April 12, 2012 by Hannah
Michel Pollet’s amazing Sappho’s Head print
At least three of our 20 first round TVRRUG printers are producing prints!
First past the post was Michel Pollet, and the quality he has achieved in just a few short weeks is absolutely incredible. As a reward, Michel has been helping us test and fix the electronics and give the rest of the group a helping hand. (more…)
Category RepRap | Tags: Build Progress,Thames Valley RepRap User Group (TVRRUG),TVPrusa | No Comments
July 23, 2011 by Hannah
Having assembled the RAMPS kit and received a new heated bed to replace the broken one, it was for Mendel’s first major overhaul – replacing Techzone Gen3 electronics, and adding a heated bed. (more…)
Category RepRap | Tags: Build Progress,Electronics,Heated Bed,Mendel,RAMPS | No Comments
July 18, 2011 by Hannah
Our RAMPS 1.2 Electronics kit arrived from German RepRap Foundation the other day so I got cracking! Unfortunately I has having one of those days and my German and Google Translate weren’t too great, resulting in several LEDs with the wrong orientation and one in completely the wrong place! Thankfully everything still works (except the LEDs). (more…)
Category Arduino, RepRap | Tags: Build Progress,Electronics,Opto-Endstops,RAMPS,Soldering | No Comments
July 13, 2011 by Hannah
Our Huxley hot end kept popping out from the clamp, which was warping under the heat, and ramming into the print bed gouging out designs in the plywood.
Several iterations of clamp design later and we’ve settled on a beefed up version that seems to cope with the force of the extruder (even when I had set the Z STEPS_PER_MM to 20% of what it should have been). (more…)
Category RepRap | Tags: Bowden Extruder,Build Progress,Extruder,Fix,Hot End,Huxley,OpenSCAD,PLA,Thingiverse,Troubleshooting,Wade's Extruder | No Comments
July 8, 2011 by Hannah
Turns out that the PCB Heated Bed isn’t a great conductor of heat on its surface, so using a hot plate for reflow soldering the LEDs and resistor can have unexpectedly fatal consequences…
Category RepRap | Tags: Build Progress,Electronics,Epic Fail,Heated Bed,Mendel,Soldering | No Comments
May 30, 2011 by Hannah
With Gen 7 showing signs of life, it’s time to figure out a mounting solution, wire up Huxley and sort out the opto-endstops and their flags. (more…)
Category RepRap | Tags: Build Progress,Darwin,Electronics,Generation 7,Opto-Endstops,Techzone,Testing,Troubleshooting,Wiring | No Comments
May 22, 2011 by Hannah
The trial run at making our own Gen 7 PCB was a success, so we ordered the components and went for the real thing. A few tricky obstacles required surmounting including out-of-date config files, a blown Pololu and invisible shorts, but finally we have life! (more…)
Category RepRap | Tags: Bootloader,Build Progress,Electronics,Firmware,Generation 3,Generation 7,Microstepping,PuTTy,RepRap Host,Soldering,Teacup Firmware,Testing,Troubleshooting,USBTinyISP | No Comments
April 21, 2011 by Hannah
The premise behind the Generation 7 RepRap electronics is replicability, so we decided to fabricate our own for our Huxley in progress. Originally we had hoped to set up our Mendel for milling with our Dremel, but with our sticky y axis problem being only improved but not completely solved by increasing the belt tension, we decided to play it safe and etch the PCB instead. (more…)
Category RepRap | Tags: Belt Tension,Build Progress,cad.py,Dremel,Electronics,Etching,gEDA,Generation 7,Huxley,Inkscape,Mendel,Milling,PCB,Pen Plotting,RepRap Host,Toner Transfer | No Comments
April 13, 2011 by Hannah
Having a working Mendel poses a difficult question – what to print next? After having successfully printed its first self-improvement, it is time for Mendel to become a parent! And what better solution to our portability problems when taking Mendel on the road than a “Mini Mendel”, aka Huxley.
Category RepRap | Tags: Bill of Materials,Build Progress,Bushings,Huxley,Mini Mendel,Techzone | No Comments
January 4, 2011 by Hannah
When my father and I first embarked on our RepRap journey, there wasn’t a single one in the world that had actually printed anything. Forget cutting edge, this was bleeding edge technology.
Fast forward roughly 5 years: there are working RepRaps all over the world, and we are finally on the brink of joining this club. In the coming weeks I plan to record our experience of “the home-straight”, but first here is a quick summary of how we got here.
Category RepRap | Tags: Build Progress,Darwin,Mendel | No Comments