So I went biking this morning (it's amazing outside) to go to home depot and get my missing alan key. Sadly they didnt have the set of 3 that I wanted but they did have another set that was small enough. Man, 1.5mm is small!
So I had to pick that up which was 8.98 plus tax, plus I had to pick up the missing screws yesterday which were 0.30 plus tax. that brings the added cost of:
$10.15 for the alan keys
$0.34 for the screws
This brings the total cost to:
$618.11 for the printer
$120.00 for the printed parts
$12.00 for the solder
$11.29 for the wire strippers
$79.04 for the crimping tool
$1.22 for the extra wire
$0.53 for the first set of extra screws
$0.34 for the 2nd set of missing screws
$10.15 for the alan keys
------------------------------------------
$852.68
So I have spent $852 to build my printer :)
~(' ')~
Sunday, 19 August 2012
Saturday, 18 August 2012
Potatoes and Printers
First the potatoes. I have been noticing that one of my potato plants hasn't being doing so well recently and since it has been cold for a couple of days I thought that I would harvest the potatoes and see what there were like. Sadly I did not get many potatoes, only 6 and only really 1 that I would call new potato sized. All the others are just babies.
While I was harvesting I noticed that only the top later of dirt was wet from when I watered it this morning. That makes me think that the reason it was not doing well is because I wasn't watering it enough so the roots weren't getting much water. I will try to make sure I water the other potato more.
On to the printer. I am currently working at connecting everything and calibrating it. Things are going really well and I have calibrated all the axis motors and now I am working on the extruder motor. One thing I noticed is that the extruder motor apparently needs to be wires in the reverse order to all the other ones. That, or more likely, the motor is flipped from the original design expected because I am doing iteration 2 parts with iteration 1 hardware.
So I have finished putting everything for the printer together. Except I don't have the Alan key to secure the set screw to the extuder gear. I thought I it in far enough because all my tests had it running fine but when I tried to print something the motor started spinning in the gear. I am hoping to go to Home Depot and get a 1.5mm Alan key tomorrow morning. Wish me luck.
~(' ')~
While I was harvesting I noticed that only the top later of dirt was wet from when I watered it this morning. That makes me think that the reason it was not doing well is because I wasn't watering it enough so the roots weren't getting much water. I will try to make sure I water the other potato more.
On to the printer. I am currently working at connecting everything and calibrating it. Things are going really well and I have calibrated all the axis motors and now I am working on the extruder motor. One thing I noticed is that the extruder motor apparently needs to be wires in the reverse order to all the other ones. That, or more likely, the motor is flipped from the original design expected because I am doing iteration 2 parts with iteration 1 hardware.
So I have finished putting everything for the printer together. Except I don't have the Alan key to secure the set screw to the extuder gear. I thought I it in far enough because all my tests had it running fine but when I tried to print something the motor started spinning in the gear. I am hoping to go to Home Depot and get a 1.5mm Alan key tomorrow morning. Wish me luck.
~(' ')~
Friday, 17 August 2012
x axis test 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQPv3zq3XAw&feature=youtu.be
I managed to get it to move in both directions. the problem was that the end stop switch wasnt connected so I had to plug that in.
I am still having some problems in that it doesn't seem to jog smoothly. I have done a little research on it and it seems like the problem is most likely the power settings for the stepper motor. I will hopefully test that tonight or tomorrow :)
Thursday, 16 August 2012
My printer moved
Not much and not the way it's supposed to but I got the x axis to move in one direction. It wouldn't move in the other direction I unfortunately. I also had the y axis move but it just jumped around back and forth making a huge amount of noise. Hopefully this weekend I will work out the kinks in those motors
Wednesday, 15 August 2012
Printer build update
So I know it has been a while since I last updated. My bad. But Things are going very well. Today I was home for the morning because I have a Dr apt at noon so there was no point in me going to work just to turn around and leave. This gave me some time to work on the printer.
Last night I connected the last of the wires to the switches and connected the switches to the h shaped plastic pieces. Unfortunately I have realized that I am AGAIN missing some screws. That would yet another complaint I have with the mixshop kit is that there doesn't seem to be enough screws and not of the right type. This may be because my plastic parts of iteration 2 and the kit is iteration 1.
This morning I added the last of the wires and crimp ends and then I pulled out the power supply. Gotta say, I am a little intimidated by the power supply. I know its just a standard 350W computer supply which I have taken out of machines dozens of times but to have to short circuit a wire and then cut off ends was a little unnerving. But Everything seems to have worked out.
Now I just have to connect things together and see if it works. I am hoping to connect the motors and sensors one at a time and test things as I go. That way I will know exactly what is screwed up if I screwed something up.
