YAB Yet Another Blog

[RepRap] Mechanical machine and Wii hacks
on 22/01/2008 - like it?

Great news today for RepRap at Las Indias: the mechanical machine has just been ordered from BitsFromBytes, and it should arrive in Madrid in 3-4 weeks.

Fully assembled and tested, in a wooden crate for easier transportation, I’ll hope to have the time to make some demo at the end of the month.

What’s missing:

• electronic: we already have all electronics, but it has became a bit obsolete over the last few month, it would be great to upgrade it to Arduino platform;
• experimenting: we’ll need to melt stuff then, and see how it reacts. Faboroni, another fabbing project, has made a recent experiement with various cooking material (chocolate, cheeze, …). And I’ll need to find a source to buy some plastic polymers, or make our own.

Then, will it be possible to plug your wiimote in RepRap?

Johnny Chung Lee has release a lot of really cool wiimote hacks, and the Reprap Forum is now looking how they could be used

Tags: bitsfrombytes, hack, mechanical, reprap, robot, wii

[RepRap] Moulded parts ready
on 06/12/2007 - like it?

Reprap parts are now available on www.bitsfrombytes.com and ready to order!

From the Reprap Builder blog post, a complete kit with motors will be available in next days for a 300£ + VAT price, it’ll surely help a lot of reprappers who already have all electronic ready and just need all these parts to finish the cartasian robot.

There are some interesting options if you choose to buy the moulded parts kit: you can ask them to be prepared if you do not have necessary tools to drill the holes, and you can choose the resin color to customized your own reprap.
The scope of supply provided for each kit will be a great help too for people who already have some parts (like the extruder) from the RRRF store, and just need to order the cartasian robot parts.

Order will be placed this week to Madrid, hoping it’ll arrive next week to build it before Christmas.

Tags: catasian, kit, moulded, parts, reprap, robot

[RepRap] Mould parts arrive soon
on 27/11/2007 - like it?

The above RepStrap is made entirely from moulded parts or off the shelf items for the couplings and timing pulleys. I intend to do mouldings of the pulleys to further drive down the cost but thought I should get something up just to let people know it was still happening!

The above RepStrap does not have the Extruder parts fitted but these are as posted before.

On Friday we will have a web site up so people can order any or all of the moulded parts, I’m still figuring out what the bits actually cost in resin and silicone mould! But expect a full set to be in the region of £100 to £120.

More on RepRap Builders blog…

Tags: mould, parts, reprap, rrrf

[RepRap] Completed Shotbot at Metalab
on 22/11/2007 - like it?

Few people in Vienna have just finished a RepRap Shotbot:

“This was a collaborative effort with a lot of people at the metalab, grl vienna, and monochrom!”

This machine will print out shotglasses this weekend at roboexotica.org

This is near the RepRap Holy-Grail, I hope it would print some RepRap parts soon! The hardware in use is 2 Arduino Board, and the new electronic parts from parts.rrrf.org.

Photos by Brex

Tags: cnc, electronic, fabbing, hardware, reprap, robot

[RepRap] Universal Board testing
on 12/09/2007 - like it?

I’ve been soldering up Universal Boards for RepRap all day long, and make this video of the last test:

Almost all electronic is finished, just missing few resistors and heatsink for the extruder card, I fear I won’t have time to connect it to the extruder itself before leaving…

Tags: 2007, board, electronic, leds, madrid, reprap, testing, universal

[RepRap] Extruder Kit mounted
on 09/09/2007 - like it?

I’ve just arrived few days ago at Madrid, and I’ve had the joy to received the RepRap Extruder Kit built this summer by RRRF!

The pieces are well cut, and there is some neat mechanical design (I’m new in this domain) helping to put pieces together.

The only issue has been the middle part, containing the driving screw, with one of the part just a millimeter short. It looks one-sided, if put on the wrong side, there’s a gap at the bottom of the piece near the plastic part.

Now, I’m just missing “40mm length of 3mm braided steel wire”, some “JB Weld high-temperature epoxy glue” to finish completely to assemble this extruder kit. Thanks to Fernando from Barcelona who gave me a ferreteria address to visit in Madrid to get this kind of pieces.

The next missing part is the PIC programmation, I’ve got some issue with the Olimex PG3B pogrammer and pkp (under Ubuntu), they seem unable to communicate, and the programmer board is stuck with PRG1 led once parallel port is open… Hope to solve this during the week before to leave to Berlin with everything connecting, and come back soon with all mechnaical parts!

Tags: 2007, extruder, fabbing, hack, kit, madrid, printer, reprap

RepRap-Fab@Home convergence
on 13/06/2007 - like it?

RepRap and Fab@Home are doing a great job to build an open-source solution to get a cheap fabbing solution for everybody, each one at various stage of production, each one with amazing ideas to continue the adventure?

