Dan's Maddening Descent into Hobby Electronics

3D Printer Printing

Fri, 01 May 2015 15:19:00 +0000

3D Printer

The printer is printing! I was able to couple the Z axis with the 1/4” tubing and zip ties. I have printed a couple 25mm cubes, a couple of whistles and a bracket for the fan that I designed in OpenSCAD! I am now printing new couplers as the 1/4” tubing slips on higher accelerations.

Pictures:

Videos:

3D Printer Extruder

Fri, 13 Mar 2015 14:51:00 +0000

3D Printer Extruder

Well the extruder was a lesson in frustration and just how much my time is worth. My old son and I worked on a wooden version for hours and only were capable to get it to work marginally. It wouldn’t constantly extrude and often times would jam. I was at my wits end with the failures until the final straw, yanking the filament out with pliers because it was just that suck. I managed to crack the piece of wood I was using and at this point I looked up my alternatives. I decided to have an extruder printed. I had plenty of screws and bolts to make that work. So I chose the following:

Greg’s Wade reloaded

I used 3DHubs to find a location near me and submit the job. I managed to get find a hub just a couple of miles away and the operator was excellent. I can’t believe the level of service he provided. That night, about 1:30am he provided me an update that he had finished my print! He had the knowhow to correct the infil settings and product strong and exact parts. I picked it up the next day and it fit together wonderfully well! Thanks Ryan, this was awesome. His hub is located here: Global Tech Now. I highly recommend his services.

With all great news comes a problem, just the universe balancing things out. While testing the exturder, sitting on my workbench, I managed to drop it and break a wire to the thermistor. Now I have 2 on order, just in case I do this again.

Next step, figuring out the Z axis end stop and getting this ugly beast of a repstrap to print. Once calibrated my first print will be replacement parts for the extruder. This one piece has been a major hold up in the build and I don’t want to be here again. However, if it fails for some reason, I can go back to Ryan and get a replacement made quickly.

3D Printer X axis

Thu, 05 Mar 2015 12:22:00 +0000

3D Printer X Axis

The X axis is now connected and working. Using the steps per millimeter setting for the Y axis allowed me to make a movement of 100mm exactly. This was exciting that I didn’t have to sit and recalibrate it multiple times.

Next up is the extruder. I have some ideas, it includes a lot of hot melt glue and may not work, but I’ll give it a shot. It this all work I’ll begin on the next steps, a Mendel90 for the final form of this printer.

3D Printer Z axis

Wed, 25 Feb 2015 08:56:00 +0000

3D Printer Z Axis

This weekend, with the help of my oldest son, I was able to get the Z axis built and implemented. This was actually much easier than originally thought. I have secured the top of the Z axis with some wood with properly sized holes drilled into it, levelled the smooth rods and then screwed and glued the top supports.

My next step is the X axis, though I think this will be simple as well. The next part that will be tough is the extruder. I am considering ordering an extruder rather than cobbling one together, but that will take some challenge out of this design as well. I’ll have another update next week!

3D Printer Y axis

Tue, 17 Feb 2015 10:51:00 +0000

3D Printer Y Axis

This weekend, after receiving the hot end from my lovely wife as a valentine’s day gift, I dove back into working on the 3D printer. I have been buying parts for months, picking up lumber, smooth and threaded rods and basic screws, nuts and bolts. After sitting down and deciding to just put things together, mistakes were made. My initial thoughts had a design with a 9”x9” bed, however I forgot to take into account the location of the bed mounting blocks and now I am stuck with only 5.5 inches of travel in the Y direction! Lesson learned, measure five times, cut once!

So, after that minor disappointment, I tried to accurately measure and drill holes in the 2x4s with my drill press. This failed, I was off about 1/8” in the end, enough to bind the platform and keep it from traveling all the way. I explained this to my wife and she said I should pin the pieces together and drill them as a single piece, this was brilliant! I ended up clamping the ends and drilling through both boards at once, now I have parallel bars. I used hot glue to attach the nylon spacers, which I use as bearings, to the moving platform and then greased the bars with some white lithium.

I attached the stepper using a simple metal L bracket. On the other side is a slidding glass door bearing. Braided nylon fishing line was strung between both of them and wound around a wooden spool I fitted on the stepper motor shaft. I attached the electronics and I was able to get motion out of the platform! After measuring repeated moves and getting different answers I determined that the spool I created was not centered. This is a problem as an elliptical path will cause inaccuracy as movements can’t be reliably repeated. I asked for ideas on the #reprap channel on the Freenode IRC and received the following suggestion, chuck the spool on the drill press and use sand paper to make it properly round. I will give this a try. My next step is the Z axis!

3D Printer Ideas

Wed, 11 Feb 2015 08:30:00 +0000

3D Printer Ideas

In order to build a 3D printer, such as the Prusa i3, it is common to need printed parts. In order to get around this you can start with a design that uses common parts from a home improvement store. Such builds have been labeled RepStrap, a mash up of Reprap and bootstrap. I am currently looking into designing my own RepStrap using as many parts from local home improvement stores as possible. Early last year I start to purchase some parts that I can’t find at Home Depot, mainly the stepper motors and the controller. I have lumber to build the frame, rods and nylon bushings (simple rings) for the sliding mechanisms and threaded rod to move the Z axis. I still need the following:

Belts and pulleys to attach the carriages to the motors
A hot end to melt the filament
Filament
An extruder

I am going to use the following ideas for some of these parts:

Belts and Pulleys

Nylon braided fishing wire

A more recent option I have seen is to use nylon braided fishing line of high strength to drive the axis.

Pros

Easily obtained at local sporting good stores
Very strong and has been shown to keep tension

Cons

Still need a spool to attach to the motors to give the line enough travel to move the plaform back and forth.

Threaded Rod

Threaded rod can be used to drive all axis. It is cheap and easy to work with.

Pros

Cost effective
Readily available
Easy to mate to motors using clear plastic aquarium tubing

Cons

Considerably slows print speeds

Hot End

This will need to be purchased. I talked with the designer of the J-head on the #reprap channel on Freenode and will be purchasing from his shop.

Filament

So many choices and too far away to even contemplate it so far.

Extruder

I could make a hobbed bolt and run a direct drive extruder, but at this point I believe it may be far easier to buy a premade extruder.

The Non-Update Update

Wed, 11 Feb 2015 07:31:00 +0000

This is a simple post to show the git hook after a push to the remote origin repo.

3D printer

Fri, 16 Jan 2015 23:17:00 +0000

###3D Printer I have been collecting parts for a 3D printer wherever I can find them (junk printers, scrap lumber). I have collected steppers, smooth rods, threaded rods and some wood. So now my next steps are to design the chassis and drive mechanisms. I had this drawn on a sheet of paper but have misplaced that paper. I am going to look at using a high strength fishing line to drive the X and Y axis.

Going foward:

Create an accurate drawing with measurements
Acquire components to move X and Y axis
Test electronics

Items to acquire:

Hotend (J-Head most likely)
High tensile strength nylon fishing line

When I am finished I hope to end up with something that looks similar to this:

Welcome to overambitio.us!

Fri, 16 Jan 2015 14:16:00 +0000

Welcome to the overambitio.us website. I am instrumenting this site with jekyll CMS-less framework. This system creates static web pages to keep the site fast and secure!