BIQs 1st day @ Bang Goes the Theory Live Manchester with FabLab Manchester

After a successful Top Gear challenge result yesterday morning with Midge Ace doing her wanna be the first female Stig impression, driving a typical "James May" type car against the clock we got to the Bang goes the theory live venue within our allotted time slot.. Phew..

Note to Midge when Jem announces fire in the hole or something like that and your at Bang Goes The Theory LIVE setting up day you shouldn't jump out of your skin as Midge did.. LOL.. Bang!!!!

Anyway I'm up early collecting the bits and bobs to build one or more of the Huxley seedlings at the show We will aim to build 2 Huxley Seedling 3D printers & demonstrate at least one of them them working....

Will post Pics if any come out its an even  Darker Hall than Maker Fair was in March this year.

We are not far from releaseing Beta versions of Huxley Seedling to testers then it will not be too much longer before we release a take away 3D printer that will be avalible in Pocket money staged sections.or in full kit We will be offering fully built machines as well depending on demand.

Sunday morning 5am update
Trying to build two 3D printer when you are surounded by visitors to the show is almost imposible..  I will post pictures tomorow /  tonight of how far I got with building two printers.. the basic frames were finished yesterday thats 4 A frames with fronts and back frame seperators on each printer finished. 

The only takeaway 3D printer Kit so far...

 Still here just a tiny bit bizzy its a case of Slowly Slowly Catchy Monkey, presenting the only takeaway 3D printer test packed in its pizza box!



The only takeaway 3D printer test packed in its pizza box!
Includes printer frame, reel holder, extruder, nuts, bolts and bars with a sprinkling of fix it blocks!



Cut with a Solar powered Laser Cutter... To Be Continued......

Huxley Seedling is at MakerFaire UK 2011

 After a long while without  a post here is a Short post from our hotel room in Newcastle on Tyne..

A 3.5 hour drive up from Cheshire yesterday, we set up the stand this morning pictures to follow. We are on stand 52 if your passing this way..;-) tomorrow. I've not had much of a look around the show yet Midge had a good look today & took a few pics..
This new laptop doesn't have a memory stick reader so cant up load them from here we will try tomorrow from the show if we get a quite spell ~ it was busy to day with about 2,800 visitors we were told. unofficially
 There was a few comments from visitors at the show about the number of different 3D printers.
So far from Midges walk around she spotted there were 3 Makerbots, 1 RapMan, 1 Mendel, 1 Lasercut Mendel, 2 E-maker Huxley's our 4 of our Huxley seedlings two of them bare frames two with electronics (still waiting for our Huxley seedling boards) so one machine with Gen3 electronics 1 Machine with an allinone CNC printer port driven stepper controller running from EMC2 Linux. This was built for Midge to play with engraving, paper embossing paper cutting  and PCB cutting  Midge also wants to extrude Acrylic paint and Acrylic Media for crafting her art orientated applications.

We also have a early stage Harvester 3D scanner build that is a little behind schedule now...  we suffered burst pipes again this year this time it was Midges house so that has delayed us a little.

Pictures to go here........Compared to thos on the Photo stream our pics were not that good ;-(

Any way here is one taken and shared and uploaded to Nottinghack's photostream (700)

Bodge & Midge Visit Fab Lab Manchester.

Its time to write a few things up and share with you the wonders of  FabLab Manchester





As you know I have been making drawings of both of my Re-Strap renditions so that others can build their own Repstrap that works without having to re-invent the wheel to solve the problem of not having printed parts to start with. I have been taking at least a week to make all the parts from my drawings it gets tedious you end up with huge collections of sometimes useless parts. I have piles of failed ideas filling boxes in the workshop.




Above Right MTM multifab has a similar design principal to http://blog.ultimaker.com/ a small box sliding on two cross hair bars.

So I thought I would save some time if I could make use of the equipment at FabLab Manchester.

The Laser cutter in particular which is the most popular tool in FabLab so there seems to always be a Que for it.



I have now used the  Dimension 1200es Series 3D Printer It has produced an interesting result as seen in the pictures.



The most interesting stuff is the support material that is said to be ABS + additive. Its feels hard snaps like wafer biscuit its a dull brown in colour it behaves like what I imagine extruded sugar would be like brittle and crunchy turning to dust.t usually is dissolved in an heated bath of water soluble solvent taking several hours to be dissolved.

