RepRap: Blog

I hear there may be another attempt at making a RepRapMicron out there. As I have not done any build instructions yet, I thought I'd post a few photos here from various angles. Marvel at how bad my photography is.

Labels: assembly, maus, photos, reprapmicron

# posted by vik-olliver @ 11:07 PM 0 comments

For those wishing to play with Maus C, it is now at https://github.com/VikOlliver/RepRapMicron/tree/main/maus as OpenSCAD files. Early release, subject to change etc. Needs axis drivers and probe parts from the original Maus file.

Labels: flexure, maus, reprapmicron

# posted by vik-olliver @ 10:16 PM 0 comments

I stuffed up the slide mount on Maus C, and the probe head was colliding with it. So I redesigned the slide mount entirely to use magnets. This allows the slide to move in two dimensions while still holding it securely, thus allowing more of the slide's surface to be used in tests. The old slide jaws can still be fitted if needed, though slight hack needed for probe clearance. Looks like this:

 

This indicates that not only is Maus C in a vaguely working state, but that the magnets hold the slide sufficiently well to allow a probe to carve stuff off the slide's surface. Should be plenty robust enough to put drops of resin in place. I did notice a bit of resonance on the Z mount which a bit of strategic foam should dampen down.

Assembly of the thing still needs three arms and a prehensile tail, so I will be looking to make some modifications for captive nuts and so forth. I think the time has come to strip the rude words from the comments and upload to github.

Labels: maus, reprapmicron

# posted by vik-olliver @ 4:27 AM 0 comments

I've refined the X & Y mounts a bit, and had a crack at mounting the Z axis. That allowed testing of the X & Y axes with a calibration slide, which worked nicely on the Y axis, but not as well on the X (that axis driver is slightly suspect) through whatever it was doing was repeatable. A rotation of about 20 microns off-axis was observed at 500 microns deflection, which I will live with for now.

The whole thing still fits under the binocular microscope, but the USB microscope is better for getting an overall view of the build area and tracking movement as I do not have good USB optics on the binocular microscope. I might make a mount for the USB microscope just to make the whole thing more integrated.

Next step though is to install the ground probe and test out the Z axis a bit.

Labels: maus, reprapmicron

# posted by vik-olliver @ 2:08 AM 0 comments

Just as a side note, these are the prototypes that evolved into the Maus C ('C' for Complementary) flexure system.

I started out with a couple a flat designs. Top left is mine, top right one I tried off Printables. The weight of the stage caused the flexures to sag, but I noticed they didn't deform vertically so I flipped the whole thing 90 degrees.

The latest one (but 10mm too short, dammit) is in the bottom right. That has the middle section of the flexures as a more solid beam, which significantly reduces the tendency for the platform to torque. It might be possible to make a print-in-place version of the completed assembly but I'm still fiddling with the overall design too much, so it can stay as a kit of flexures for now.

I'm reprinting the latest flexure panel 10mm wider and will rebuild Maus C with those. Probably have fiddle a few bits of the driver framework to fit. In parallel, I'm working on affixing the Z axis and probe holder to bring the thing into a single unit. When it has tested good I'll pop it on github as part of the Maus library.

Assembling this has also spurred further development in the Metriccano library, as I discover new beams and brackets that need to exist to make Metriccano fit together in useful configurations.

Labels: maus, reprapmicron

# posted by vik-olliver @ 10:21 PM 0 comments