Smashing Cricuts.

Well, not really, but I used a Cricut vinyl cutter for the first time today.  Lotsa fun!

I found a set of Adobe Illustrator templates for my bike several years ago and have been meaning to do this for a long time.  I designed some new graphics a couple of years ago, but still didn't get them cut.  Today was the day.  Last day of school, no students, room was all checked off and I was good to go.  Been fighting with file formats for the last week so I figured I would give it one last try, glad I did! Got them all straightened out and ran them through "Make the Cut".  The OLD version, that lets you run the Cricut like a CNC without having to cut only whats on the stupid cartridges.



Cricut doing its thing.



Peeled off the extra vinyl and had this left. Made a few stickers for my website with all of the extra space.





Used a little bit of contact paper to transfer this piece over,



The rest were just stuck on by eyeballing it.

Before:



After!



Not to bad for eyeballin it!  One side done:



Now to do the other side and finish up a few little things.

FWIW, the templates I have DO NOT fit perfectly... I had to trim a little to get it to look right, and because the tank is not perfectly flat there were a few teeny wrinkles in the vinyl.

I spent about $25 on vinyl- just used whatever my local craft store had in stock. Don't like the orange I got so I will probably order some brighter stuff but I was impatient and wanted to get it done.

Here's what my poor bike looked like before:



and AFTER!

 






You might notice I changed a*few* other small things besides the stickers... Glad it's finally back in the dirt! Hoping to do a lot of riding with the family this year... I even figured out how to stuff the bike, the 4 wheeler, and two mini-bikes on my teeny little trailer!



Oh, and did I mention?  SCHOOLS OUT!!!

3D printed parts- Functional? YES!

Been working on fine tuning the Mendelmax 2.0.  Have figured several things out, and am working on a few "Quickstart" guides.  In the meantime, here's a few of my test pieces.

One of my students asked me if I could make some parts for his dads motorcycle helmet that he apparently was unable to find anywhere.  There were to pieces, mirror images, and only one was broken.  He brought both parts in, I measured them up and drew it up in Sketchup.  The black are the old, you can see the one on the left is missing a piece. Blue are the new parts, and they are pretty darn close!



I had to go back after they printed and cut a little piece out, but it took all of 5 seconds on each part.
 



Had the speeds turned down quite a bit and the quality looks excellent. Took about 13 minutes to finish both of them.  He told me today the parts fit perfectly and the helmet works like new!

'Nuther project for the woods teacher. He wanted some rollers to fit on a pipe rail thingy he's building. Much bigger print, took about 43 minutes for each half at high speed.









As you can see, they are a little rough.  There is a setting to crank up the number of "edges" in a circle in Sketchup, but I forgot to change that and had it printing already. He took it home and tried it on the pipe, said he thinks it will work perfectly the way it is. He needs three more, then he's going to build a rail out of the pipe and a carriage with the wheels to go on the pipe to carry his cutting torch.

Pic he texted me:



And some spare parts just in case. Speed was cranked up on these too, and they came out pretty nice. Maybe a 2 minute print time.




And lastly today's somewhat useless invention. Made these snaps to go on over the extrusions to hold wires down.













I was sure someone had to already have thought of this, turns out I was right...

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:15812

I've been starting to make separate "profiles" in Slic3r- I have one for small parts with slower speeds and cooling fan, and one for larger parts with higher speeds.  Finally starting to get the hang of this thing, LOTSA fun!  The Mendelmax is more than capable- even more than I had hoped.  Still need to get the updated z axis parts installed, maybe over spring break!

Mendelmax 2.0 / 3D Printers in general- A review, and some thoughts.

Well, with a few successful prints under my belt, I think its time to write a few of my thoughts down.  These printers are incredible machines.  It is something else to draw something up in Sketchup, click a few buttons, jiggle a few switches, and then sit back and wait for an actual thingamajig to come off the printer.  My wife thinks its pretty funny, but me and the boys will sit and watch it print- back and forth, back and forth, for hours on end.  My students have been totally enthralled with it- anytime it's running they want to stand around and gawk at it.  Maybe they just want to avoid working on their assignments?  Nah...

Previous to this expereince, I had ZERO time playing with 3D printers.  I did get an Associates degree in Manufacturing Engineering like 10 years ago, which had a fair bit of CNC experience, and that helped a bit.  There is litterally thousands upon thousands of pages of information out there on the internet, and many different resources for setting up your own printer. 

What does all this mean?  Well, I don't know how qualified I am to review the Mendelmax 2.0, but here's my take on it.  Given my background I would consider myself as one with great skills when it comes to the mechanical end of things, but only mediocre when it comes to the electronics / software end of things.  I will admit- this was a HARD project for me.  It took a lot of time and I had to do a lot of research and trial and error to get prints.  I do feel though that as this specific printer moves from the beta testing process into a more refined package for resale, many of my headaches will have been eliminated.  Many of the issues I have had have already been adressed, and as more people build and use this printer the support group and information will expand exponentialy. 

