Calibration and the first extrusion

When we went to Metrix, we went to figure out our problems with the z-stage and why our stepper motors were so hot. Matt at Metrix was on his way out so he wasnt able to help us a whole lot but he was able to give us some valuable information about printing, painting, and where to look for information.

We fixed our problems with the z-stage using our iPhones as a measuring device for leveling the z-stage. We then had to figure out why the motors were over heating. We searched on the makerbot wiki to find more information about it. There was not a lot of helpful information about making the correct calibrations to reduce the current to the motors. We found out that we need to adjust the potentiometers on each of the stepper motor boards. Matt told us that adjustments to the potentiometers will only take place after a power cycle. So we made our first adjustment to the x board by turning the potentiometer off with a 3/4 counter-clockwise turn. After we powercycled, we were not able to control our x-stage anymore, which is exactly what we wanted. We made a 1/4 clockwise turn to power back on. It was just a guess. Now the z-stage motor is complete cool when its running. The y-stepper is warm but the x-stepper is still really hot. The z-stage still makes some noise when going up and down.

Our first print was a bust of a woman's torso. I was kept my eye on the model the entire time to make sure nothing was going on. I was so excited to see it build up. The instant I looked away the nozzle hit the model knocking it over. I had to stop the build. I tried another model the next morning and for some reason it printed most of the model and then changed where the zero location was and started the print at a different location.

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!