New extruder & CNC machine

There are a few designs for printable mk7 style extruders but none that suited the hardware I had around. So this one was designed and printed out in a couple of hours. I got the drive gears off Ebay. So far it looks like it should work pretty well.

The CNC machine has taken a bit of a change in direction. The origional was having issues with the rod bending when under strain. Instead of spending lots of money getting bigger rod we  just opted to make the working area a bit smaller. I ended going with a mendel 90 style design.

The spindle was made with a couple of bearings and a shaft pulled from an extension thingie that came with the rotary tool. The original bearings on the extension thingie were a bit rubbish so I couldn't just use it how it was. Its allmost back to its original state of functionality, just a bit more tinkering.

I also noticed on the original design that the actuation nuts had a little bit of play. I've added a second nut on this design, the two are rotated onto each other to a point were the play is greatly reduced. If its done just right the friction doesn't get too ridiculous either which is handy. 

Burnside Reprap

First Daughter machine!  built for Burnside High School. construction took two weeks of on and off building, somewhat larger than what I expected, though most of the time was spend re-doing things in an attempt to make the machine less "year nine-able".

This beast features a number of fancy parts. The RepRapPro cross brace, an innovation ive not seen commonly used though incredibly effective for both bracing the frame and eliminating any wobble. And my Y-axis motor mount (On Thingiverse) that I'm possibly over-proud of. Not quite incredibly effective, functional.

We used Sanguinololu on this machine, even made a lovely little box shown. Pretty tidy if I may say so myself, what with plugs, cable glands and a noticeable lack of MDF. 

Remember that CNC machine?

Well yes, technically its been together, wired up and going for a while now but only today did we finally get the Dremel in there for a test run.

The electronics, scrambled, just how I like em.

let it loose on some board, results were pleasing. 

My multimeter concluded that the pad was indeed excluded, yo.

changing the RPM can have quite an effect.

Im thinking printed bushings aint really the best.

So overall I'm pretty pleased with this, though still needs a fair amount of work. Have yet to pick out a software package. All this was just done with pronterface. Yes that is the 3D printer interface, it works, well kind of. 

With any luck I will get a board done in the next week.

The beginnings of a CNC machine

Based on the famous open source Mantis 9 design, modified for a slightly larger working area (180x280x100mm) and to work with printed linear motion bushings. so far only the frame has been completed. with any luck everything is at 90 degrees where it should be and it is soon to be working. 

un-messified

So I mounted all the electronics. its all pretty tidy now, well the reprap at least.

An almost water-tight shot glass

getting there

baby steps

so yea making progress. could be faster but eh. still running too hot, but we know why now.
good progress will follow.

feedrate still needs tweeking. bridging isnt quite working. im 90% sure it has to do with the temperature.
well yea. theres a lot wrong. it will get there

indeed