Ready Player One!

As the title might suggest, this post isn't dedicated to an awesome book written by Ernest Cline with the same name... go read it... now!

This post it's a celebration... I've been accepted to this year Sapo Codebits, which is an great event to meet geeks, nerds and high tech ideas (*le wild idea appears).

You still can register, you have until this sunday, the 16th of september... so hurry up!!!

And the frog got unleashed.. again!

YES! The most awesome geeky/programming/techie event is about to happen!
I've participated in two editions and it was a blast! Nuclear tacos (best mapping tool for your digestive system), quiz show (put your nerd/geek knowledge to the test), talks about building bi-copters, passing by sending balloons to space, raising chickens, web scrapping... oh did I mentioned the nuclear tacos?
It's 3 days full of win, go ahead and enroll yourself!

Time lapsing...

Last week I've been a little busy, soldering two sanguinololus kits, and here it is, one gorgeous time lapse movie, filmed by my friend Pedro Moura Pinheiro

Installing Cura on Ubuntu

Yesterday Celso sent me a little video of his last print with the Ultimaker. It's a big gear of Greg's Wade reloaded - Guidler, Tilt Screws, Fishbone Gears and I was amazed with the print quality.

In the same mail he said something about Slic3r not being so great and mentioned Cura as the holy grail of slicing, so today I took a peak at it.

I'm running Ubuntu at work, so I needed to install some bits and bytes to run the Cura thing, and we can resume to one line:

sudo apt-get install libssl0.9.8 pypy python-opengl python-wxgtk2.8 python-wxversion

And that's it! Now you can run Cura. Can't say much about it, but seems straight forward  and easy to use, almost plug'n play to a ultimaker, but with a bit of work will do on other repraps.

A even more sharper knife!

They did it! Slic3r as a new version in the wild with the coolest features you can find, take look:

This is a very important update, grab it now and enjoy! I want to say thanks to the wonderful community that has been helping with feedback, early testing and nice ideas. A lot of people is involved in our open "quality assurance" process! 

New features:

• graphical interface for composing multiple objects in one single print (with tools for rotation, scaling etc.)
• new --merge switch to compose multiple object with auto-positioning from command line
• new option to randomize starting points across layers
• automatic detection of additional required perimeters for avoiding haps in domed/sloping objects (the perimeters settings means nowminimum perimeters as Slic3r could add more when needed)
• sequential printing: print a complete object, then move onto next one, with automatic collision detection
• ability to export STL files of composed plates, as well as a Splitcommand to turn multi-object files into individual objects
• we can read OBJ files now

Improvements:

• very large memory savings and speed boosts, allowing to process high-resolutions files without getting out of memory; also, the number of threads is customizable
• very improved surface quality due to new smoothing algorithms
• the GUI doesn't block while slicing and a Cancel button was added to stop the process
• hole perimeters are extruded in reverse order (from the outermost to the innermost) to get better overhangs
• a slight compensation is applied to avoid small hole shrinkage
• support material now uses honeycomb pattern (much work is still needed on support material)
• retract before changing tool for dual extrusion

Changes:

• SVG colors were inverted to better support DLP printing (next versions will carry more settings for SVG export)

Bugfixes:

• fixed some GUI memory leaks
• fixed some fatal errors
• fixed a bug causing high memory consumption when infilling every 2 or more layers
• some holes where filled
• some nearly-thin walls were discarded
• removed tiny dots/blobs that were generated sometimes
• bottom layer speed ratio wasn't taken into account when estimating layer time
• omit any G92 E0 when in relative mode

I need tools!

Last tuesday I've managed to print some parts for the Prusa Air, but this kind of empirical tuning of Violeta it's giving me something to think about. There's a science behind this stuff, this shouldn't be all about empirical experiments, so I've googled around and found many theories how you should calibrate your 3d printer and/or setup your skeinforge configurations.

Skeinforge it's uglier than hell, but it's the most used slicing tool, there's a bazillion of knobs and values you can change, but apparently, if you suffer from a light OCD, you can get some decent prints by changing just 5 settings :)

At least this is the approach you can find in ProfileMaker.

Josef Prusa made a RepRap Calculator, a valuable tool for sure.

I can't wait to start making some printers. :)

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 ;)