RepRap: Blog

The Darwin has been busily churning out replacement parts for Phoenix, the rebuild of the original wrecked RRChild. The bed corner here is a standard support-free part, but the X Carriage has been modified to include an insert for all the places where the guide bars go through it. This fixes an issue whereby one of the holes (rightmost, in this picture) had a teardrop top in which the guide bar fitted very loosely.

The new carriage also features larger holes for the belts to pass through, which should allow some experimentation with fine-gauge ball-chain.

Vik :v)

Labels: carriage, phoenix, reprap

My LCD screen is starting to return to a less blue shade after enduring a stream of classic Anglo-Saxon last night. The cause of this was the crashing of the GUI software with an Out of Memory error about 98% of the way through the biggest part of the RepRap - the carriage.

I knew things were not going well. Garbage collects were happening with increasing frequency. I'd run the job to a nullcartesian device first to make sure it would print - probably best to close and restart given the current state of play.

I had "top" running, so I know it was all Java. No other applications of any consequence going on a 2GB machine.


Now the good news: Though technically incomplete, on inspection the part appears quite functional. There are some big blobs on it where the extruder was left running in garbage collects (should we force a GC at the end of a layer? Can we, or will Java "know better"?), but these will soon succumb to my trusty Dremmel tool. I believe I can now start work on the X axis assembly, the first phase of mechanical construction in our instructions. Yeah, looks like the picture on the left :) I leant on the X motor bracket and cracked it, but clear epoxy cures all ills.

Vik :v)

Labels: carriage, reprap