Yesterday, it was proposed to build a bridge between the 2 communities, mainly because RepRap members need some parts to build first Darwin machines (which would be able to replicate themselves after), and Fab@Home might be able to produce these parts quickly. That’s the beginning of a faster way for everybody to generate more ideas:

• Contacting Fab@Home people to help making Darwin parts on RepRap forums
• reprap/fab@home convergence on Fab@Home forums

Have a look at Fab@Home Ideas Gallery to see what’s possible today with fabbing!

Tags: 2007, bridge, fab@home, fabbing, forums, reprap

RepRap: PowerComms card soldered and tested
on 09/06/2007 - like it?

At last, I’ve just finished testing the PowerComms card for our Darwin RepRap machine.
This is the summary of differents tasks during this process.

Getting PowerComms card

Zach has made an excellent job with pushing difficult Darwin parts on a web-shop.
It’s simple and really faster than doing your own PCB cards, but supplies are limited, so I prefer to order parts step by step to give priority to people well more advanced than me in their RepRap building.

Finding componants

I’ve never order any electronic componants on the web, and when I tried to do so on RadioSpares, it was so complicated I preferred to look for help.
After a week, I went to this little electronic shop - Le Comptoir du Languedoc - in the middle of Toulouse, and everything was ready in 10 minutes :)

Soldering componants

Zach has made a great video available on RepRap blog where he shows the steps to follow. The only step to take care of is the PCB molex bug, it has to be reverted (5V to 12V position).

Looking for a power supply

It’s time of the century when you’ll find lots of people with dead computers at home, time to use their spare parts. After SMS-spamming all of my toulousian phone directory, Kortex answered first to the announce, and the power supply was retrieved the day after.

Switching on the power supply

Most of ATX power supply you’ll find won’t have a switch on them, this switch used to be connected on the computer motherboard.
You can easily make one yourself. For this, I used an old lamp switch, and connect 2 wires between the green wire and one of the black wire on the big pin plug.

Mac USB Serial connector

I’ve been a bit lost at first with this usbserial cable, a unknown brand one. After connecting it to an ubuntu computer, it was detected as a PL-2303 chipset.
After that, you just need to install one of the PL-2303 drivers for your Mac, and restart the computer.
Just verify you’ve got this file after reboot: /dev/cu.usbserial

Testing card

• Open iTerm (or another terminal)
• sudo minicom -s
• Serial Port Setup
• A - Serial Device : /dev/cu.usbserial
• E - Bps/Par/Bits : 19200 8N1
• F - Hardware Flow Control : No
• G - Software Flow Control : No
• Save setup as dfl
• Connect the usbserial cable, place a wire between Tx and Rx (pin 13 and 14 on max232 chip), and open minicom. If you type on your keyboard, something should appear on the terminal.
• Remove the wire between Tx and Rx, verify nothing appear in your minicom terminal when you type.
• Connect the power to the PowerComms card anb switch on the power supply. If you type something in the minicom terminal, it should appear.

Getting help

RepRap wiki and forums are a big place for information, you should definitely use them in case of problem with your PowerComms card:

• Wiki page for PowerComms 1.2
• Electronics Forum

Tags: 2007, electronic, howto, powercomms, reprap

RepRap: shop online to buy parts
on 23/05/2007 - like it?

RepRap shopping website has just appear online, this is the place where we’ll be able to buy parts to begin with the RepRap project.

There are probably few people readier than me to build their 3D-printer, and only few pieces are available on the shop. The shop should be filled on regular interval, so I’ll wait another time to to order all parts to build Las Indias printer. I’ve just ordered the PowerComm board now to test the connection between the Mac and the future machine, there is probably some hacking-fun to have here :)

Until then, I’ve just installed RepRap java source yesterday on my computer, it’s lauching well from Eclipse if you follow the simple step-by-step instructions, I just wonder how difficult it’ll be to communicate with the external electronic board, I’ve never used any USB->Serial comm. tools before…

Tags: electronic, fabbing, fablab, hack, parts, printer, reprap, shop

Fabbing: 400$ 3D printer, self-replicating
on 23/04/2007 - like it?

Fabbing might be a coming revolution: far more accessible than nanotechnology, it would allow people to have a mini-industry at home to build common objects.
In coming months, my project it to build one of these 3D printers, that will be self-replating itself to spread fabbing in few places like Toulouse, Berlin or Madrid.

I’ve discovered RepRap this weekend, it seems the best options to follow, a great community around a small budget printer (400$ is their goal).
Now, let’s get it in practice, that’s a really extended project: electronic, software, mechanic, … a lot a new skills to learn!

Call me back in a month to see if something has been built yet :)

More links:

• RepRap forums
• Fab : the coming revolution on your desktop - excellent book on real-life fabbing experiences
• Fab@Home: another open-source fablab project, with possibility to order ready-to-use kits

Tags: 2007, fabbing, fablab, hack, reprap