Reprap Visit

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Notes from the RepRap visit:

Contents

Background

Description

Splat Space is working on getting a 3D printer! W00t! The first step is that we are borrowing one from Neil Underwood of Fablocker (the Winston-Salem hackerspace). This came about through a series of discussions that culminated in Alan and Neil talking at the Maker Faire NC 2011 and working out the details.

The specific type of RepRap is a Prusa Mendel. Here's a cool video overview of both 3D printing and Mendel operation: OhmEye's Introduction and Orientation for 3D Printing with the Reprap Prusa Mendel.

Neil says the Prusa is one of the simplest designs, straightforward to build and maintain, and pretty robust. It's also one of the cheapest in parts and effort to build. For about $400 in parts, we could have one. Once we had one built, we could use it to print parts for more.

The Prusa that Neil loaned to us arrived in not-quite-working condition, although he has used it to successfully print in the past. So the first steps are to get it working. See #Current State section for the current state of the printer and #Day by Day section for the details of the debugging effort.

Email Threads

There have been a few e-mail threads about getting and setting up the RepRap. They are archived on the Splat Space Googlegroup:

Prusa Mendel 3d printer for space
Reprap contest?
Prusa: The Arrival

Current State

Machine works mechanically. Firmware needs to be altered to reflect our data with regards to feed volume. Then we can start printing. Drew 17:31, 11 July 2011 (MDT)


Day by Day

Saturday 9th

Team: Alan, Drew, Skippy, and the other Jeff (add yourself as appropriate)

Sunday 10th

Team: Drew, Skippy, Mike, Lisa


Monday 11th

Team: Drew

After an email exchange with Neil today found out that the length fed into the machine is based on a volume calculation done in the firmware. This was not my understanding of the machine's operation. We need to get a copy of the firmware on the machine, update it per on of the following.

Also there's an IRC channel on freenode, #reprap. I'm told that they're helpful. Drew 17:31, 11 July 2011 (MDT)

Tuesday 12th