Hello RAMPS, Meet ESP8266

August 20, 2015 by Anool Mahidharia 17 Comments

The proliferation of DIY 3D printers has been helped in large measure by the awesome open-source RepRap project. A major part of this project is the RAMPS board – a single control board / shield to which all of the other parts of the printer can be easily hooked up. A USB connection to a computer is the usual link of choice, unless the RAMPS board has the SD-Card option to allow the 3D printer to operate untethered. [Chetan Patil] from CreatorBot built a breakout board to help attach either the ESP8266 WiFi or the HC-05 Bluetooth module to the Aux-1 header on the RAMPS board. This lets him stream G-code to the printer and allow remote control and monitoring.

While the cheap ESP8266 modules are the current flavor of the season with Hackers, getting them to work can be quite a hair tearing exercise. So [Chetan] did some hacking to figure out the tool chain for developing on the ESP module and found that LUA API from NodeMcu would be a good start. The breakout board is nothing more than a few headers for the ESP8266, the HC-05 and the Aux-1 connections, with a few resistors, a switch to set boot loader mode and a 3.3V regulator. If you’re new to the ESP8266, use this quick, handy, guide by [Peter Jennings] to get started with the NodeMCU and Lualoader. [Chetan]’s code for flashing on the ESP8266, along with the Eagle board design files are available via his Github repo. Just flash the code to the ESP8266 and you’re ready to go.

One gotcha to be aware of is to plug in the ESP module after the printer has booted up. Otherwise the initial communication from the ESP module causes the printer to lock up. We are sure this is something that can be taken care of with an improved breakout board design. Maybe use a digital signal from the Arduino Mega on the RAMPS board to keep the ESP module disabled for a while during start up, perhaps? The video after the break gives a short overview of the hack.

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Wood & Glue RepStrap Works Surprisingly Well

July 5, 2015 by Rich Bremer 7 Comments

Even with the cost of 3D Printers continually falling, entering the hobby still requires a significant investment. [Skeat] had some typical 3D Printer components available but didn’t have access to a printer for making the ever-so-common frame parts of typical RepRap designs.

[Skeat’s] plan was to cobble together a printer just good enough to print out parts for another, more robust one. The frame is made from wood, a very inexpensive and available material. The frame is not screwed together and doesn’t have any alignment tabs, it’s just hand cut pieces glued together. Each portion of the frame is laid out, aligned with a carpenter’s square and then glued together. This design and assembly method was intentional as [Skeat] didn’t have access to any precision tools. He stated that the only parts of the frame that had to be somewhat precise were the motor mount holes. The assembly process is well documented to aid anyone else looking to make something similar.

In addition to the wooden frame, all of the components are glued in place. That includes the bearings, rods, limit switches and even the Z axis motor! After seeing the photos of this printer, it would be easy to dismiss it as a poor performer. The below video shows that this printer’s print quality can keep up with any hobby level machine available. We wonder if [Skeat] is rethinking making another since this one works so well.

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Hackaday Links: June 7, 2015

June 7, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 22 Comments

I’ve said over and over again that Apple’s MagSafe port is the greatest advancement in laptop tech in the last 15 years. Those charger connectors break, though, so how do you fix it? With Lego, of course (Google translatrix). Use a light-colored 1×4 brick so the LED will shine through.

Want to learn Git commands? Here’s a great game that does just that. It’s a really well-designed game/tutorial that walks you through basic Git commands.

Lets say you’re just slightly paranoid about the Bad Guys™ getting into your computer with 0-days and roller blades. You’d like to connect this computer to the Internet, but you don’t want to leave it connected all the time. The solution? A timer for an Ethernet switch. It’s actually a better solution than doing the same thing with scripts: there’s a real, physical interface, and if the Bad Guys™ get in when you are connected, they could just enable the network adapter anyway. An extremely niche use case, but that’s 99% of the security hacks we see.

The DaVinci 3D printer is an okay printer if you’re cool with the Gilette model. The filament cartridges are chipped, and the software is proprietary. These problems have been solved, and now you can use a standard RepRap heated bed and glass with the DaVinci. At this point, people are buying the DaVinci just to tear it apart.

Cheap Hot End Modification Allows Easy Future Repairs

June 2, 2015 by Rich Bremer 24 Comments

We’ve seen a lot of experimenting with 3D printers over the years, and that is a good thing. However, [Tyler] has had a bad experience with experimenting. He has a Printrbot Simple Metal and decided to try nylon weed wacker line. Since he wanted to get straight to printing, he skipped the apparently important step of drying the trimmer line before printing. This experimentation ended in several clogged nozzles. Removing and cleaning the nozzle several times put undo stress on the Ubis hot end wires and they broke. Things were not going well.

In an effort to make his printer more repairable, [Tyler] ordered up an aluminum RepRap heater block, heating resistor and thermistor. The heater block was tapped with standard M6 threads but the Ubis was 1/4 inch. This was remedied by drilling and tapping the M6 hole to 1/4-20.

