Thursday, April 8, 2010

PLA Parts

I got a hold of part, printed from a mendel. that got parts printed from a mcwire.
so my parts 3ed gen reprap. that s the good news. the bad news is now i get to trash my mcwire. i dont get to see it print :(

the only parts i plan on taking off of it are the electronics and steppers. so if anyone want a boost in to repstrap send me a email or post a message, i am allso on the reprap chat room a lot now. i allso have left over parts, like 1/4 thredded rod, and two spar set of the screws i used, a bunch of screws, bolts nuts, etc

my first part of building my mendel was wades extruder.



Its amazing how fast it works with parts made for what your doing. in the photo the hot end is not attached just a press fit. All so the thermocoupler is not attached. So there's a little more work on the hot end. If you look careful you can see a drill bit in the background. Thats the shaft that the press bearing sits on. I will replace it with scrap 5/16 rod


This is one side of the frame. I need to buy 2 more 6 foot bars to cut down for the cross beams. And then all i need is the smoth rod. All of my rods are 5/16. In the usa its all most half the cost and about the same size.

This is my profile of the hot end.

On Electronics i have mounted them to a board of mdf. I tried using the a Nokia Ca-42 cable, but i could not install the driver to talk to the computer. So i order a 5v sparkfun tll board. I have alot of mini b usb cables. This setup worked for me.

On software, i plan on FiveD. And hoping on getting Reprap host working. I get an error from what i think is 64bit compatibility. Or Repsnapper which is running.

Friday, April 2, 2010

My First "Printed Part"


Theres this program out h called Pepakura. I have designer 2 of this program from an old life.
This program can take an STL model and Skin it. Turning it in to a 2d image that can but cut out and then folded back in to a 3d model. Download the pdo for this object
This is how i printed a part with out a 3d printer.



This is what i did in 15 mins of cutting and 5 mins of glueing


Screen shot of the program. On the left you have the object in this case is the Frame Vertex for a mendal. On the right is the 2d of the object. Pepakura let's you move around any face on the object in the 2d area. Joining edge's for folding or glueing. There's all so an auto unfold that works well, but all most all ways need so help on getting the object on one piece of paper or making it easyer to build it item.


printed page from pepakura


Cut page from pepakura

Cut out from the page

after the first folding of the paper

Just after Glue. white glue works well. dont use to much or it will take ages to cure