ABC Australia science show story on DIY Reprap machine in Bath UK. Great introduction to 3D printing.
via The Future is 3D
Archive for December, 2011
Recently, Tassimo sent me a huge box full of new coffee flavors to try out. I’m normally a latte drinker (grande toffee nut soy or 1% milk latte) and never really acquired the taste for straight, black coffee (with or without sugar & milk).
I know some of my readers are self-proclaimed coffee snobs…I get that. I’ve made many attempts at home with too many coffee makers, espresso machines, etc to count. I like the Tassimo since it’s single serve and easy to clean/maintain. I just wish the T-discs were more environmentally friendly or at least refillable.
Anyways, after a lively chat with a coworker and our local baristas, it was suggested that I give black coffee a try. They said it would take at least a few days to get used to it and then I wouldn’t look back. I could also use a little milk or creme to ‘take the edge off’ since I’m used to sweet & milky lattes.
So I decided since I had all this new coffee to sample, might as well give it a shot.
So, since Sunday I’ve been skipping the usual $5+ latte (I even have syrup at home to make it just like at Starbucks) and give ‘regular’ coffee the good ole college try.
I’ll let you know if I’ve been converted next week.
UPDATE: Success! I’ve been converted…well, at least not loathe to try a non-latte coffee on a regular basis. I may spoil myself occasionally with one though…perhaps like my friend, Lee LeFever who likes to earn his latte during the week and save it for Fridays.
I didn’t do it strictly via Tassimo though…with some Starbucks & mystery cafeteria coffee thrown in the mix over the past week. Thanks to everyone that commented here and on Facebook…machines like the Tassimo work for me since I don’t live beside a coffee shop with a Clover machine, nor am I interested in spending the time in the morning brewing my own the conventional way. Certainly on the weekends, I’m able to spend more time but during the week, with my commute, it’s a drive-by coffee experience or none at all. The environmental impacts of this approach aren’t lost on me either (as I noted in the post above). Maybe I’ll soon be able to recycle the t-discs in my 3d printer?
Figured it was time for a build update on my Prusa Mendel 3D printer. I had some friends over this past weekend from our RepRap user group and we ended up spending the whole day tinkering with the printer.
With huge help from Brad and Eugene, we were able to get everything wired up and the motors moving.
It was pretty cool to finally get to this point and have things generally work as they were expected. The only issue I noticed was that the Z axis was inverted so it was simply a matter of flipping the connector around.
It wasn’t without some casualties though…we managed to break off 3 different PLA bushings while testing things.
If I was doing this from scratch tomorrow, I’d definitely skip the PLA bushings and go for LM8UU or brass bushings…the PLA bushings plus the epoxy is just a pain in the butt.
When testing out the Z axis motors, it became apparent right away that that original couplers weren’t going to work. The threaded rods wobbled like crazy and I may have stripped the plastic parts when assembling. Fortunately I had a set of the updated couplers printed which worked really well after a quick trip to Home Depot for some tubing.
At Brad’s suggestion, I swapped out the original belt clamps for the new ones in the 2nd Iteration of the Prusa files as it’s taller, has grooves for the belt teeth to hold it and helps the belt line up better with the motor and bearings on the Y axis.
I had printed some M3 nut thumbwheels for use elsewhere and they came in handy for leveling the build area on the aluminum thick sheet I have.
Brad also soldered the wires to the heated build plate PCB (Mk1) after my failed attempts…seems my new soldering iron tip wasn’t heating up enough but Brad was able to make it work. The PCB works great and gets toasty hot pretty quick.
The RAMPS 1.4 board almost fully wired up…just missing the extruder and thermistor connections:
Note the fancy fan with blue leds – everyone seemed to like it and wanted to get one for themselves. It’s an Antec SpotCool
We also had quite the adventure figuring out how to make a usable hot end out of the parts I had from Mixshop. The brass barrel was too short so we cut down the PEEK block and also milled out the heater block with a drill bit and some fancy dremeling by Brad.
Not a lot left to do: mount the endstops, clean up the wiring, finish building the extruder/hotend and check everything is tight and level. Hopefully this weekend I should knock those off the list and possibly even get to the point of extruding some plastic! I can already tell that I’ll have lots of calibration to do…it’s definitely not as solid yet as my MakerBot is so the fine tuning will be critical to getting some decent prints with it.
