Sunday, April 03, 2011

 

This week In The Wikii 4/02/11

It's amazing how fast our community evolves.  I have been doing this feature at the RepRap Blog for a month now and not once have I ran out of stuff to post.  And in some ways each week seems to be a bit more awesome than the next. :)  I know there are a lot of you guys and girls out there plugging away at your projects, if you want to see it here at the reprap blog PLEASE post it at this features's wiki page at:


If you post your project there with a link to your Wiki page, I will post it the following Weekend into the Blog.  We are not picky at the RepRap wiki.  If your project is related to a RepRap, or just uses a 3d printer or lasercutter to make it, your welcome to use our wiki to host your instructions!  All we care is that it's open source.

Now for what is awesome in the wiki this week!

Mendel 3547

 Poller uploaded som pics of the Mendel 3547, it is an interesting concept, somewhere between a Prusa and a Sells.  Looks to be a bushing based Sells Mendel.  No real documentation yet besides some projections.

RepRap Franklin

Don't have a RepRap yet, but want to test your wicked awesome new firmware ideas?  The emulator is easy to set up and run, can be used to test new programs for sending proper commands to a fake RepRap, before you destroy your own. Multiple firmwares are supported, and more can be easily added, allowing you to test on many different versions without flashing firmware between tests. Plus there is a speed boost as commands can be executed at any speed desired.


Portable Skeinforge

One of the 1st things that people who join our community complain about is that Skeinforge is not an .exe in Windows.  Well Kliment has fixed this issue, and added a nice extra functionality to Skeinforge.  Portable Skeinforge allows you to operate Skeinforge from a thumb drive and take your settings files with you.  Also it allows you to run Skeinforge from a machine that you do not have access level to install Python on.  Many of us have ran into this situation when doing demos at public schools or trying to goof off Skeinforging objects at work.  Considering in Windows repsnapper is a simple .exe file also, you can now run your reprap fully off a thumb drive.

Community portal

I didn't even know we had this page, it was started by TheOtherRob and it's actually quite up to date.  There's some cool things I did not even know we had.  Cafe Press Shirts and Hats with RepRap on them, and donate buttons for reprap.  I mean seriously, why don't all of us have these buttons on out pages?  I didn't because I didn't know about them, must correct that.  Lots of other cool stuff over there also.


Exquisite_Automated_Build_Platform

Jamesdanielv has been doing some serious work on the Mendel Automated build plate.  He has added several videos of it in operation, and a much more flushed out instructions on how to build it.  Considering Makerbot seems to be going to TITANIUM to get there's to work properly, I hope that James finds a magic bullet to make these work well.  Automated build plates will be wonderful if we can get them to work reliably.


Mrkim has started the serious documentation of his 1x2 wooden repstrap.  It's amazing what you can do with a few blocks of wood!  I can't wait to see a few of these in the wild.


Mrkim  As if that wasn't enough MrKim then proceeds to make the tallest 3d printer I think I have ever seen. I don't even think Fortus production machines have that type of Z envelope! :)  Instructions for both this and the normal 1x2 are at the wiki page.  I swear that printer is sort of scary looking.



It's amazing how quickly our extruders in RepRap are evolving. Mattroberts has made a unique and small geared extruder, which is a hybrid of the Wades and Adrian's extruders.  This one is physically smaller than even the wades, uses a m3 hobbed bolt, 624 bearings, and a 9:31 gear ratio.  The good thing about the smaller hobbed bolt it it's much less force transfered to the plastic gears.


More hardware progress with the A5 Powder bed printer.  Sorry, I know I posted this one earlier, but I am a sucker for hardware pictures. :)


Cloudmaker has managed to get RepG to play nice with standard RAMPS.  I have not tried it yet, but I will tell you that if you start out with a Makerbot and try to move to RepRap, the most painful part is giving up RepG.  Makerbot has put a lot of time and effort into the RepG program that the Makerbot kits uses, and it shows in the interface.  I can't wait till RepRap user have as wide of  variety of choices of drive programs as we do electronics.

Comments:
Neil--Great posts so far. Definately picking up things that never make it into the RepRap blog pipes.

I like the idea of using a RAMPS with RepG. Makerbot has priced their electronics out of the ramen noodle RepRaps. If a SD Card gets added RAMPS would be a great replacement.
 
These wiki updates are very useful. Thanks Neil!
 
The Reprap wiki is full of information, but sometimes you have to dig deep, most of this stuff I had not seen, so well done in bringing it to our attention, Please keep it up.
 
keep them comming! i love these posts, and think they focus a lot of attention back at the wiki, which is great!

there's been a bit of a gap in "this week" so i wanted to offer my encouragement. even if there hasn't been any cool new stuff posted on the wiki, it's nice seeing a weekly or bi-weekly update.
 
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