Re: [Emc-users] Extrusion-based RP
Ed, I am not certain I am interpreting your comment The firmware doesn't apply acceleration limiting, which I regard as a major limitation on performance and dependability correctly, but if you mean that the firmware doesn't do acceleration at all (it is either full speed or not moving), that is a limitation of the Makerbot firmware. Pretty much everyone else in the RepRap world have moved on to one of two Acceleration-capable firmwares, either Triffid_Hunter's Teacup or Kliment's Sprinter. Many people have used EMC to drive their RepRaps, it certainly is possible. Personally I use EMC for my router, but I think it is a terrible idea for a Printer. I personally view the RepRap as an appliance, not a shop tool (at least that is my goal), so I strongly favor the RepRap's traditional integrated MCU based driver. The goal is to have the printer almost as easy to use as your 2d printer. We are not quite there yet, but I expect that the usability will take a big jump forward in a couple months when the next gen electronics we are working on comes out. Mike On Sat, Jun 11, 2011 at 6:25 PM, Ed Nisley ed.08.nis...@pobox.com wrote: On Sat, 2011-06-11 at 19:17 -0400, Colin K wrote: you can make very complex geometries without multiple setups or fixtures That's why I got a Thing-O-Matic: create near-net parts that don't need much finishing. This one came out perfectly: http://softsolder.com/2011/05/27/thing-o-matic-caliper-repair-perfection/ The parts have a rather hand-knitted aspect that doesn't matter for the things I build. Some close-ups: http://softsolder.com/2011/04/18/hbp-aluminum-build-plate-abs-film-win/ It's handy for cranking out one-off parts on short notice: http://softsolder.com/2011/06/11/stepper-motor-sync-wheel/ Fortunately, some parts really don't have any accuracy specs: http://softsolder.com/2011/06/02/thing-o-matic-graduation-day/ Being that sort of bear, I've tweaked / improved / rebuilt / replaced much of the printer's innards and now have something that works quite well. Other folks have had zero problems with the stock printer, so much of what I've done has been along the lines of That doesn't seem quite right, I'd rather do it this way rather than the rare Dang, it's busted! Like, for example, my experience with the stock stepper motors: http://softsolder.com/2011/05/05/thing-o-matic-mbi-stepper-motor-analysis/ It now produces good parts almost every time, although you must design parts with the printer's limitations in mind. The smallest feature will be a bit under 1 mm, you can put edges anywhere with resolution around 0.05 mm, it doesn't do steep overhangs very well at all, and the objects must fit in a more-or-less 100 mm cube. But you can print some truly odd things: http://softsolder.com/2011/05/02/what-would-barbie-pack/ The firmware doesn't apply acceleration limiting, which I regard as a major limitation on performance and dependability. I'd like to plug the motrors into EMC2 and whip up some HAL / ladder logic to control the extruder temperatures, but I've reached my tinkering limit for a while. DIY 3D printing is *definitely* not a plug-and-play experience! If you have nothing better to do for a while, my blog's Thing-O-Matic category may be amusing... -- Ed http://softsolder.com -- 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 -- 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
Re: [Emc-users] Extrusion-based RP
I have been looking at this technology myself and have a machine half built - I found a design via the reprap page which incorporates a milling head as well as an extruder so that, in theory, the parts can be 'finished' in situ after they are made or maybe even as they are being built. I have the electronics working fine and am part way through the mechanics - designing as I go to use parts I already have... However, one thing which has relegated the scheme to a lesser place in the queue of 'things which must be done' is the high cost of the ABS filament around here. I have considered redesigning to use something like nylon strimmer line but haven't decided yet as I'm not sure how useful parts made from this softer plastic would be. I did, however, see a project some time ago which seems to have since fizzled out, to recycle old plastic drinks bottles etc. into an extruded filament that could be used with these machines - it was, in fact, this idea that first sparked my interest in the technology ( being a Yorkshireman genetically engineered to be 'careful' in all things - especially parting with money!! ). Has anyone come across any similar project which is still active? Ian _ Ian W. Wright Sheffield UK -- 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
Re: [Emc-users] Extrusion-based RP