As for print quality.  Again, I don't have much to compare it to, so here's my take.  From what I have seen, the quality coming off of my printer is excellent.  There are hundreds of varialbes that affect the quality- type of plastic, size of nozzle, extruder, heated bed, design of parts, and on and on.  In addition to the physical factors, it does take some practice and some skill to get the printer aligned and calibrated each time, and to know how to design prints to be successfull.  It's all part of the huge learning curve.  Again, thankfully, there is a lot of info and a lot of people out there willing to help you become successfull.

I full intend to use the heck out of this machine in the classes I teach.  I don't see any reason why it isn't up to the task of running just about continuosly day in and day out in a middle school setting.  Sure, things will probably wear out or need adjusting, but it's a well built, well thought out design that can only get better- that's the beauty of REPRAP's or REPSTRAP's- everyone can littlerally print their own improvements.  Heck, I've already got an idea to adapt some ideas from a MIG welder to my extruder to make it much quicker and easier (without tools) to change plastics.

Can't wait to see where this thing takes me.  For now, we'll call the assembly and testing done.  Keep in mind I will still have to do the z-axis update when it shows up, and I still plan on doing a lot of posts here about how to set up prints, slic3r settings, different plastics, and other little tips and tricks I've picked up doing this.

SO.  Lets call it an even 18 hrs. to build, test, and get some decent prints off of this printer.

I feel now that I've done it, this could be DRASTICALLY reduced-  I think  much more reasonable estimate should be 5-10 hours for the total newby, and possibly quite a bit less for the experienced builder with all the tools and know-how from previous builds.

What would one of my posts be without a ton of pics?!

Some bling, both from Makers Tool Works and the school district...



The "finished" printer. Still need to make a spool holder for the plastic among many other things...



 Several of my trials and errors.












Kids sure love to watch it!

Mendelmax 2.0- Bits and Pieces.

Are we getting tired of this thing yet?!  I am SO ready for it to be done...  Lots of little odds and ends to tie up.  Let me apologize right now in advance for this gi-mongous post... Sorry. 

Assembling the Y idler. Here is my first complaint... this step uses 3D printed parts- and the print quality was pretty poor on these two. I'll explain more when we get to the pics.

Parts.



These two slots are supposed to have nuts slid into them- but as you can see the right slot is warped. It took me a bunch of dinking around to carve it out big enough to get the nut to fit (both sides were too small and had to be carved out).





Finally got them in...



This nut went in fine, but the screw wasn't long enough to reach it so I had to drill out the other side.





Once I got it drilled out enough, take the screw out and install the bearings.



Attach the base. The instructions called for M5-8, but they wouldn't reach so I used M5-10.



Install the tensioner nut on the back. This hole had to be carved out too...



And the tensioner screw.



Easiest part- put it on the machine.



Time Spent on this step: 40 min. (should have been like 5...)
Total time so far: 6 hrs 30 min.

More fiddling and tweaking.  I also spent some time adjusting things to get everything square and moving as freely as possible. The first order of business was to free up the x-axis- I made the mistake of tightening up the rails too soon. One of the little screws stripped out trying to loosen them, so I had to drill it out, slide the rail out, and replace it.





Once I had that fixed, I just slid the plate back and forth and slowly tightened the screws until they were all tight and the plate slid back and forth freely.

The z axis was similar. Loosened things, and slowly tightened them back up until it seems to move freely. The thing that seemed to make the biggest difference was to not tighten these busing blocks as tightly- they are plenty tight, just not gorilla tight.



The y-axis didn't need and adjusting- it moved very freely.

The last thing I did was fix the x idler- had to add a few washers. Here is the correct assembly.





And installed.



Also went over all of the nuts and bolts and checked and tightened anything I found loose.

Time Spent on this step: 1 hr.
Total time so far: 7 hrs. 30 min. 



Finishing Touches! The closer I get to done the more I notice the hundreds of little things that still have to be finished...

Parts:



Install the pulleys. They have to be oriented a certain way to line up with the axis and idlers.

Y-axis:



X-axis:



Cut the belts.



Attach one end to the axis plate.  I plan on adding another zip tie and trimming of the extra on all of the belts still.  Y axis:



Loop it over the pulley



And through the idler



And attach it back to the axis plate.



Obviously the extra belt needs trimmed off still...

Adjust the tension using the idler.



X-axis. Still need to trim the belts.












Once the belts are on, adjust the tensioners to tighten.



Time Spent on this step: 30 min.
Total time so far: 8 hrs.

Spent some time routing stepper motor wires and figuring out how to hook things up. When I was talking to the company about what electronics to get, they recommended I get the RUMBA contoller board. It looks like the mounting brackets supplied do not work for my style of board, so I'm going to have to make something up. Same for the power supply. Means it'll take a little longer but I feel like I'm reaaalllly close to firing it up and figuring out the software!


Electronics bracket... not designed for my electronics.



Rubber feet.



Install one foot, then the bracket, then the other feet.





These should have all been installed while assembling the frame... The instructions have already been fixed to reflect that.

For the most part, all of the hardware is now DONE!!!  I *only* have to install the electronics and get the software figured out.  Sounds simple, right?  NOT.


Time Spent on this step: 45 min.
Total time so far: 8 hrs. 45 min.