! The hot end is basically going to be a block of aluminum screwed onto a brass insert which itself is screwed into a PTFE (teflon) barrel. I drilled the PTFE by hand holding the drill bit in my hand and turning the part and the bit opposite directions. I was able to get much more control this way as I have no drill press nor even an accurate drill. I then drilled two holes in the sides so that it can be attached to the extruder, it looks like this:
This piece goes into the extruder which was quite a complicated bit to put together. This is what it looked like part-way through construction:
And this is what it looks like now with the PFTE barrel also attached:
and:
I’ve manually pushed some filament into the extruder and rotated the gears and it pulled through. Hopefully it works well when powered up.
Speaking of power, the next step after getting most of the extruder put together and mounted is wiring everything up. I decided I wanted to do something special with the power switch as I had a red missile-launch style switch cover that I’d bought previously. I hooked it up like this:
with a dual-color red-green LED. When the machine is connected to the power supply but the power supply is in standby (switch is off) the LED is red. When you flip the switch the power supply turns on and the LED turns green. This seemed like it should be very simple but turned out to be one of the more complicated things I’ve done on this build so far. I did learn some things along the way though about using transistors and NOR gates, so this was worth while. And now it works.
The final bit I’ll include in this update is a bit about the endstops I’m building. I chose optical endstops because again it wasn’t clear to me yet why I’d choose one over the other and the optical ones seemed cooler. The purpose of these is to signal the controller when the build plate has travelled the maximum distance in one direction. Eventually I might want 6 of these but it seems like most people use 3, so that’s what I’m going to start with too. These came in kit form so I’ve got to solder them. Here’s one complete and one not yet started:
And that’s all the pictures I’ve got for this update.
Things that I’ve still got to do before I can get printing include:
- finishing the other 2 end-stops
- finishing wiring everything up
- finish the build platform
- mount the endstops
- mount the resistor and thermistor in the aluminum block and test that out
- calibrate the axes
- figure out how I’m going to spool the filament into the extruder
- figure out how to use the software
That sounds like a lot of work. Hopefully I’ll have time for an update again before Christmas.
2011-10-07 » Spain!
I just recently got back from Spain. It’s hard to summarize our whole epic 6-day trip in a blog post, but it was also exciting enough that I want to write something about it. I’m sure I’ve already forgotten places (just going from memory and Google searches, not bothering to look elsewhere) we went and I’m not going to spend too much time describing everything. I might update this post from time to time as I remember stuff. My wife and I went there for Pedro’s wedding. Before the wedding, we traveled through the 3 largest cities in Spain in descending order by population. We went first to Madrid.
Madrid
Madrid is a pretty big place. We took the Aeropuerto Express to Atocha which went pretty smoothly and was quite a bit cheaper than a cab ride would have been. When we got to Atocha however we had a bit of trouble finding our way to the hotel. We had a couple maps, but unfortunately it turned out the Google Map was wrong. It also took us quite a while to get used to the fact that street names can change from one block to the next. Because of that, it’s not always easy to figure out how to get somewhere when you just have the name of the street you’re going to. The good thing about getting lost though is that we saw lots of interesting buildings and stuff on the way that we probably wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
After we finally got to our hotel and checked in, we went out and walked around to a bunch of places in Madrid. We went to:
We also went to some place that had a bunch of drinks and tapas type food after walking around all over the place and had a bunch of tasty stuff. This is where I first tried the acorn fed Iberian ham.
Overall Madrid felt like a big city, but in Spain, with lots of people around speaking Spanish. It was relatively clean and there’s lots of interesting stuff to see.
Barcelona
Barcelona was about 3 hours by train from Madrid. After we got there, we were able to take the local metro system all over Barcelona. We rode the metro most of the places (except the bus we got on which was the wrong one) we went in Barcelona and it was cheap and pretty efficient. I’d definitely recommend it.
In Barcelona we saw:
While Barcelona was nice, it felt kind of touristy to me. I think I’d go back because the Sagrada Familia was so impressive, but Barcelona was not #1 on my list.
Valencia
The train to Valencia from Barcelona took about 3 hours and was pretty nice as we got to see the ocean, some small port towns and some countryside. When we got to Valencia we checked in to the hotel and then walked around to:
I really liked Valencia. It seemed to have a really nice atmosphere and I’d like to go back. Like everywhere else there’s lots of old stuff, but there is also a really big park that used to be a river that I’d like to spend more time exploring next time. Valencia seems like a really good place to go for a walk.
Murcia
In Murcia we saw:
- Pedro! (and several other fellow “Joyeurs” and spouses)
- Pedro’s wedding! (It was pretty nice ceremony)
- The reception after Pedro’s wedding! (Also great, tasty food + drinks, lots of Pedro’s family)
- The Cathedral (Which I was told by Pedro’s brother-in-law is the only thing worth seeing in Murcia)
I think I’d like to go back to Murcia again despite the fact that I was told there’s not much to see. Just seeing the old buildings and stuff was pretty cool and the area around the Cathedral was pretty nice. We had a really good time at the wedding and reception and enjoyed the experience.
Thanks for inviting us Pedro!
We went back to Madrid the day after the wedding and got in late to Madrid. We walked around Atocha a bit and saw the garden but then went to our hotel near the airport. In the morning we had to get up early to go to the airport to come home. It was great being in Spain, but I also missed my kids! So it was nice to get home and see them again. Hopefully someday we’ll be able to all go to Spain together!
General Observations
- I never really thought about how much of a desert Spain is. It’s really bare all the places we saw away from the coast.
- Spanish kings (and knights) used to be really small dudes.
