http://www.curiousinventor.com/store/product/200
:)
-CollinstheClown
Printable View
http://www.curiousinventor.com/store/product/200
:)
-CollinstheClown
Dan. I am was shooting for a 10" x 10" workable area. However that just can not happen with my current design. The rails for the x stage are 21" long and the x stage plexi is 10.5" long so that leaves 9.5" of travel total or 4.75" in each direction from left to right. This could be increased by lengthening the rails the x stage slides on. Technically with a few modifications to the actual base of the machine you could make have a 20x20" workable area. For my needs a 5"x5" workable are would be enough. The largest part I need to print is about 4" long.
thanks collins, but that is solder flux not actual solder paste. I may just order the smd kit from makerbot. it comes with some nice tools too.
one,
I noticed that the makerbot guys mentioned that they had not refrigerated their solder paste.... While it's true you can get away with it for a while... best practice is to keep it cool, it lasts longer that way :) 12g may not sound like allot but I'm going to say (based on the complexity of the pcb) you should be able to get 50-60 boards out of a tube... easy if there small boards you can get more out of it!!!
Nice project... It's one of my daily stops :)
CBB
Doh! For some reason I read it and thought of paste flux... :facepalm:Quote:
Originally Posted by Oneslowz28
I've never used solder paste however so I don't know where to get it. Google it maybe?
-CollinstheClown
BB. I went to the site that Makerbot gets their stock from and the manufacture advertises it as a no refrigeration paste but on the other hand they also sell the refrigerator rack to hold the tubes in the right orientation. The kit they offer is $50 and comes with nice tweezers, a LED visor magnification thing, 12 gram syringe, fine tip, plunger. The manufacture sells the paste for $13 a syringe. I think I may just go that route.
I was looking on ebay at lab hot plates and was wondering if they get hot enough to melt the solder. Makerbot, RepRap, Metalab, Make, etc all recommend a cheap $12-15 dollar hot plate from a discount store for reflowing the solder paste. There will be an update tomorrow. I had planed one for tonight but I went over to the woman's place and spent some time with her. But tomorrow you should see some threaded rod, and a Y stage coming together.
Collins- No worries. Is that a radio shack iron in your sig? If so I have an interesting article coming up about regrinding tips that fit that iron.
Project update: Still waiting on the electronics to come in stock at MakerBot, also waiting on the Nema 17 stepper motors to arrive from California. I also need to figure out some feet for the bottom of the base. They need to be adjustable so I can level the bot. I am thinking about some bolts with rubber caps as feet or some cool acrylic with leds in them... Dunno... if you have any ideas post them.
Oh forgot to update on the workable area. I did some measurements and it looks like it will turn out to be 9" x 10" or 9" x 9.5"
Just wanted to share the news that I was asked to be a contributor to the reprap builders blog. http://builders.reprap.org/
Why yes, yes it is. It's my old faithful backup now though. I now am a proud owner of a Weller WES51. I know what your talking about when it comes to grinding the tips. Thing is do we use the same method? I stick mine in a drill press. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Oneslowz28
Congrats on contributor news! :banana:
*Edit: Forgot to say, Curious Inventor has an article about using a toaster over for paste flowing.
-CollinstheClown
I use a drill press too. I use a dremel stone to get the rough shape and then a fine file to tune it and then follow up with 600, 800 and 1500 grit wet sand paper to get it perfect. My tips usually last 2-3 months of good use before I regrind or toss them in the trash. I bought a lot on ebay a few months back with 50 of the chisel point tips for the radio shack irons. I had a weller up until last year when it let out the magic smoke. I bought the dual watt radioshack deal because I needed to finish the project I was working on. It works great (do miss temp control though) for what I am doing right now. I may break down soon and buy a hakko in the near future. If this hotplate reflowing works out great then I may just move to smd design and only use through hole where it would be easier.Quote:
Originally Posted by Collinstheclown
IIRC I saw a toaster oven on hackaday that was arduino controlled and used a thermocouple for temp sensing. Might be an interesting future project.
Stepper motors came in. Was overcharged on the shipping but other than that they are what the seller said they were.
I believe the gauntlet may have been thrown down here...
http://gizmodo.com/5301370/worlds-la...ing-prototypes
:D
Thats awesome. Thanks for the link Curtis. I bet it was not built for under $400 though :p
thats cool mate.. cant wait to see more.
This is kind of a late post. I have had the stepper motors in for over a week now, but just have been too busy to take pics and post them up. I wound up ordering 4 more of these through the same guy (because they were so darn cheap) despite his rudeness. I did have to use my mothers ebay name though because he blocked me from buying anything else from him.
They are NEMA 17 1.8degree bipolor steppers from ebay for $6 each. I wound up buying a total of 7 of these. 4 will be used to drive my McWire. What makes them really cool is that they have splined shafts. This makes using them to drive the pinch wheel Thermoplast Extruder Version 2.0 easy. These were brand new old stock and they were manufactured in 1984 (the year I was born) so they are at least 25 years old. Never the less they will work great for this project and another I have in my head. For those of you who may not know what a stepper motor is here is the wiki link.
So how about some photos.
Showing the splined and smooth shafts.
Splined shaft goodness.
Splined shaft diameter
Smooth shaft diameter
HE even sends out technical drawings with them.