Dimension 1200 Print options for Wades extruder body

Low density	30.45^3 cm
High density	39.00^3 cm
Solid	44.37^3 cm
Support material
Basic	11.37^3 cm
Sparse	11.66^3 cm
Smart	10.23^3 cm

I Opted for the lowest density with sparse support material as you pay £0.33 per cubic cm for both materials plus VAT so the extruder body and Clamp was £18.05 ~ Print time on the 1200es was 4 hours.

The amount of support material used by the Dimension is huge Things printed by RepRap without any form of support material need to have support material in the Dimension. Having seen the results of RepRaps and a Dimension 1200 I think Adrian's RepRap project  has really cracked the nut particularly as RepRap results are constantly getting better.


Any way I printed Wades Extruder body and clamp un-fortuantly the resultant print has an extra part to it where there should be a hole there is a thin membrain of ABS. This is not visable in any applictions I use to view STL files. Im sure that when I loaded the STL file before it was printed the hole was a hole all the way through.



You can see I am going to have to drill out the extra material that is a 1mm thick membrane to make use of the part..

I have also used the Laser cutter its a neat tool I have save a week of sawing chiseling and drilling for each revision of my drawings I have made. As promised to Sebastian Ballard I will not blog the making of Huxley seedling here until I have put it in the ReprapWIKI.

Picture of Repstrap Mendel parts / Drawings Laser cut based on my Mendel 2009 build.



Midge took a few pics of Fab Lab so here they are.




I also introduced some of the other users to REPRAP and HydraRaptor ending up having to explain what a NOP was.

Strange until that point I had not given much thought to it.. as we all know  NopHead is far from being a Nophead.
I also discovered that its really only us old hand coding or in your head assemblers form the era of and Nascoms / 8080s - Z80s that even know what a NOP is.

NOP in assembler is the instruction or mnemonic for No Operation Performed

Been busy.

Dawing and re-Drawing my new Repstrap Huxley and Mendel designs so I'v not had time for taking pictures Blogging, FaceBook, Linked-in or Twitter.

Next week I think I should have some pics. If all goes well this week I will be blogging some pictures of my results next week. I will be posting the drawings first on the reprap Wiki.

. 

New Hot End ~ Peak insulator melts~ as Thermocouple fell off

The idea was to have a new changeable extruder tip to allow for extruder die swell tests and a swappable 0.3 mm tip.. but alas changing / fixing some thing that's not broke or applying instant design usually fails.

From Blogger Pictures

So my insulator that has extruded by now over a 1lb of ABS I need to remake it was all going so well ;-(.


Lesson learnt do not rely on Kapton tape to hold a thermocouple onto a heater block.


At least I know the heater block works OK.. showing heater bloc and 2 copper 0.6 welding tips and a brass copy with 0.3mm hole.

Aside from that my Evolution saw ate itself earlier today not a good day..





The part on the Right is all that remains of the blade guide the part on the left is part of the blade safety cover.



It looks like the blade guide a two prong fork thing came lose it was shredded by the blade then  flew around blade cover cracking it and the blade safety cover open and the motor mount is also split open. Needles to say it did fail safely. Not happy that it failed though.

Before and After fixing Y axis wobble

From Blogger Pictures

After chasing my tail the problem of the Y axis instability is solved.

Watching the Y axis I was convinced that I was losing position on the Y axis due to belt slipping jumping on the drive gears..

1/. So I rebuilt the Y stage and the X stage using linear bearings ... The gain was a significant noise reduction Y position wobble still there strange...

2/. Replace the Y belt for 10mm 5mm pitch wire strengthen belt replacing the old 4mm wide xml rubber belt..

No change...


3/ Adjusting the current drive on the Y axis stepper controller threw up a strange effect it was a little like tuneing the stage a small band on the current adjusting resistor rendered zero Y positional wobble.
Problem solved sort of... spent the night thinking about how this could be..

4/. Looked at my firmware again then at the  "Tonkip FiveD" code noticed that disable stepper after a move had been commented out. Thought about it a little remembering stepper tests and how the steppers jerked as the start up.
Modified my code by removing disable steppers code. As I have used all my Sanguino pins Ive lost the power on off pin. So in the time out code that usually switches the power off I have now got disable steppers code. I also adjusted the M80 instruction to disable stepper.

So after a print I now send an M80 

Y axis positional wobble  was caused by the stepper motor jerking as it was restarting for each move also explaining the ability to tune the effect out by adjusting the current. The belt movement is now not jerking but as its kept taught.

The side effect again is the whole thing is quieter than my laser and ink jet printers where as originally you could hear it in the house 14 meters away from the fully insulated  home office.

