I agree with you. When the GGG (Glorified Glue Gun) fad started a few years ago many of the maker folk looked at Linuxcnc since it had been used to control multi-axis machines for over a decade. Some of them felt that it was too complicated and expensive to control their GGG made mostly of threaded rods, nuts and low resolution PLA printed parts. They then decided to just use an Arduino and make some custom IO stepper boards to control the 3-axis Cartesian stage and glue gun/extrude and write all the software from scratch. The printers still needed a PC for the user interface, but I guess you weren't supposed to notice that.
Later they decided to move from Arduino to all-in-one 120MHhz ARM cortex M3/4 boards and write all new libraries for the new architecture. The new all-in-one boards sell for $120-200 and combine the micro with stepper drivers, GPIO and mosfet outputs. A PC is still required for the UI but they can run stand alone with the G-code stored on an SD-Card. Now TI has released a $45 BeagleBone Black with a 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 that can host the machine control and suddenly there is interest in Linuxcnc again. The UI can be directly off the GPU or over he network. The Beaglebone Black still needs some expansion IO to drive the steppers and extruder but the BOM is <$30. The GGG's only use one or two nozzles to deposit material so the process is very slow and they have difficulty with producing features under 200um. It's become popular since the original patents expired a few years ago and you can build your own printer for only a few hundred dollars. The reasons I have heard from the "maker guys" for not aspiring to other additive manufacturing technologies have been the complexity and the high costs involved for DIY. There are a few DIY projects that use SLA with DLP (B9) or laser (SLAMPS) but they have chosen slow methods mostly due to the problems with "It's the patents stupid!" or just ignorance of the technology and SLS, Inkjet and micronozzle DIY is practically non-existent. On 06/27/2013 10:29 AM, Dave wrote: > I have been randomly watching the 3D printer efforts from the sidelines > and for the most part I have not been impressed at all. > > I think you are right ... they are way, way behind. To many, it seems > that reinventing the wheel is how they learn but at the expense of > making any meaningful > progress. > > >>Loading an SD card works because it > > is pretty bullet-proof and easy to manage as is just pressing a button.<< > > I guess that is fine if you want to duplicate a design that someone else has > already worked out on a "standard" printer. > > However I would hope that some of the "maker guys" would have more ambitious > aspirations! :-) > > Dave Cole > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.net email is sponsored by Windows: Build for Windows Store. http://p.sf.net/sfu/windows-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