I am not a big fan of the various hybrid machines and repstraps (for people unfamiliar with the terminology, a reprap is a printer made from printer parts (REProducing RApid Prototyper), and a RepStrap is a printer made without printed parts (in theory used to make the printed parts for a real RepRap)). These printers are hard enough to get working reliably with the base model that has been built by hundreds of other people. Trying to make your own non-standard bot makes it many times more complicated. My first bot was a repstrap, and though I got it working for a while, before long I gave up on it and went with a standard Prusa... And it has still been a nightmare, but at least the problems I am having now are shared by other users who can help me debug them. Nylon line seems an ideal filament, but unfortunately it does not work well. Nylon tends to warp severely as it cools, so it is extremely difficult to get good prints. ABS has the same difficulty, but to a much lower degree, so you can get good prints with the simple addition of a heated build platform. PLA is another material choice, and one reason many people (myself included) prefer it is that it does not require a heated build platform. There are a couple of filament suppliers in the UK who can sell you suitable material. It may not seem cheap, until you compare it with the same basic material (ABS) sold for the Stratasys Dimension printers, which is approximately an order of magnitude more money (and sold in non-refillable cartridges to make sure you don't buy yours from someone other than them). As for the notion of recycling material, that is one of the holy grails of RepRapping, but it is not as easy as it sounds. http://haveblue.org/?p=841is a short blog article about how commercial filament is produced, and shows that it is not as simple as feed in the granules, get filament out the other end. If the filament diameter is not consistent going into the extruder, the finished rint won't be accurate on the other end. Unfortunately I suspect that means it will be a while before we see granule printers or recyclebots being usedd widely. On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 1:13 AM, Ian W. Wright watchma...@talktalk.netwrote: I have been looking at this technology myself and have a machine half built - I found a design via the reprap page which incorporates a milling head as well as an extruder so that, in theory, the parts can be 'finished' in situ after they are made or maybe even as they are being built. I have the electronics working fine and am part way through the mechanics - designing as I go to use parts I already have... However, one thing which has relegated the scheme to a lesser place in the queue of 'things which must be done' is the high cost of the ABS filament around here. I have considered redesigning to use something like nylon strimmer line but haven't decided yet as I'm not sure how useful parts made from this softer plastic would be. I did, however, see a project some time ago which seems to have since fizzled out, to recycle old plastic drinks bottles etc. into an extruded filament that could be used with these machines - it was, in fact, this idea that first sparked my interest in the technology ( being a Yorkshireman genetically engineered to be 'careful' in all things - especially parting with money!! ). Has anyone come across any similar project which is still active? Ian _ Ian W. Wright Sheffield UK -- 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 -- 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
Re: [Emc-users] Extrusion-based RP
On Sat, 2011-06-11 at 23:54 -0700, Mike Payson wrote: that is a limitation of the Makerbot firmware. As nearly as I can tell, ReplicatorG has become sufficiently intertwingled with the firmware that it's best to not stray too far from the beaten path, so I'll continue to use the 2.7 firmware until things settle down a bit. RepG 24 has 17 different drivers for various combinations of machines / firmware / configurations and it's not at all clear what works with what. I used to like being a beta tester, but I've gotten over it... integrated MCU based driver The problem with that is economics: right now, the hardware cost for the microcontroller(s) and motherboards has run up against the cost of an ATX system board. In fact, the MBI retail price for the Ardino / Motherboard / Extruder Controller exceeds the full-up Atom I'm using with the Sherline. There's not all that much horsepower in an 8-bit microcontroller and the firmware is bumping up against those limits, too. I expect the next generation will use an ARM or some such, at the economics will definitely favor a commodity PC and a very cheap analog interface board; you need pretty much the same stepper drivers for either one. All the firmware does is eat G-Code and spit out parts; that's exactly what EMC2 does with my Sherline mill. I think it'd be a whole lot easier and less expensive to use EMC2 for motion control than to re-invent all those functions and jam them into an Arduino. Plus, you'd get a much better user interface, bigger displays, better keyboards, and a much more stable system for free. 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. I'd like to do it just to show how it works, but ... not right now. -- Ed http://softsolder.com -- 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
Re: [Emc-users] Extrusion-based RP
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
Re: [Emc-users] Extrusion-based RP