Im still struggling slightly with making rafts tht stay down on the perspex
Its ok for things like a Nopheads belt drive gear and Eriks standing-mini-mendel-vertex with an 8mm border. However if printing some thing flat I still get warping if any one could sugest the best thicknes of the first layer of the raft and the height of the next two layers to prevent warping that would be great start. Im using repsapper.

Im still trying to get a heated bed to work

Quick Problem update

Problem after problem gradually solved one after another..

First problem was making the raft stick to Perspex eventually solved by fine tuning the first layer of the raft.

It must be slightly squashed but not so squashed that the extruder cant extrude.. and the filament kinks into a coil filling the space between the drive and the insulator.

Next problem make sure you have the latest version of Repsnapper not the version pointed to by the RepRap WIKI the latest version is in the source in a directory called release. Though I'm not sure exactly what the difference is between the two windows version in the source other than they have slightly different UI interfaces.

Next I found a bug in raft creation on Repsnapper its only shows if acceleration is not turned on. the second layer of raft creates G-code that has the E value missing for the middle section of the second layer the first 4 passes are OK then the middle section E values are missed out then the last 4 passes of the layer are OK.

G1 X102.59 Y94.0193 E82.5899 F2300
G1 X20 Y92.0193 E82.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 Y90.0193 E82.5899 F2300
G1 X20 Y88.0193 E82.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 Y86.0193 E82.5899 F2300
G1 X20 Y84.0193 E82.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 Y82.0193 E82.5899 F2300
G1 X20 Y80.0193 E82.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 Y78.0193 F2300
G1 X20 Y76.0193 F2300
G1 X102.59 Y74.0193 F2300
G1 X20 Y72.0193 F2300
G1 X102.59 Y70.0193 F2300
G1 X20 Y68.0193 F2300
G1 X102.59 Y66.0193 F2300
G1 X20 Y64.0193 F2300
G1 X102.59 Y62.0193 F2300
G1 X20 Y60.0193 F2300
G1 X102.59 Y58.0193 F2300
G1 X20 Y56.0193 F2300
G1 X102.59 Y54.0193 F2300
G1 X20 Y52.0193 F2300
G1 X102.59 Y50.0193 F2300
G1 X20 Y48.0193 F2300
G1 X102.59 Y46.0193 F2300
G1 X20 Y44.0193 F2300
G1 X102.59 Y42.0193 F2300
G1 X20 Y40.0193 F2300
G1 X102.59 Y38.0193 F2300
G1 X20 Y36.0193 F2300
G1 X102.59 Y34.0193 E82.5899 F2300
G1 X20 Y32.0193 E82.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 Y30.0193 E82.5899 F2300
G1 X20 Y28.0193 E82.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 Y26.0193 E82.5899 F2300
G1 X20 Y24.0193 E82.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 Y22.0193 E82.5899 F2300
G1 X20 Y20.0193 E82.5899 F2300
G1 F70 ;Move Z
G1 Z3.3 F70 ;Move Z

Switch acceleration on and its all fixed.. strange bug..
However the accelerated G-code also seems to have a very high number of feed rate setting G codes added that are identical.

G1 F2300
G1 X23 Y94.0193 E3 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y94.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y92.0193 F2300
G1 X23 Y92.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X20 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X23 Y90.0193 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y90.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y88.0193 F2300
G1 X23 Y88.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X20 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X23 Y86.0193 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y86.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y84.0193 F2300
G1 X23 Y84.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X20 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X23 Y82.0193 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y82.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y80.0193 F2300
G1 X23 Y80.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X20 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X23 Y78.0193 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y78.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y76.0193 F2300
G1 X23 Y76.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X20 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X23 Y74.0193 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y74.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y72.0193 F2300
G1 X23 Y72.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X20 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X23 Y70.0193 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y70.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y68.0193 F2300
G1 X23 Y68.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X20 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X23 Y66.0193 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y66.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y64.0193 F2300
G1 X23 Y64.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X20 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X23 Y62.0193 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y62.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y60.0193 F2300
G1 X23 Y60.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X20 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X23 Y58.0193 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y58.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y56.0193 F2300
G1 X23 Y56.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X20 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X23 Y54.0193 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y54.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y52.0193 F2300
G1 X23 Y52.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X20 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X23 Y50.0193 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y50.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y48.0193 F2300
G1 X23 Y48.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X20 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X23 Y46.0193 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y46.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y44.0193 F2300
G1 X23 Y44.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X20 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X23 Y42.0193 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y42.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y40.0193 F2300
G1 X23 Y40.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X20 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X23 Y38.0193 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y38.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y36.0193 F2300
G1 X23 Y36.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X20 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X23 Y34.0193 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y34.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y32.0193 F2300
G1 X23 Y32.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X20 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X23 Y30.0193 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y30.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y28.0193 F2300
G1 X23 Y28.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X20 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X23 Y26.0193 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y26.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y24.0193 F2300
G1 X23 Y24.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X20 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X23 Y22.0193 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y22.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X102.59 E3 F2300
G1 F2300
G1 X99.5899 Y20.0193 F2300
G1 X23 Y20.0193 E76.5899 F2300
G1 X20 E3 F2300
G1 F70 ;Move Z
G1 Z3.3 F70 ;Move Z