~(' ')~
Last night I connected the last of the wires to the switches and connected the switches to the h shaped plastic pieces. Unfortunately I have realized that I am AGAIN missing some screws. That would yet another complaint I have with the mixshop kit is that there doesn't seem to be enough screws and not of the right type. This may be because my plastic parts of iteration 2 and the kit is iteration 1.
This morning I added the last of the wires and crimp ends and then I pulled out the power supply. Gotta say, I am a little intimidated by the power supply. I know its just a standard 350W computer supply which I have taken out of machines dozens of times but to have to short circuit a wire and then cut off ends was a little unnerving. But Everything seems to have worked out.
Oh I also forgot to mention that I installed the upper print bed
~(' ')~
Wednesday, 8 August 2012
wires wires, everywhere
Managed to work on my printer again last night (I'm on a roll). I don't have any pictures but I did manage to extend all the motor wires and attach the crimp ends and plastic plug ends. I also extended the wires for the heat resistors to pretty soon I will be able to finish the x axis carriage.
In order to do all of this I had to pick up some extra stuff. Specifically I had to pick up some crimpers (69.90 + tax) and I also grabbed some extra solid center wire for motor wires because the ribbon cable that came with the kit seemed kind of thin. Those wires cost me 0.09 a foot and I got a total of 12 feet.
In order to do all of this I had to pick up some extra stuff. Specifically I had to pick up some crimpers (69.90 + tax) and I also grabbed some extra solid center wire for motor wires because the ribbon cable that came with the kit seemed kind of thin. Those wires cost me 0.09 a foot and I got a total of 12 feet.
Saturday, 4 August 2012
Prusa build update
So it has been quite a while since I did an update on my 3d printer. Sadly it is not yet operational. I ran into a couple of problems.
The biggest problem was that the plastic parts I had were not the iteration 1 or iteration 2 of the prusa design but rather some type of current beta iteration that has not bee officially accepted. This cause a lot of confusion because I had no instructions for these parts.
On top of that the mixshop kit was specifically for iteration 1 of the prusa so I was missing several minor pieces like a couple screws. It took me a little while to find the missing screws but I eventually did at a cool little shop that I have probably passed a dozen times but never noticed. It is called Jacobs hardware and it right in the fashion district which I visit frequently with Talia.
The other odd problem I had was that the clamp that was supposed to attach the z motors to the z axis threaded rod was not small enough. With the clamp fully tightened the motor post would still spin around. To solve this I did a little drilling to add a set screw of sorts to hold the flat end of the motor post in place
But despite these problems I have the majority of the chassis built. Now I have started working on the electronics.
The print carriage is assembled (in the background by the external drives) but I have to put the heat resisters in so its not attached right now.
Now onto the electronics. I started doing the soldering a couple weeks ago while I was still searching for my missing hardware but unfortunately I ran into a problem right away. My soldering iron was not working the way it should. The thick bulky part of the tip would get hot but the precision part was not. It would take a long time for my to get any solder to melt and when it finally did it would immediately solidify as a ball on the tip of my solder.
Thankfully Talia's dad is an electrical engineer and had a really nice soldering iron with a super fine tip. It took a couple days for him to find it but it worked like a charm and I was soldering the in no time
The next thing to do for the electronics is to connect the motors to the RAMPS board. Sadly I am again missing a tool. This time it is a crimping tool to put nice plug ends onto the motor leads. My dad has one that should fit so hopefully I can borrow one from him. I also have to go and get some cables to extend the leads in order to attach them to the board.
Total money spent so far:
Prusa electronics and hardware kit: $618
Plastic parts: $120
0.8mm solder: $12
5 extra M3 screws: $0.53
Sadly I have completely lost track of how much time I have spent building this :(
~(' ')~
The biggest problem was that the plastic parts I had were not the iteration 1 or iteration 2 of the prusa design but rather some type of current beta iteration that has not bee officially accepted. This cause a lot of confusion because I had no instructions for these parts.
On top of that the mixshop kit was specifically for iteration 1 of the prusa so I was missing several minor pieces like a couple screws. It took me a little while to find the missing screws but I eventually did at a cool little shop that I have probably passed a dozen times but never noticed. It is called Jacobs hardware and it right in the fashion district which I visit frequently with Talia.
The other odd problem I had was that the clamp that was supposed to attach the z motors to the z axis threaded rod was not small enough. With the clamp fully tightened the motor post would still spin around. To solve this I did a little drilling to add a set screw of sorts to hold the flat end of the motor post in place
One thing that has me a little concerned is the quality of the printed parts that I have. I actually managed to partially split of of my motor gears by screwing the set screw in too far :(
Glueing the lower layer of the print bed down
My assembled x axis
But despite these problems I have the majority of the chassis built. Now I have started working on the electronics.
