Metrix Trip

After the long break we are back in action. We traveled to Capitol Hill today to go to Metrix Play Space to ask some experts about the MakerBot. When we last worked on the MakerBot we had some tough times getting the Z stage to move properly. So we thought it would be a good idea to come to Metrix and ask how we should go about fixing the stage. Well when we arrived the MakerBot decided to fix itself and the actual stage works perfectly. Thankfully this is now working but we have run into another problem. We believe our engines and boards are overheating so we are trying to figure out how to change, and fix, our current settings so that we can run the machine at an efficient temperature. No need to burn out the engines!

Heated Build platform, Blender modeling, and Remapping with Replicator G

With the MakerBot complete it now comes to us testing and maker sure the printer can work! So we decided to split up our tasks to be more efficient. Nathan is going to build the heated build platform, I will be working with Blender to make a first object to print, and Steven is going to be working on remapping the heater controller to a different port. Hopefully we can get something printing today but we will see! So far we are all very excited to be working on this and can't wait to start printing!

We've got heat!

Our time together on Tuesday ended with the Makerbot all put together and communicating with ReplicatorG. We were excited to see everything coming together but our Plastruder wasn't heating up so we weren't able to do a test extrusion. We planned to tackle this problem the following Thursday; Alex was going to see if his TA would be able to give us some advise. I was feeling particularly motivated on Wednesday between classes so I began scouring the Makebot forums. I found a person who was having similar problems. It turned out that the port our heater controller was plugged into wasn't working. I quickly switched the connection and it did the trick. The instructions now require us to remap the ports in ReplicatorG, this should be a challenging task.
We were also having trouble updating the firmware of the motherboard and extruder controller. While searching on the forums I was also able to find out how to update the motherboard.
In other news, we have decided on a name for our Makerbot: Midas!

Electronic's, Soldering, and Plugging in Wires

After Thursday of last week we have most of the parts constructed and now we are just trying to test each part using a multimeter. We are running into some trouble as we are not getting acceptable values for the thermistor or the heating resistors. At this point we are having to test the wires again because on Thursday we could not get the right values. We believe it may be caused by our multimeter which isn't the most high tech. After a little disassembly we tested each resistor individually and found each to be about 5 ohm's and with a 1% tolerance we found them to be 3 ohm's in parallel so about 2.5 with the 1% tolerance. After some deliberation we figured to move forward with our work and are now going to try and put everything together so that we can try to calibrate and begin printing on Thursday.

It's Soldering Time

We stopped on Sunday when we realized that we didn't have any solder to use on the plasturder parts. We got quite a bit finished though so we called it a night. Nathan was able to procure some solder so we are able to continue working on the plasturder. So far producing the plastruder hasn't been extremely difficult. Some of the parts are hard to assemble which is poorly portrayed in the instructions but with a little brute force and elbow grease we were able to get them together and in the plastruder. We will definitely make a note of how difficult the pieces were to put together, which was mainly the thumbscrew. At this point we are working on soldering and we will hopefully get the plastruder finished today.

Sunday Night Session

We met up this Sunday night to get started on building the Plastruder. The 59 pages of instructions seemed like a daunting task until we figured out that we printed out the wrong version. Starting in on the 35 pages of instructions for the Plastruder MK5 seems like an easy task now.
Nathan has made some attempts to use Google SketchUp to create 3D models of chess pieces but quickly become frusterated with the software. We will try to use Solid Works, Blender, and Rhino in the future do the 3D modeling. It will be exciting to see the Plastruder come together so we can finally begin printing things out!

Interview for Thingiverse

Allan Ecker has decided to interview us for thingiverse's website. We answered the questions today and the interview should be up by tomorrow!

Body is ready to build

After taking Tuesday off for test studying and Portland traveling we are back at the MakerBot. We had to wait for a couple meetings before assembling the body because we needed to make this MakerBot stand out a bit, so Nathan spray painted the outside of the body, twice, with gold and then finished it off with a clear coat. All in all the body looks really snazzy and today we are going to start actually putting it together. So far in the construction there hasn't been anything extremely difficult in our path. I think the real troubles will come when we need to start building the pieces like the extruder which has many intricate parts. I believe we will get the body completed today and then begin looking at the extruder.