As my Rep strap Mendel was so loud I rebuilt all axis removing the skate bearings and using some linear bearings its much quieter now (i.e you cant hear it outside the Home Office)

The next problem is Y belt jump/bounce I'm not sure if this is a common problem as I haven't seen it mentioned any where so It must be some thing peculiar to my set up.

I'm still using the original 80 thou" pitch belt bought from the RRRF ages ago. or 2.032mm pitch belt cut down to 4mm wide.

looking at a scanner that has a similar length of movement with a similar un-wired belt, I will try to simplify the rep strap Mendel drive to be more like the scanner drive belt system.

I do hope some one finds a neat way to re-cycle ABS waste as I have a growing collection building in a cardboard box now.

I'm very pleased with the performance of  my Mk5.5 Worm drive extruder that uses only 40mm of 16mm peek insulator with a 4.2mm hole through it and a 0.6mm welding tip with nichrome wire wraped around it. with a 4.2mm hole through it details and drawing I will post later.

Beginners luck.... ran out Warping warping nothing but warping...

Even though I had the Potbelly well stoked up and the temperature in the home office T shirt weather.

I fixed every thing that showed as a problem in the first print Tensioner for Y belt, filament reel etc.

Reel made from hardboard with £1 shop paint brush stand as the core covered in thick card 2 skate bearings 8mm threaded rod and two  22mm pipe clips drew around garden sieve to get sides. Tensioner two fix-it plastic blocks 2 springs 2 long 4mm screws 2 big washers 4 small washers 1 shorter 4mm screws 5 4mm nuts. 1 small bearing with 4mm hole.

I tried desperate measures to stop warping bigger rafts warming the print bed plate up on the Potbelly stove  before printing. So alas I must now find a way of using uninsulated Ni-chrome to heat the bed the other heated beds I made are all for Huxley / Mini Mendel so are too small.



As recomended by Kulitorum this is a RepRap Mendel Fan Mount from Thingyverse

The only explanation I can think of for the reasonable print of the Two spoons print is it has such a large overhang  i.e. it almost floats over the raft. That was why it did not warp.. just pure luck I saw it on the pipe when I was looking for my next test thing to try..

Next jobs Heated bed from what I have to hand without changing the structure of the existing almost working printer. Modifying the code to include a heated bed or using  a Pid controller with separate PSU... making a case to Suround the printer in case Midge opens the door to the cold out side. to prevent this I have waited till she is busy painting in the conservatory.

Its been a good day for firsts.

Its been a good day for firsts.
The first fire in the Pot belly stove yea!!! and now Ta Da the first Repstrap Mendel print  using Bodgeits Extruder Mk5 Bodgeits modified version of Tonkip's 5D Gcode Interpreter firmware using Rep Snapper Host Software.

First here is a pic of the calibration prints or the eleven failed prints....



Failed due to things like extruder feed rate guesstimate was wrong, Z was too close to print, filament feed got stuck, X axis belt was slipping.
The only adjustment I need to do now is tighten the Y axis belt as it has a little slack that shows up when you watch the belt.

Then I can start to fine tune the speed and parameters in Rep-snapper.

So here is the clip of Rep Strap Mendel having a go at printing. 2 teaspoons // tablespoons at once!




Extruder details are as follows.

The extruder has an insulator of 16mm diameter 40mm long Peek with a 4.2mm hole through it with 6mm long 6mm thread hole to take a 6mm diameter 25mm long 0.6mm Welding tip.
The Welding tip is drilled out to 3.2mm for 24.2mm of its depth, leaving a 0.8mm long 0.6mm diameter hole to extrude thru.

6.8 ohms of Nichrome is wound onto the 25mm welding tip with a thermcouple and Kapton tape. Temprature measured using AD595A.

Plastic used ABS temprature was set to 255C