On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 10:42 AM, Ed Nisley ed.08.nis...@pobox.com wrote: On Sat, 2011-06-11 at 23:54 -0700, Mike Payson wrote: that is a limitation of the Makerbot firmware. As nearly as I can tell, ReplicatorG has become sufficiently intertwingled with the firmware that it's best to not stray too far from the beaten path, so I'll continue to use the 2.7 firmware until things settle down a bit. RepG 24 has 17 different drivers for various combinations of machines / firmware / configurations and it's not at all clear what works with what. True, which is why I recommend avoiding Makerbot stuff all together. I used RepG and Gen3 electronics on my first bot, but I have since switched to RepSnapper Sprinter on Sanguinololu, and I get far better results. You are correct, though, from everything I hear, RepG is a bad choice to use with anything other than the Makerbot firmware. I used to like being a beta tester, but I've gotten over it... The funny thing about this comment is after your first post, I almost posetd a link to your own blog (before I realized it was your blog) pointing out some of the design flaws in the Makerbot stuff. From what I can tell, Makerbot doesn't have beta testers, their philosophy seems to be ship it, then sell them an upgrade when they complain. I am actually pretty surprised to see that you seem to be a bit of a Makerbot champion, considering how critical you are of many of their technical decisions on your blog. integrated MCU based driver The problem with that is economics: right now, the hardware cost for the microcontroller(s) and motherboards has run up against the cost of an ATX system board. In fact, the MBI retail price for the Ardino / Motherboard / Extruder Controller exceeds the full-up Atom I'm using with the Sherline. This is somewhat true if you are looking at one of the boards that uses an Arduino, and is definitely true if you use the overpriced Makerbot electronics, but I have never understood the justification for buying a $65 board just to get the $10 chip on it. I currently run Sanguinololu, which costs about $100 complete including the four stepper drivers. http://reprap.org/wiki/Sanguinololu There's not all that much horsepower in an 8-bit microcontroller and the firmware is bumping up against those limits, too. I expect the next generation will use an ARM or some such, at the economics will definitely favor a commodity PC and a very cheap analog interface board; you need pretty much the same stepper drivers for either one. I never said anything about 8-bit. :-) Like I said, watch for a big improvement in the usability when the next gen electronics ship in a couple months. The cost should still remain under $100 including stepper drivers. (BTW: ARM chips are cheaper than an 8-bit ATMega). All the firmware does is eat G-Code and spit out parts; that's exactly what EMC2 does with my Sherline mill. I think it'd be a whole lot easier and less expensive to use EMC2 for motion control than to re-invent all those functions and jam them into an Arduino. You can certainly get a MiniITX board for around $50 (Though finding one with a Parallel port is becoming more difficult). Then you have to add memory for anouther $25, a hard drive, a dedicated power supply, probably a case of some sort. All told, you are probably going to spend $200 or more on a MiniITX system before you ever think about adding the parallel interface, the stepper drivers, and the dedicated power supply. Plus, you'd get a much better user interface, bigger displays, better keyboards, and a much more stable system for free. EMC = RepG = RepSnapper. EMC is not the same as the electronics, so you cannot say Plus, you'd get a much better user interface, bigger displays, better keyboards since those same points are true of the RepRap today with the host software. I do agree that EMC is more stable, but things are rapidly improving on that front. And of course you don't really get these things for free. Most users will not want to run Ubuntu as their normal desktop OS, nor will they want to reboot into EMC every time they want to make a print, so that means you have to buy each of these items and dedicate them to the printer. Suddenly your $200 is at $300 or more, still without the stepper drivers, parallel interface and PSU. On the RepRap, these things truly are free since they use your existng PC, not a dedicated one. 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. You assume the UI model is not going to change. There are developments underway that will change the fundamental way people interact with their printers. It won't
Re: [Emc-users] Extrusion-based RP
On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 1:31 PM, Colin K cwk@gmail.com wrote: 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? I am actually working on a design that uses the printed parts, but replaces the threaded rods with aluminum extrusions. It should be considerably more rigid and allow faster print times without as much of a degradation in print quality. The only downside is cost... instead of $15 in threaded rod, it will require about $45 in al extrusions. I know that raises the price to high for many, but sometimes you cannot avoid it /sarcasm mode off. 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. You cannot print PCBs yet, but you can use the RepRap to apply resist for home etching boards. Personally, I don't see the point when you can buy 10 PCBs from China for $13 delivered, but others like it. It is a nice option to have at least. -- 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
Re: [Emc-users] Extrusion-based RP
