Monthly Archives: February 2010

Is it an evil replicator?

Posted on by

Over at the RepRap blog Vic has posted a picture and a link to the files for a mini-Mendel.  He suggests that since the reprapped parts are 30% of the full-size Mendel, it should replicate at three times the speed!

A loooong time ago I was at a friend’s place when we were discussing how best to send files.  This was back when I had saved up for a 14.4 modem.  (A modem?  What’s that?)  I suggested we just keep using PKZip to zip the files, then zip the zip files, until the resulting files were so small they could fit on a single floppy disk.  For those of you youngin’s out there, this is called “sneakernet” – as in you walk the files from place to place.

The idea that the smaller we make RepRap machines the faster replicate is simultaneously amazing, silly, and scary.  Amazing because it means we really only need to produce a modest sized RepRap which could then print up the parts for a larger cousin or many of its similar sized brethren.  Silly because it makes me think of zipping zipped files – let’s keep making RepRaps infinitely small so that they are infinitely quick to replicate!  Scary (well, not really scary, but you get the point) because it reminds me of the gray-goo problem – where the world is taken over by machines that turn the planet into copies of the machines.

Open Everything

Posted on by

The ideal is obviously using a totally open source environment to develop things with a RepRap/MakerBot.  For the most part I use open source software – FireFox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Pigin, PHP, MySQL, WordPress.

However, I’m still tied to certain closed source proprietary software.  I still use Windows and haven’t made the leap of faith to Linux/Ubuntu.  I really like the ease of use and intuitive nature of Google’s Sketchup.  But, I can’t help feel like a little bit of a sham – still clinging to Windows and Sketchup because they’re easy and familiar.  All the while cranking out wonderful plastic goodness with my open source hardware ‘bot.

I have a feeling I could get used to Linux/Ubuntu if I gave them a shot, but the alternatives to Sketchup I’ve seen and tried are nearly unintelligible.  Does this mean I try to run Wine or break down and spend the time to learn something else?

Retractable Tape Measure: Reloaded

Posted on by

Putting together my original spring loaded retractable tape measure taught me a few things.  I’ve made a few changes/revisions to this thing.

  1. The spindle in the center of the exterior part was too thin and susceptible to snapping.  I realized that I could thicken the base of the spindle to give it more strength.
  2. The spindle in the center of the exterior part didn’t seem quite long enough to hold the center spring holder part in place.  I’ve stretched the spindle to be slightly taller – by about 2mm or so.  I’m hoping this will leave a groove in the spindle where the interior spring holder will naturally move towards and allow the entire thing to spin more freely.
  3. The interior spring holder would have been much more useful if it were attached to a large disk to help keep the wound tape in place.  This disk has been added in this latest version.
  4. The interior spring holder has two sets of notches.  One can be used to attach the measuring tape.  The second can be used to attach one end of the metal spring.  Unfortunately, one set of the notches was too narrow and required more cleaning than should be necessary.  I’ve widened this one notch for easier printing.

How to learn electronics

Posted on by

Oh, see, I was going to ask you!

I’m more of a web application/software guy.  PHP, MySQL, javascript, AJAX, and WordPress are my stock and trade.  Every once in a while I get the itch to learn about electronics so I can build stuff out of other stuff.  I haven’t opened Posted in MakerBot