OpenPnP at Maker Faire

[Jason von Nieda]

Hey all, as Ami and others have mentioned, I failed to report back on Maker Faire. I've been pretty sick since the Faire so I've been spending most of my non-work time sleeping :) But, it's high time for a report, so here one is!

When I set the goal of going to Maker Faire back in January, I expected to get a lot further with the hardware than I eventually did. Unfortunately, as it often does, life gets in the way. I had very little time to build hardware so I ended up doing almost all the work in the last few weeks leading up to Maker Faire. I also ran into some major issues with my design and ended up abandoning big parts of it!

So, here is the 3D model of what I ended up taking to the Faire:

X/Y table is linear guides, with Y being the bottom and X being the top. Y is supported and X and unsupported on one side. I found this worked really great, only giving 0.010" of drop on the far side and it turned out that was due to frame flexing.

The entire head was pneumatic, based on the suggestions and help from Aaron, from this list. Aaron was a HUGE help leading up to the show, spending many hours on the phone with me helping get things ready and I owe him a giant thank you!

The head had 3 pneumatic cylinders. 2 were for vacuum nozzles and 1 was for a feeder advance pin. I made the nozzle adapters and feeder advance pin out of brass. The nozzle adapters accepted Fuji CP-6 nozzles as I have discussed here before. Vacuum is applied to a hole in the side of the tube via a tight fitting HDPE ring and the tube is drilled to allow the vacuum to get to the nozzle. I decided with only a week to go to abandon the C axis for the demo as I simply didn't have time to get it going. 

The lead up to Maker Faire was pretty crazy. I was actually still making aluminum parts one hour before we packed up the truck and headed to San Francisco. This is how my workspace looked before we left.

I live in Seattle, and San Francisco is supposed to be about a 13 hour drive from here. We loaded up the truck around 7pm on Thursday and left home at about 8pm. We finally arrived at Maker Faire around 1:30pm the next day, Friday, after having driven all night.

Once we arrived, we got the booth all setup and ready to go:

And then we went off to finally get some sleep. We, by the way, is me and my wife Courtney who was a massive help during the entire process. I could not have done this without her help!

The next day, we arrived bright and early and people started stopping by the booth! Te response to OpenPnP was overwhelming. Lots and lots of people wanted to know how to get one and there was a definite and clear need for this system in the hobby market. I told people that I was hoping to be selling hardware kits this Fall. That's still the plan.

Unfortunately, before leaving Seattle I only had time to test a few placements before I had to pack it up all up and go. It worked well at home but once I got to Maker Faire the noise from the solenoids was resetting my laptop and TinyG, so I actually ended up placing NO PARTS at Maker Faire. It didn't matter though. I turned off the pneumatics and just ran the machine through it's paces without actually placing. I explained the issues to people and everyone was still very excited to see the machine moving, software working and camera running.

Here are some pics showing how things looked once people started visiting the booth:

Finally, after two days of giving out almost 500 business cards, talking to thousands of people, losing my voice, getting it back and being utterly exhausted we packed the whole thing back up, headed back to the hotel to get some sleep and started the drive back in the morning.

It took me a full week just to find the energy to get my workspace set back up:

But now I am back to it and working on the next revision of the hardware design. The next version will not use pneumatic cylinders and instead will use a stepper to actuate two vacuum nozzles in Z, a combined C with a stepper and a push solenoid based feeder advance pin. Still deciding on a camera.

I'm shooting to finish up the next revision of the hardware this month, see where things stand and keep working towards a kit. I'll be sticking with linear guides and lead screws, although I may go down to a 1/2" lead screw to get a little more resolution out of the machine. I'll be going up from NEMA 17 to NEMA 23 motors to keep up with the torque requirements.

So that was Maker Faire! It was a lot of fun, but incredibly exhausting. This is the first time I have exhibited a project of my own at a show like this and I learned a lot about the process. Primarily, have your demo DONE a week before you have to leave :)

Jason

[Karl Lew]

Sweet! I am sorry I could not go to the fair and shake your hand, especially after your mini cannonball run to the bay area. Love the openpnp banner!

Also thanks for sharing the 3d design. Fascinating how your base is flat and stable like FirePicks. You went with butt joints where I went with lap joints for Makerslide/stepper-pulley belt alignment. The cantilevered head is really cool--it makes my Lego guy want to stand on the end like a travelling diving board. You have totally eliminated the parallel gantry drive belt.

[Ami]

Hi Jason, thanks for the news and photos.

(That poor guy on the third photo is having difficulty reading the panel "Danger... Do not touch!", you should write better than that!)
And I like the logo too.

[Vlad O]

Wonderful and simple enough design !   Great Job !
Looking forward to see more progress in development.
Best,
Vlad