Tag Archives: robot

Alternate alternate extruder controller mounting

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Tony Buser’s post about his Alternative Extruder Controller Mounting reminded me that I’ve been meaning to show a better picture of my own setup.  I had blogged about it earlier, but not shown a good picture.

Side mounted extruder board, rotated motherboard

Side mounted extruder board, rotated motherboard

Here you can see where I’ve mounted the extruder board at the top left and how I’ve rotated the motherboard 90 degrees counter clockwise.  This gives me better access to the SD card slot.   If you don’t rotate the motherboard, the SD card slot is blocked by the extruder board.

Totally clear plastruder

Totally clear plastruder

Here you can see Leonardo Robot’s arm and how I’ve run the wires from the extruder motor and heater up to the board.

New Print: Leonardo Robot

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Jrombousky designed his Leonardo Robot based upon the ratios in Leonardo DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man.  He mentioned that it was based on these very cool papercraft Paper Robot.  I just used his gcodes and they turned out just fine.  This just supports my belief that a good set of Skeinforge settings may be nearly universal.  In any case, here it is!

Ddomo arigato, Mr. Roboto

Ddomo arigato, Mr. Roboto

MakerBot Cupcake CNC print resolution

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Some people have asked me about the MakerBot’s print resolution.  Although this information can be found on the MakerBot wiki, there’s no harm in disseminating this data. 1  Before I get into some of the technical stuff, let me just say this – the print resolution is pretty freaking good for a $750 DIY robot and it will give a $15,000 commercial printer a run for it’s money.

As a printer that can create objects in three dimensions the normal two-dimensional printer resolution jargon of “DPI” or “dots per inch” doesn’t mean much.  The printing resolution for the X/Y axes is 0.085mm and the resolution for the Z axis is 3.125 microns.  Most of the time you’re going to have a Z axis resolution of about 1/3 of a millimeter.  If you print with layers much smaller than that it will take forever to print without a huge increase in quality.

Or, to put it another way…  if you were to hand me two objects one printed on a MakerBot and one printed on a commercial printer, I’m going to ask you why the heck one of them costs $14,000 more than the other.  I’ve printed some pretty intricate and detailed stuff on my MakerBot.  As I tune it I hope to improve it even more.

  1. If you haven’t poked around the website, I highly recommend it.  There’s a lot of information about the Cupcake CNC, RepRap, fused deposition modeling, robots, and all sorts of stuff. [↩]

Leonardo Robot

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Leonardo Robot

Leonardo Robot

Freaking cool. This robot was designed by jrombosky by taking the measurements/proportions/ratios from Leonardo DaVinci’s Virtuvian Man. Even if these proportions were all messed up, this would still be super awesome. It’s a little printable robot!!!

Lego Robot Set

Lego Robot Set

It reminds me of a lego set from a few years ago:

Adding the circuit boards

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Once I had the opto-endstops all soldered up, I really wanted to keep going.  I made the Y-endstop cables, bolted the opto-endstops on, and bolted the motherboard and stepper motor boards to the MakerBot.  Clipped in the cables and it looks like a robot after all!  I’m going to need to organize those cables, but that will have to wait until all the other parts are in place.

An interesting side note – as I was moving the various axes someone noticed that little lights started flashing on the stepper motor boards!  Cool!  I presume moving the platform caused the motors to act like generators and pushing power to the boards, lighting up the LED’s.

Once the opto-endstops were done, I couldn’t resist bolting them on.  Once I started doing that, I wanted to make the Y-endstop cables, then the ribbon cables, and wire it all up.

If nothing else, it looks like a robot now!

Mission critical decisions

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Such as:  Should I paint?  What color(s)?

I’m thinking I should paint.  I figure it will help the robot body stand up to a little extra wear and tear while looking cool.

Not white or black.  That’s SOooo October 2009.  I’m liking gray/gunmetal/silver.  I’ve only seen pictures of one silver MakerBot and I rather liked it.  (Thank you to RDon Ebben/Robostang 548 for posting pics of his MakerBot 347.)  The picture is a little dark, so I don’t think I can see it to its full effect.

Just the other day a user named unrepentantgeek posted a Google Sketchup version of a MakerBot, to make it easy to test out paint/color schemes.  URG – you’re the best!  Thanks to you, I got to test out this color scheme:

Roughly a 50% gray on the outside, silver on the inside.  (I figure I can’t rightfully name the machine Bender unless it has a shiny metal assplate, right?)

Printed Pulleys Assembled!

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I’ve just take the first step to building my MakerBot!  Admittedly, two of the bearings were already in the printed pulleys, but that’s just not the point.  I’ve taken a material step towards building it!  Huzzah!

Printed pulleys assembled!

Printed pulleys assembled!

Oh, and I don’t think I was supposed to have a pack of 8 extra bearings.

No, no, I’m supposed to have these 8 bearings.  I suppose it would help if I read the directions.  (I’m just so used to grabbing things and tossing them together and expecting them to work.  I guess it’s a little more complicated than that when you’re building a robot, eh?)