I've done it!

I've finally done it! These are the first 3 pieces for the Prusa Air. Last saturday I went to AltLab to print them, but as usual, Violeta (the resident cupcake... the 3D printer) said - "No you don't!", and after a couple of hours discussing with her, I went home :p

Mental note: If you need give a name to a machine, skip the chapter "Women", for some kind of strange reason, the machine catch their... let's call it "moods".

So, after licking my bruises, I've stumbled on Celso Martinho time lapse documenting his Ultimaker build, and after that he tweeted about some extruder problems, very similar Violeta. We've exchanged some tweets about 3D printing and he has found a post in the Ultimaker forum, suggesting to turn off the Temperature setting in Skeinforge.

This tuesday I went back to Violeta and tried to talk to "her" without mentioning "temperature", and it worked! I was able to print the support for the Y-axis motor and two clamps... and then it was getting late and I had another lady to go to ;)

Not like beef jerky, but still smoked

Last monday I've picked up from my university a package. It was filled wih goodies, 4 Nema17 stepper motors, 4 opto-endstops and a sanguinololu pcb with all the components... to solder on it!

So, on the next day I went to work and took the whole swag with me, hoping on having time to soldering everything while at work, and all went right, all morning surrounded by nasty fumes, but by lunch time I've already uploaded the Marlin firmware onto my freshly assembled sanguinololu and was able to connect it with ReplicatorG and PrintRun :)

But it was only lunch time, and when I got back at home, there was another surprise, my 12 "10€ worth ebay bought linear bearings" had arrived, oh happy happy joy (insert happy dance here).

Almost lost my bearings!

It has been a while from my last post, but let's get back to work!

Bearings... I went bearing shopping, at least get some ratings, and i was shocked!!!

I've asked on brick and mortar shops, and the prices... they asked me 4,50€ plus VAT for 1... yep, one 608 bearing!! 608zz are the same bearings you can find in skateboards, and not long ago I've built some longboards and there are top notch bearings in ceramic with ultra rolling power for 60€.... 8 of them!!!

And the cherry on top of the cake, linear bearings, lm8uu ones, 17€+VAT, also for one bearing... I'll be needing at least 11 of those!!!!

Well, I was getting disappointed, fired up a browser, http://www.ebay.co.uk, lm8uu, and bought 12 bearings for 10€...

One after another

Yep, one cube... err... not really a cube, after another. Trial and error it's a scientific approach, but AltLab cupcake can get on your nerves.

First of all, Violeta it's a kind of cupcake prototype with many and many hours of printing, so she can be a kind of moody and the standard setups on ReplicatorG doesn't apply to her, wich it's a kind of a bummer :p

Second, João Neves, Basílio and me, well... how should I put this, we are rookies on 3D printing matters, but very eager to take the bull by his horns :D

Now, yesterday at AltLab, we've started with a new ABS spool, a spool with some bad reviews from AltLab experts, they never got an usable print from it, so,with our natural stupidity we've engaged in empirical effort to calibrate the damn thing.

As you can see, after 4 hours of trials and errors we've give up and wen home... with a promise, let's investigate what is the correct way to calibrate it :)

Just imagine....

Someone close to you needs an organ transplant and a compatible donor it's getting hard to find. Unfortunaly this is a very recurrent picture, but science it's getting there! There's a San Diego company, Organovo, is using 3D printing technology to print human skeletal muscle, and use it as graft.

Can you imagine printing a whole organ?

(via 3D Printing is the Future)

So full of win!

So it was, yesterday AltLab meetup was full of win.
It started with someone showing off his project, Laser Tag... no, no laserish paintballish kind of laser tag, it was more grafitti tagging, but using a laser pointer, a video projector, a camera and a kind off nifty software :)
Everyone played with it, and headed back inside, it was a kind of chilly in the back alley.

Next, João Neves and me went on a date with Violeta... It was a kind of threesome, but Violeta is AltLab Cupcake 3D printer!

I tried printing a part from a Wallace, bat as usual, Violeta didn't finished the print, and I was using my computer, so the plot thickens! :(

The problem is in the printer, now we're certain of this! We scavanged AltLab junk... err... the nice and very organized wharehouse for ATX PSU, and tried a few, but that didn't, so we plugged the original one back, and it worked! Violeta is printing again, at least two parts for Franky (a mini-mendel) withou a hitch, the future will tell us.

And the pièce de résistance was the first test of a stereolithography printer... "waht?!!?" it's a 3D printer using photo sensible resin as a medium, very impressive piece of technology.

 They made some exposure tests to understand how long they need to expose the resin for a perfect cure, it's around 15 seconds and they-re ready for the next layer :)

A full of win day!

Slice it and Dice it... Part 2!

Not everyone has a 200mm plate to print parts, not even me.... hell, I haven't got a printer... yet, but that's another story.
Someone asked for 100mm batches on my RepRap Wallace (Nema 17 and M8 rods edition), so I've fired up Blender and tried to make the best out of it.