Got some work done last night. There will be an update tonight.
Can't wait. You better not be teasing...
I think he was... :(Quote:
Originally Posted by rendermandan
-CollinstheClown
Another cool article of the uses of one of these beauties..
http://www.popularmechanics.com/auto...59.html?page=1
Sorry guys. I accidentally deleted some of the photos for the Y stage. I need to dissamble it and take pics. will try to get it up tomorrow.
Thanks for the link OvRiDe
Um, tomorrow???? We are waiting with anticipation.Quote:
Originally Posted by Oneslowz28
I still have not gotten around to taking the pics again. I will try to do it this week.
Please! :)
-CollinstheClown
Ok, have you just given up on this or what??? You killing us...
Well right now is the beginning of sports season which is my busy season. On top of that I have some very time consuming things going on behind the scenes here at TBCS. I will get back to this project as soon as I have some time.
DVR--unless you're attending games. You need to be able to rewind and watch those big plays again anyway...Quote:
Originally Posted by Oneslowz28
Don't you guys have forum interns?Quote:
Originally Posted by Oneslowz28
I heard rendermandan died of a severe case of anticipationitis.:dead: This threads subscribers are dropping like flies! I think a few pics could be enough to save some lives...Quote:
Originally Posted by rendermandan
He's a photographer, he takes pictures of the games and edits them and stuffs.Quote:
Originally Posted by mDust
-CollinstheClown
Well damn, he'll be at all the games and still be busy afterwords with editing. It's OK then, if I shot and edited tons of photos for work, I wouldn't want to come home to shoot and edit tons more in what spare time I had either (if any?).Quote:
Originally Posted by Collinstheclown
It may be picking up soon guys. I am doing my best to juggle 25,000,000,000,000,000,000 things at once lol.
We have plenty of staff that do a wonderful job of keeping the site going. I just have a few more responsibilities and site projects going than most of the staff.:)Quote:
Originally Posted by mDust
I'm still subscribed, this thing is neat :up:
I just read through the entire thread for the second or third time. I love this project! Its so damned cool! The parts, the assembly, the idea of being able to use the finished product to create so many things... it makes me want to build one! But alas, I am poor and can't afford it. T_T
I'm definitely going to build one some day though. I have that itch not just to own one of these babies, but to build one too. Its been a long time since I've even built something, which only adds fuel to the fire. :p
You said that these things cost around or under $400 right One? Maybe I'll use my returns next year to fund one of my own. Sure would be pretty damn cool to build and to have!
Does the cost go up very much the larger you build them? I'd love to have one big enough to "print out" a custom monitor stand/enclosure out of one piece! That'd be pretty cool! or maybe print out a laptop chassis or pc chassis... hmmm.
Actually (and at the present time I am not in the loop so to speak) scaling it up is not much more expensive. Where things get complicated is the actual printing. The larger a print is the more warp-age you will see. There are also size limits as the layer of plastic will cool too much for the next layer to print on a large print. Last I heard, there are people using heat guns, hair dryers, etc to keep the print warm and make it able to print large. The problem with that is that these printers are kinda slow. Takes just over 2 hours to print a shot glass that's 2" tall. To print a corner block for a darwin reprap it takes 11 hours. To print a scaled down model of walt disneys head it took like 15 hours IIRC.
Especially if you're gonna wait for a while, it might be worth it to look into Reprap Mendel instead of Darwin. Mendel is the next generation of the Reprap project, and is supposed to give you a larger printing surface with a smaller footprint, among other things.
More info here: http://hackaday.com/2009/08/27/reprap-wedge/
Mendel isn't finalized yet, but there are already some instructions on the Reprap website.
http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/MendelUnderDevelopment
Dang, I didn't realize it took so long to print! Two hours for a shot glass.. lol that is almost painfully slow. But, as long as it works, then who cares right? :p
What's the reason for it taking so long? Does it have to do with hardware limitations, or software? Is there anyway to speed the process up?
They need to make a laser edition model, now that'd speed things up for sure! :p
The limits are actual physics limitations. They have sped things up a little with some code changes and with a better extruder but its still nowhere near fast. The Mendel will be a cheaper model with a slightly larger build surface but it still requires printed parts to build. Thus the need for a friend to print parts or for you to build a repstrap like I am building. People say "oh I will just buy the parts from someone on the site" that never happens. Only a few people ever follow the rules and print parts for 2 more machines and give them away.
What if you used stronger motors and parts? or would that still not make much of a difference? Maybe they should make a more complex model, one that utilizes multiple printers but combined into one setup? Now that'd be pretty cool if possible...
How much are they thinking the price will be for one of those wedge builds? They say it's supposed to be cheaper, but how much?
And I guess I know who to go to for parts once a certain someone gets theirs finished. :p
A darwin cost just over $1000 so the mendel will be > $1000
Its not the motors or the electronics, its the temperature the whole print needs to stay at to make sure each layer sticks to the previous one.
Check out http://reprap.org
I always get excited over things like this! Every time I see a 3D printer I start thinking of Star Trek-esque replicators. I find it amazing that this can be done in your own home. Props for the adventurous and highly detailed worklog. I'll be keeping an eye on this from now on.
Hey guys. I know this has been kinda on the back burner for a bit but things may be picking up again. I will post an update in a few days.
sweet. :smoker:
