On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 1:42 PM, Ed Nisley <ed.08.nis...@pobox.com> wrote:
> > The fact that the "computer" inside the printer is a PC running EMC2, > instead of a microcontroller running something else, is largely > irrelevant. From the outside, you feed either printer with G-Code from > Skeinforge it produces parts; the advantage of using EMC2 is that > developers can concentrate on improving *printing* rather then > reinventing motion control / UI wheels. > Ed, great blog. I will definitely be reading a lot of it. Seeing what you've done gives me a bit more confidence that there is a pot of decent parts at the end of the rainbow with this. Regarding motion control, I think the goal of ultimate simplicity is better served by hardware-based step generation. EMC2 is awesome and awesomely powerful, but I see it as a tool built by wizards, to be used by experts, while RepRap and its derivatives is starting to show up in the mainstream media--NY Times, Colbert Report, and other places like that. Right now the ecosystem is a ball of spaghetti because there are still a lot of basic problems to solve. It is an evolutionary process and in time winners will emerge. prices too will fall as boards start getting made in runs of thousands rather than tens. For a long time I was very skeptical of the whole "machine that makes its own parts" aspect as I thought, "why bother, aluminum extrusion is cheap?" Plus, it's not like you can print your own steppers, bearings, etc., so it seemed like a frivolous exercise. In the early days, a set of printed parts for a RepRap costed close to $1000 and the machine they made was not very good. Now the parts set price is headed towards $100 and below, and the machine seems pretty decent. So I give up, the vision seems to have worked out so far. Will they ever print their own stepper motors? Probably not in the next 10 years, but I would not be shocked if in that time we were printing PCBs and using the RR as a pick-and-place machine. Even that may be enough to significantly alter some of the dynamics of the macro-economy. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ EditLive Enterprise is the world's most technically advanced content authoring tool. Experience the power of Track Changes, Inline Image Editing and ensure content is compliant with Accessibility Checking. http://p.sf.net/sfu/ephox-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
