Repcrap

[Allen Brown]

Last night didn't go all that well. We started on on the wrong
foot when Kassie forgot her laptop. I had not succeeded in
getting Nomad to run the software we needed and we didn't
succeed last night. (The program had an incompatibility
with remote displaying across X-windows.) We installed
pronter on my laptop. As an aside, I don't recommend this. The
installation appears to have broken some of the other software
packages on my laptop, specifically audio mixer kmix.

But otherwise the pronter functioned on my laptop, enabling
us to drive the reprap. We (mostly Kassie) adjusted the
bed to make it flatter. And adjusted the config of pronter
to the size of our workspace. But it turns out it only
uses that size when generating instructions for a new piece.
Existing pieces still attempt to print in parts of workspace
that doesn't work. We attempted to generate a new piece,
but ended up with something that was larger than necessary
and which would have taken 8 hours to print. Attempting
to scale it down to something smaller failed.

Kassie also adjusted the motor currents. (This is using new
motor drivers over the ones we had used before, so it had
to be done again.)

For awhile the extruder gear was spinning on the motor shaft
so I dropped a little glue on it.

What I have seen our repcrap doing so far:
- It extrudes melted plastic.
- It moves around in the working space as tho it's printing.

So of the 4 items to be done last night, none of them
happened.

We won't meet next Wednesday, too close to daVinci Days. We meet
in two weeks. Hopefully Kassie will remember her laptop so we
can reburn the firmware, adjusting some parameters. Once we
are in the process of printing something perhaps I can measure
average current.

Before then I will put together something to hold the spool of
plastic filament. We actually were using enough that it would
have been helpful.

Kassie will print updated Z axis riders. These are where the
x axis stepper is mounted, It's just possible that replacing
them with the newer simpler model will reduce x axis belt friction
enough that we don't have to replace the belt. (But I think
we should anyway.)

If we are ever successful printing anything, we will need to
make some purchases. Kassie is lending her electronics to us.
We need to buy it.
http://www.panucatt.com/azteeg_X1_reprap_3d_printer_controller_p/ax13dp.htm
And buy some motor drivers
http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/1182
And some replacement belt
http://shop.polybelt.com/T5-Belt-Metric-Trapezoidal_c79.htm

We also will need to completely replace the underpowered power
supply. This fits with my plans to go to battery power. A
lead-acid solves the peak power easily. We need to select a
battery plus charger that will supply the repcrap and charge
the battery, all without danger to the battery. (To do this
calculation I just need the average power during printing.)
--
Allen Brown http://brown.armoredpenguin.com/~abrown/
No great scoundrel is ever uninteresting. --- Murray Kempton