- The national sport seems to be smoking, and people are always practicing.
- There are not really any houses anywhere near city as far as I can tell. Everything is apartments.
- Food + drinks were much cheaper than I expected.
- Portion sizes at cafe’s and restaurants were also bigger than I expected.
- Iberian ham seems to be the most popular food in Spain. (and it’s really tasty)
- Canada customs also loves Iberian ham. They stole ours after wasting our time. I bet they enjoyed it!
- Several places, beer was cheaper than water.
- Remember to carry 50 Euro-cent coins for the toilet.
- The metro system in Barcelona is a great way to get around.
- It’s hard to find WiFi in Spain, except at McDonalds. (which also sells beer!)
- If you’re used to having the Internet in your pocket, you’ll miss it when you don’t.
- Lots of cathedrals.
- Muslims and Christians repeatedly took over different parts of Spain and burned each others stuff down, replacing it with their own.
- All traffic signs, signals and markings are optional in Spain.
- If the line for X-raying your bag is taking too long, it’s ok to give up and walk around it and just get on the train.
- Entering Europe is way less painful than entering Canada. Even for Canadians.
- Don’t choose seats in row 1 or 2 on a Renfe train unless you know the people in the other. 1a and 2a face each other for example.
- Gaudi was pretty cool.
- I’m not much of a fan of Picasso’s paintings.
- A backpack is the best way to carry your stuff, if you have to carry stuff.
- It’s important to blow stuff up and shoot rockets at a Spanish wedding.
- If you’re on a train in Spain you should talk loudly and constantly on your phone.
- Everything’s made of dirt, rocks or some combination: concrete, clay tiles, bricks, etc.
- It seems like it’s pretty normal to be out late on weekdays, and pretty quiet out before ~10am.
- If you’re not a fan of shopping, being in Spain doesn’t make it much better.
Conclusion
We really enjoyed our trip to Spain and this trip has encouraged us to want to go back to see more of Europe as well. Especially more hams and cheeses.
All the parts I ordered have arrived and I’ve been able to get started on my RepRap. This is what it looks like currently:
As you can see, I’ve got the frame mostly together. The aluminum plate you see in the picture is not yet attached and that’s what I’m working on currently. That is the lower part of the build platform and attaches to some PLA bushings that snap onto the smooth rods to allow movement on the y axis. I’m still working out the way to get these to move smoothly and get the plate mounted straight. Unfortunately in the process I’ve already broken one of my bushings, hopefully that’s the only one:
The only other thing I’ve had to really figure out so far (there is some pretty good build documentation out there) was what to do with some parts that were not quite as perfect as I’d like. As I mentioned in my last post, I bought my initial RepRap parts from some random dude on Ebay. All of the parts have a number of imperfections which I’m hoping will not ultimately impact the accuracy of my machine. These look like:
and
and really all the parts have looked something like that. I’ve spent a lot of time with an X-acto knife cutting away as much of these as I can. Hopefully my parts will come out looking better eventually!
For a while now I’ve been talking about making a hexapod.. I even went so far as ordering some parts and putting together servos and a server controller and making some stuff move. The problem I soon ran into though was that building a hexapod requires either buying or making a lot of parts. Each leg needs several brackets for the servos in order to make joints. When I started looking into these I found that most of these were either expensive, or complicated for me to build myself.
I’ve heard of RepRap before, but never actually seen one in person. Earlier this year when I went to the Mini Maker Faire in Vancouver, there were several people with both CNC and plastic printing machines. These were actually even more cool than I realized. I then started thinking about making the servo brackets for my hexapod using printed plastic. Which led me to read a bunch about the current state of these printers. I found the amazing hydraraptor and many other sources. It seems that with enough work you can get pretty decent quality prints.
The next stage in making a RepRap, after deciding you’re going to do so seems to be investigating all the options. There are a lot of different options when building a 3d printer. Even among RepRaps there are several variants in both metric and SAE, there are all sorts of different options for electronics to drive things, different extruder designs and different print beds. After reading about these different options, I decided that to start with I’m going to try to choose the most common options so I can get up and running as fast as possible. Then I can work on tweaking the setup and potentially print myself the parts to make another variant if I want. It seems 3d printing is a hobby in itself.
The decisions I made at this point are to go with the:
I wanted to order more of the electronics parts in components so that I could assemble them, but it seemed like it was cheaper to just buy those pre-assembled which will I guess leave me more time to get the rest working properly. So, at this point I’ve ordered what I hope are all the parts I need to actually get started printing and am waiting for enough of them to arrive for me to get started putting things together. The plastic parts I ordered from some random guy on Ebay have arrived already, which is nice. They seem to be “ok” build quality though I’m hoping I’ll be able to do better eventually. Then maybe I’ll sell the parts myself.
Anyway, that’s it for this post. Expect future posts to include more details on how construction is going.
It’s been a really long time since I’ve posted now and even longer since I posted regularly. I won the challenge for 2010, but that didn’t continue into 2011. Even if it had I’d still be ahead of Kevin and — with this post — tied with Howie. Kevin’s last post is almost 1 year ago and Howie’s only posted two so far this year too.
I’ve been really busy this year in the first two quarters. Working hard on some awesome new stuff at Joyent has left me with little time for other things. I have realized though that I’ve been missing doing work on my personal projects so I’m going to try to start doing more of that. To try to encourage myself, I’m going to try to start blogging more again. I am not going to commit to blogging every week again, but I’ll try to start posting updates again.
Over the coming while I hope to write about some of the things I want to be working on including:
Hopefully some of this will be interesting to read.
