Makerbot Weekend June 13th and 14th

Hello all, I would like to announce on June 13, 14th a Makerbot / Reprap build session.

It will be at the AS220 in Providence, RI And it will be open to all for free. It will be on Saturday 10:AM - 4:PM. and Sunday 10:AM - 2:PM

We will have Zach Smith there and also be building and teaching how to build a Makerbot cupcake.

We will be there with our machine.

We will be at the 115 Empire street location. directions can be found here http://as220.org/about/directions.html

There is a raffle for the Makerbot Cupcake being built tickets are 10 dollars each http://as220.org/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=25&products_id=175

Hope to see you..

Stuff to do in the new year..

here are some things I would like to get done in the new year. Hopefully it will get done since I might have the time. ( I am loosing my job as of the end of May, I will keep you posted. )

here is the list pictures will follow.

To build a stand alone printer / box this to have the following things.

1. Electronics that will operate with out a computer attached along with a interface to select files that are loaded on a cf card and status of the machine maybe also status sent out for a 2nd interface so you can know the state of the printer remotly.

2. a heated chamber for the printer so it will help in printing to be kept at around 100 Deg. F.

3. a filter system for the air because printing with ABS is not the best smell my family thinks.

4. a place to hold the filament and also a way to feed the printer and a way to know if the printer is out of filament.



Also my 2nd thing I would like to get done this year

to print 2 sets of parts one to give away and the 2nd to replace my machine. which will become the stand alone machine.

I would also like to give some clases at the AS220 on how to build Reprap printers.


I hope all have a great NEW YEAR!! and I hope to see REPRAP grow a bunch more in 2009

it is running again

I found the problem was the diodes were shorting out with the ground plane on the board. A word of advise check the diodes and also use the step leds to see if the board is working right if it is working right you should not create a lot of heat on the heat sinks. So the leds should both be on in a stand alone state and both orange when stepping.

Update New Electronics

I figured I would post since we have not posted in a while.

Current status: I have been working on changing out our electronics to the new electronics and which means also testing the new Sanguino motherboard.
the only issue is my stepper boards are not fully working I am not getting my steppers to move they are just vibrating back and forth. I have checked the wiring and it is correct I did notice I am not getting the "status LEDs" for the stepper to both show orange. So I am to next look at why this is happening.

What we have been doing over the last year:
in June we met up with a bunch of people who are interested in Reprap at Olin Collage. we showed the printer even though we ran into some trouble with the Pic firmware.

After this we decided to work on the new electronic boards for the machine. I also have been wanting to be able to run the printer with out a computer connected so I started to work on a LCD board with button interface with help from Zach Smith we made a cool board that communicates with I2C bus so we only use 2 pins to communicate with the Sanguino.

We presented our printer in Providence RI at the May DC401

we presented our printer at the may meeting and had a good sized group and had a very interested group

Printing a Cup!!!

Well,
This weekend we printed 2 cups one for each of us but have not the chance yet to toast with my son. Here is a picture of the cup and a short video of it in the middle of being printed..

My extruder is not shutting off so I can nap?

I found that my extruder was not shutting off for me when it went into its cooling mode. it also was not shutting off when it was moving from the perimiter to the inside printing. I found the bug after looking at the code fixed it and now I can nap when printing... Now I can give a cup a try printing this is good to dial in the machine. I now think I am close to printing parts for our machine..