On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 5:46 PM, Mike Payson m...@dawgdayz.com wrote: On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 1:31 PM, Colin K cwk@gmail.com wrote: 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? I am actually working on a design that uses the printed parts, but replaces the threaded rods with aluminum extrusions. It should be considerably more rigid and allow faster print times without as much of a degradation in print quality. The only downside is cost... instead of $15 in threaded rod, it will require about $45 in al extrusions. I know that raises the price to high for many, but sometimes you cannot avoid it /sarcasm mode off. Not sure where the joke begins or ends there :) But seriously, is rigidity in the frame lacking? Because I was thinking that I could replace the 5/16 threaded rod with something like 3/8 or 1/2 drill rod and just turn an inch or so of 5/16 thread on the ends to attach to the brackets. But not sure what the limiting factors are... I was figuring I'd start stock (or very close to it) and re-engineer parts as experience dictated. Though making aluminum motor mounts was pretty high too... 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. You cannot print PCBs yet, but you can use the RepRap to apply resist for home etching boards. Personally, I don't see the point when you can buy 10 PCBs from China for $13 delivered, but others like it. It is a nice option to have at least. Yes. But the problem with China is that the minimum spend is $130, while batch services add weeks to the build cycle. That said, drilling holes by hand is a huge PITA and I love soldermask on my boards. So I'm wondering whether the typical RepRap bot could handle, say, a Dremel running PCB drills. And whether you could make a soldermask stencil by extruding plastic over the pads to cover them, then spray soldermask, let dry, then knock the plastic bits off to expose the bare pads. If all that works, then keeping an etch tank around doesn't feel like too big a burden. -- 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
Re: [Emc-users] Extrusion-based RP
On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 4:29 PM, Colin K cwk@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 5:46 PM, Mike Payson m...@dawgdayz.com wrote: On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 1:31 PM, Colin K cwk@gmail.com wrote: 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? I am actually working on a design that uses the printed parts, but replaces the threaded rods with aluminum extrusions. It should be considerably more rigid and allow faster print times without as much of a degradation in print quality. The only downside is cost... instead of $15 in threaded rod, it will require about $45 in al extrusions. I know that raises the price to high for many, but sometimes you cannot avoid it /sarcasm mode off. Not sure where the joke begins or ends there :) But seriously, is rigidity in the frame lacking? Because I was thinking that I could replace the 5/16 threaded rod with something like 3/8 or 1/2 drill rod and just turn an inch or so of 5/16 thread on the ends to attach to the brackets. But not sure what the limiting factors are... I was figuring I'd start stock (or very close to it) and re-engineer parts as experience dictated. Though making aluminum motor mounts was pretty high too... The problem with the rigidity is not due to the threaded rod, but how it is all put together. It is quite rigid in the Y axis (parallel to the triangles), but is pretty flexible in the X axis. You certainly could make the current designs more rigid, but not without making them more complex at the same time. The design I am working on is generally simpler than the current designs, but it is also more rigid. That said, if you want to build one, I _strongly_ recommend you start with a standard Prusa Mendel (http://reprap.org/wiki/Prusa) and only start experimenting after you have got that up and running. The current design has it's limitations, but they are relatively minor and the current design is used by so many people in the community that it is easy to get support for it. FWIW, there are parts that are problematic, but I would say that the motor mounts are not among them. 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. You cannot print PCBs yet, but you can use the RepRap to apply resist for home etching boards. Personally, I don't see the point when you can buy 10 PCBs from China for $13 delivered, but others like it. It is a nice option to have at least. Yes. But the problem with China is that the minimum spend is $130, while batch services add weeks to the build cycle. No, you can get 10 2x2 PCBs for $13 US delivered. Not $13 each, $13 total. That is with slow shipping (typically 2-3 weeks in transit), but you can get them sent via DHL for about $30 more which only takes a day or two. Larger boards are cheap as well, for example 10 4x4 boards are $29 delivered. I have used both these suppliers and they both do good work at that price: http://iteadstudio.com/store/index.php?main_page=indexcPath=19_20 http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/fusion-pcb-service-p-835.html?cPath=185zenid=1b82e8551d60a29f6b0874a1d89574df That said, drilling holes by hand is a huge PITA and I love soldermask on my boards. So I'm wondering whether the typical RepRap bot could handle, say, a Dremel running PCB drills. And whether you could make a soldermask stencil by extruding plastic over the pads to cover them, then spray soldermask, let dry, then knock the plastic bits off to expose the bare pads. If all that works, then keeping an etch tank around doesn't feel like too big a burden. All this has been talked about in the community. Some people have mounted dremel's to their bots, it certainly is possible. Personally I prefer real boards, and have no aversion to designing small boards (I like the challenge) so I tend to just attempt to keep my designs under 2x2 and get them from China. -- 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
