RepRap: Blog

The trip to the Czech Republic for FAB25 was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. Unfortunately the low part was pretty low. My Father, Peter Austin Olliver passed away in the UK on the 8th July at the ripe old age of 93. Frustratingly, airlines and insurance would not play ball, and I was unable to attend the funeral despite being in Europe. On the plus side, I was with my Wife and a dozen or so very supportive notable geeks in Josef Prusa's private chateau at the time, and they promptly proceeded to provide shoulders to lean on and poured half the wine cellar down my neck.

So, a bit of "apart from that Mrs. Lincon, what did you think of the opera?"

Well, the Quirkey keyboard and lockpicking workshops went very well. The RepRapMicron presentation was very well attended and I got mobbed afterwards. Leyla arranged for the RepRapMicron V0.03 to have a permanent home at the Riverside International School in Prague, where hopefully it will inspire students.

As mentioned I met Josef Prusa - we've talked but never met before. We had a few technical and social meetings, including aforementioned two-day mass geek brainstorming at his chateau. He also kindly let me loose on Miloslav in the Prusa Printer Resin Research Lab, and I learned a lot about resin chemistry that will be relevant to the use of resins in RepRapMicron. He is generally supportive of the RepRapMicron, though obviously it's not a commercial thing yet, and has donated some resources to the cause for which I thank him very much.

Elephant in the room is the controversy over Open Source and Prusa printers. A lot of my meetings concerned that. I would be lying if I said I was happy with reducing the amount of Open hardware used. However he has identified some legitimate concerns with the abuse of Open hardware, and from what I can tell genuinely  desires the 3D printing community to continue to develop, hack, and maintain hardware. It's a lengthy topic but to sum up: There is a threat to Open printers, it's not originating from Prusa, there is no solution as yet, it's going to get worse, and Josef wants to develop a solution.

I discussed RepRapMicron with Neil Gershenfeld  of MIT's Center For Bits And Atoms. He is interested in the mechanical approach that RepRapMicron is taking and noted its similarities with the accurate mechanism of the Straight Line Engine. Speaking of, must try engraving or depositing some diffraction gratings. He asked a lot of questions to which I had no answers, and those will doubtless be the subject of future research. He may have intended this, I suspect.

Oh, and a shout out was made to Adrian Bowyer by Neil as he addressed the conference. Adrian is now setting coursework for aforementioned MIT division, and I believe he may be attempting to wrangle a μRepRap together of his own. Perhaps we shall hear more from him on the blog later?

One of the most challenging problems associated with experiments on the Feynman Path are the constantly mutating and changing software and electronics requirements. Software is pretty easy to deal with - just use version control. The electronics side of things is much more of a challenge - each experiment has its own specific set of actuators and sensors and supporting these electronically is something of a time and effort consuming roadblock. 

I think I have come up with a reasonably versatile and adaptable solution...

 

Instead of one large multi-function control board, the electronics have been split up into many smaller modules each of which performs only one function. Since they are so simple, each module (called a Steggo Module) can easily and quickly be manufactured by hand. These modules can then placed side-by-side on an inexpensive racking system and wired up to form whatever experimental apparatus might be required. When the experiment is complete, the modules can be disassembled and re-used later on.

All-in-all it seems to be a pretty versatile system. Have a look at the Steggo Module Video and FPath Experiment 007 writeup for more information. 

Labels: Feynman Path, FPath, Modular Electronics, Nanotechnology, Steggo Modules