Also have to say thanks again to Brad & Eugene…they were a huge help and I’m not sure where I’d be without their assistance at this point. One of the things that’s good & bad about RepRaps is that there are an infinite number of ways to build them…having Brad & Eugene share their wisdom was awesome and really sped up the build since I didn’t have to make some key decisions because they’ve already been through the process.
UPDATE: Here’s a couple videos of the motors running. The extruder is just clamped in place (for now) for testing purposes. Yes, it’s a printed clamp :)
I’m currently running the Sprinter firmware on the RAMPS and using PronterFace (running on Mac OSX) to control everything but it also works with Replicator G:
So much quieter than my MakerBot! Although the motor speeds in the videos are pretty low…it can go MUCH faster.
UPDATE #2: Success! Last night the bot extruded it’s first plastic (PLA). The hotend worked perfect right out of the gate (once I had all the wires properly connected), it just needs to be tidied up with some kapton tape. Next step is to calibrate and actually print something:
I was a little disappointed though. I had read that PLA (which is basically cornstarch) smelled like candy when extruded in this manner…sadly it doesn’t…in fact it doesn’t smell like anything although I haven’t had it printing for hours…perhaps it will be more noticable once I start printing objects.
UPDATE #3: Printing! Sort of!
Had an issue with the Z-axis voltage being too low to move the whole extruder (now properly installed), the whole X-axis fell down and the filament was sliding off the hobbed bolt teeth (results of which are in the video above). I’ve printed a filament guide that should help with this so I hope to actually be printing something recognizable tonight.
My original plan was to use Replicator G but I’m quite liking PronterFace with SFACT installed instead of the regular Skeinforge. It’s almost like the Print-O-Matic settings options I have for my MakerBot and aside from my filament issue, the above print is done with no calibration at all! It definitely looks correct when it’s going thru the motions.
For the second year in a row, I was asked to help document the Christmas Wish Breakfast event at the Pan Pacific Hotel in Vancouver. This was the 24th year of the event and it was the biggest yet!
A highlight this year was the surprise from the Vancouver Fire Department who had a couple of their guys repel down the exterior of the hotel, with toys in tow:
The dramatic sunrise lighting and venting steam only added to the spectacle!
Sophie Louie from Global TV looks on as the firemen repel from above.
At the end of the morning, over 12 tonnes of toys had been donated! That should make for a lot of happy kids come Christmas morning!
Thanks to Rishad at the Pan Pacific Hotel for inviting me along…it was a great event to get up early for.
View all my photos from the morning on Flickr and see the full wrapup on the Pan Pacific’s blog.
This past weekend, I was able to spend some quality ‘tourist’ time in two of my favorite cities: Seattle and Vancouver.
A quick day trip to Seattle met with great weather as my girlfriend and I took in the Underground Tour of Seattle. It’s been on my list of things to do in Seattle for as long as I’ve lived on the West Coast and just never got around to it.
Meeting up in Pioneer Square in downtown Seattle, we started off with a brief bit of history at the tour’s base of operations and museum. We then headed out into the square and proceeded through the streets and into nondescript doorways and passages which lead us to stairwells that took us to the underground.
I don’t want to give away anything but the tour focuses on the parts of Seattle history that have been ‘swept under the rug’ and tells a fantastic tale of the city’s early days. It reminded me a lot of the Sins of City Tour in Vancouver…it’s amazing how many cities are built by some very colorful characters.
Our guide, Teri-Lyn was outstanding and she really made the tour come alive. It truly is a unique tour that I highly recommend checking out. I love the fact that so much is hiding behind and below those hidden stairwells and doorways throughout Pioneer Square.
Then, once back in Canada, I headed down to Vanier Park on Saturday for the Winter Wander. It was basically a $5 open house to all the attractions at Vanier Park. I’m a little ashamed to admit that I’d never been inside the Maritime Museum so it seemed like the perfect time to change that. I then proceeded to climb all over the St. Roch with my camera in hand.
After passing a little yarn bomb between venues,
we headed to the Museum of Vancouver and the Neon Vancouver | Ugly Vancouver exhibit which I had been wanting to check out.
Also couldn’t resist checking out the Smilin’ Buddha sign in the permanent exhibit side of the museum either.
A couple of great photo walk days for sure. Check out all the photos from the Seattle Underground Tour and the Winter Wander on Flickr.