Now onto the electronics. I started doing the soldering a couple weeks ago while I was still searching for my missing hardware but unfortunately I ran into a problem right away. My soldering iron was not working the way it should. The thick bulky part of the tip would get hot but the precision part was not. It would take a long time for my to get any solder to melt and when it finally did it would immediately solidify as a ball on the tip of my solder.
Thankfully Talia's dad is an electrical engineer and had a really nice soldering iron with a super fine tip. It took a couple days for him to find it but it worked like a charm and I was soldering the in no time
One of the 4 POLO stepper motor controllers that I had to solder together. It comes with the Polo chip and the 16 pins to be soldered in order to connect it
To solder the chip I had to cut the pins in half to make 2 8 pin connections and then solder the short ends to the chip
The Ramps 1.4 board that the Polo get attached to
2 down, 2 to go :)
All 4 Polos soldered and plugged in.
The addition of the heat sinks on the chips complete the RAMPS chip assembly.
The next thing to do for the electronics is to connect the motors to the RAMPS board. Sadly I am again missing a tool. This time it is a crimping tool to put nice plug ends onto the motor leads. My dad has one that should fit so hopefully I can borrow one from him. I also have to go and get some cables to extend the leads in order to attach them to the board.
Total money spent so far:
Prusa electronics and hardware kit: $618
Plastic parts: $120
0.8mm solder: $12
5 extra M3 screws: $0.53
Sadly I have completely lost track of how much time I have spent building this :(
~(' ')~
Jam
I know it's been a while and I have lots of things happening with lots of pictures and updates but I will post about them individually as time goes on. In the mean time I made Jam :)
So the other weekend Talia and I went to the cottage which was amazing and my parents let us borrow their car to go up. On the Sunday when we were going back home we dropped by their place to return the car except we arrived while they were still out so we just hung around and waited so we could say hi. While we were there we went into the back yard to look at how the garden was doing (not bad) and we noticed that the red current bushes were FILLED with nice ripe red currents so we started to pick then. We had some adventures because it started to down pour on us while we were picking. But we managed ok with the help of my 3rd cousin Thomas who is visiting from Germany for a month.
So after our picking frenzy we managed to walk away with about 6 cups of nice red currents. Sadly things got really busy for us with helping friends move and stuff but the currents sat nicely in the fridge for two weeks until today when I finally had time (and energy) to make some jam.
I used a modified recipe off the internet. I used 6 cups of red and black currents and 2 cups of water which I brought up to the boil and let simmer with a cover for 10 minutes.
Then I added 3 cups of sugar, the juice from 1 lemon, and a couple slugs of some French brandy (yes I bought brandy to cook with, should be fun times to come). I brought it back up to the boil and cooked it "HARD" <- recipes directions for a while, probably about 30 minutes. I also added a large piece of agar to give the jam a little more thickness. I don't know exactly how much was added sadly so reproducing this exact recipe could be a problem for me.
While the jam was boiling up I proceeded to set up the jars for canning. I started by turning the oven to 200F and sterilizing them for about 20 minutes. I also grabbed my pressure canner and filled it with some water to boil the canning rings and lids. Then it was off to the races and I filled 12 jars with delicious jam. Each jar was only a 125ml jar so I ended up grabbing out a left over 500ml and putting the extra jam in that.
~(' ')~
So the other weekend Talia and I went to the cottage which was amazing and my parents let us borrow their car to go up. On the Sunday when we were going back home we dropped by their place to return the car except we arrived while they were still out so we just hung around and waited so we could say hi. While we were there we went into the back yard to look at how the garden was doing (not bad) and we noticed that the red current bushes were FILLED with nice ripe red currents so we started to pick then. We had some adventures because it started to down pour on us while we were picking. But we managed ok with the help of my 3rd cousin Thomas who is visiting from Germany for a month.
So after our picking frenzy we managed to walk away with about 6 cups of nice red currents. Sadly things got really busy for us with helping friends move and stuff but the currents sat nicely in the fridge for two weeks until today when I finally had time (and energy) to make some jam.
I used a modified recipe off the internet. I used 6 cups of red and black currents and 2 cups of water which I brought up to the boil and let simmer with a cover for 10 minutes.
Then I added 3 cups of sugar, the juice from 1 lemon, and a couple slugs of some French brandy (yes I bought brandy to cook with, should be fun times to come). I brought it back up to the boil and cooked it "HARD" <- recipes directions for a while, probably about 30 minutes. I also added a large piece of agar to give the jam a little more thickness. I don't know exactly how much was added sadly so reproducing this exact recipe could be a problem for me.
~(' ')~
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