Now for the nozzles, [Tyler] bought a handful of cheap brass acorn nuts. He drilled a hole for the molten plastic to exit the nozzle, then used a Dremel to grind the acorn nut’s dome into a cone. He reports it only took him about 5 minutes per nozzle.

It looks like [Tyler] got back to printing with a little creative thinking. Unfortunately, the Ubis and J-Head hot ends are not interchangeable. A couple of other ex-Ubis users have made J-Head adapters for their Printrbots.

Robottermilk Pancakes

April 23, 2015 by Mike Szczys 7 Comments

With a name like that how could we possibly pass up featuring this one? Truly a hack, this pancake making robot was built in under 24 hours. [Carter Hurd], [Ryan Niemo], and [David Frank] won the 2015 Ohio State University Makethon with the project.

The gantry runs on drawer sliders using belts from a RepRap. The motors themselves are DC with encoders. [Carter] tells us that since most 3D Printers are build on stepper motors this meant they had to scratch-build the control software but luckily were able to reuse PID software for the rest. Get this, the pump driving the pancake batter was pulled from a Keurig and a servo motor is used to kink the tubing, halting the flow. We are amused by the use of a Sriracha bottle as the nozzle.

It wasn’t just the printer being hacked together. The team also built an iPhone app that lets you draw your desired pattern and push it to the machine via WiFi.

Inspired yet? We are! If you’re anywhere near New York City you need to bring this kind of game to our Hackathon on May 2-3. One night, lots of fun, lots of food, and plenty of hardware. What can you accomplish?

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More MRRF, This Time A Roundtable

April 2, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 5 Comments

Ah, you thought we were done with our coverage of the Midwest RepRap Festival, didn’t you? No, there’s still more, thanks to [Timothy Koscielny] sending in some digital assets that were required to put this post together. This time, it’s the RepRap roundtable with [Johnny Russell] from Ultimachine, [Shane Graber] from MakerJuice, [Lars Brubaker] from MatterHackers, [Sanjay Mortimer] from E3D-Online.

The first video covers the introductions for these very prominent 3D printer developers and their views on what future advances in 3D printers will be, the differences between Delta, Cartesian, and Polar bots (there aren’t many), and when resin printers will start to pick up.

In the Q&A session, the panel fielded a few questions from the audience. Questions included how to get people into 3D modeling, an amazing question dealing with what we should be making (with the implication that we’re only making stupid plastic trinkets), and what needs work to bring 3D printing to the masses.

Special thanks to [Casey Hendrickson] from ninety two point three WOWO for MC’ing the RepRap roundtable and to [Timothy Koscielny] for the audio work. This isn’t it, though: I still need to dump a bunch of pictures after the break.

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MRRF: Hot Ends, Extruders, Extremely Posh Brits, And Stoic Swedes

March 25, 2015 by Brian Benchoff 26 Comments

As far as locations for the Midwest RepRap Festival go, it’s not exactly ideal. This is a feature, not a bug, and it means only the cool people come out to the event. There were a few people travelling thousands of miles across an ocean, just to show off some cool things they built.

Two Colors, One Nozzle

[Sanjay] and [Josh] from E3D came all the way from merry olde England to show off a few of their wares. The star of their show was the Cyclops extruder, a dual-extrusion hot end that’s two input, one output. Yes, two colors can come out of one nozzle.

If you see a printer advertised as being dual extrusion, what you’re going to get is two extruders and two hot ends. This is the kludgy way to do things – the elegant solution is to make two colors come out of one nozzle.

The guys from E3D were showing off a few prints from their Cyclops nozzle that does just that, including a black and red poison dart frog, and a blue and white octopus. The prints looked amazing, and exactly what you would expect from a two-color print.

Rumor has it the development of the Cyclops involved extruding two colors, freezing the nozzle, and putting it in the mill just to see how the colors mixed. I didn’t see those pictures, but there’s a lot of work that went into this hot end.

The Power of Two Extruders

[Martin] of bondtech.se came to MRRF all the way from Sweden. He was there showing off his new extruder.

The extruder uses a normal stepper motor, but instead of the usual knurled or threaded feed wheel and bearing to push filament though, he’s using two counter-rotating feed wheels attached to a planetary gear system. That’s a lot of torque that doesn’t distort or strip the filament. When you consider all the weird filaments that are coming out – ninjaflex, and even 3D printable machinable wax filament, this is extremely interesting.

Even if your filament isn’t exactly 1.75 or 3mm in diameter, this setup will still reliably push plastic; there is a bolt that will move one of the feed wheels in and out 0.4mm.

[Martin] had a pair of his extruders hooked up to a strain gauge, and it’s strong enough to lift your printer off the table without stripping the filament. Here’s a video of that demo from the bondtech page.