Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Day 7: Yes, Boards Can Be Fixed, But Extruders Can Clog

Dataman was able to surface mount solder the driver chip onto the driver board and we had a good test.  So, we have two good replacement boards in stock.  That's a relief.


But now we've started to have strange problems with the extruder.  Seems we can't get much to come out at all any more.  The boards suggest that bake at 220 and soak the tip in acetone.  So it's baking and soaking...

This picture shows good grooves in the filament, followed by a telltale dig mark where the motor burrowed in.  This indicates the motor pushed as hard as it could, but could not get past the hot end.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Day 6: Board Replacement

With the replacement boards from New York, I was back in business. I forced the build team to rebuild my hot end, but I produced one more model in the end.  The team learned that compressing the PTFE, the white teflon tube was bad, and that occasionally you have to ream it out again with a 1/8" drill bit to get filament to pass through it.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Day 5: Fist Day Down

Well, Data-Brilliant-Boy decided to swap the X and Y controller cable with the power ON!  A definite NO-NO!  Y stepper board survived.  X did not.  Overnighted 2 more stepper boards from New York, and 5 driver chips from Digikey in case we can repair ourselves.

Cards are due in tomorrow, so we tested to make sure Y Stepper and, most importantly, the Motherboard survived, they both did.  Thank Data. 

ChipQuick is a wonderful product and really good at removing SOIC chips.  Closeup of Driver Card with Driver Chip removed:

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Day 4: Fist System Test

The build team finally put me all together for the first time today.  Spun up my motors, tried to print the 20mm test cube, and I happily crashed right into the build platform with a 220 degree tip.  Nice gouge! 

Seems the build team forgot to read the configuration instructions.  Something about the fact that my stepper motors might be reversed? 

After a wild goose chase to get new Molex connectors and rebuild the data cables (Good thinking Dataman, but entirely WRONG!)  Padawan discovered something about Inverted Axises in the documentation?  Duh!!!

Anyhow, read the docs more carefully.  Especially Calibration, PID Settings, Thermistor Calibration, Skeinforge Setup.  Lots to do before you really print!

Anyhow, by some miracle, these two somehow got it right.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Build Day 3: Plastistruder

Putting together the Plastistruder was the next bit of business.
A complex bit of maThey get through the Y, X, and Case stages and give up for

This machinery, this is the Achile's heel of the whole bot.
If the pinchwheel does not push correctly, the filament jams,
If the hot-end does not operate properly, the fimalent jams,
If it's not cailbrated properly, guess what? it jams.

Please note a couple noob mistakes here...
A better picture later on...

Friday, June 25, 2010

Build Day 2: Mechanical Complete

Day 2 build complete,
X, Y, and Z Stages Installed, Electronics Installed
Problems with with Data cables, not well documented.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

My Birthday

I'm delivered by UPS from MakerBot, New York.  The 1,251st of my kind.  Happy Birthday Dataman!

Dataman and Padawan get to work on putting me together. They get through the Y, X, and Case stages and give up for the night, pretty exhausted.

For now, I'm an empty box with a couple disconnected sub assemblies.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

I'm Almost There!

I'm en route to Las Vegas in a couple of boxes!
A couple of parts arrived today, and Dataman quickly put them together.
The big box with all my major assemblies is due to arrive tomorrow.
Today it's just the Endstops and Lots and Lots of Plastic!