Journal « a drop in the digital ocean

Project Leonard – Z Axis Coupling

Published on November 23, 2011 in Projects. 0 Comments Tags: 3D Printer, Project Leonard, RepRap, Z Coupling.

Following on from yesterdays Project Leonard post, today I fortunately I managed to get a set of the Z Axis couplings I designed last night printed. If you haven’t been following my RepRap build, yesterday evening I tried to assemble the machines Z axis and hit a small problem, when trying to attach the steppers to the 8mm threaded bar used to lift the X carriage.

The default Prusa couplings just would not grip the 8mm shaft, even when tightened to and/or even past full capacity. A little research of the RepRap wiki revealed another potential design solution as made by Chris Hanton, however I would need to machine the part. Instead I decided to utilise the design as a basis for the development of a printable solution. The above picture shows the bespoke part and the original coupling (with tightening damage).

As you can see the new design is much simpler in implementation.

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Project Leonard – Z Axis Issues

Published on November 22, 2011 in Projects. 0 Comments Tags: 3D Printer, Project Leonard, Prusa, RepRap.

Well this evening I hit the first snag in the Leonard build. No matter how much I tightened the motor to 8mm bar couplers the bar would not grip. I even tried wrapping tape around the bar in order to increase diameter (yup a dirty hack) but alas to no avail (bad design and/or model implementation if you ask me).

Eventually one of the couplers snapped due to purpose over tightening (not surprisingly) and this brought a halt to proceedings for most of today’s build. The above image shows the snapped coupling. Despite this issue however, I decided to continue mocking up the axis so I could get a feel of how things go together ready for my next attempt.

Once completed I decided to have a go at developing my own coupler utilising the “more durable design” developed by Chris Hanton and as suggested at reprap.org.

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Project Leonard – Y Carriage Build

Published on November 21, 2011 in Projects. 0 Comments Tags: 3D Printer, Project Leonard, RepRap.

Well some more of the parts for the Project Leonard build arrived today, more specifically the RAMPS electronics. Inspired by this I decided to allocate an hour this evening to a little more of the build. I started by tightening and squaring off the frame. This step takes some time and would be nearly impossible without the aid of spacing jigs (fashioned out of some spare lengths of wood).

With this achieved (maybe a little to tight in places) I then moved onto assembling the Y Carriage. This like all of the build so far was a fairly easy process that consisted of adding the two running bars and attaching the MDF base plate (via gluing to 4 slide on bushings). With this achieved and a little adjustment to ensure that the bed runs the length of the bars smoothly, I also decided to attach the Y stepper motor.

This is done by bolting the motor onto the provided mount, via use of three 3mm bolts (and washers). A little tweaking was also applied to ensure that the cog lines up with the pulley guides. An additional length of wood was used to ensure that the pulleys line up.

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Project Leonard – Frame Build

Published on November 16, 2011 in Projects. 0 Comments Tags: 3D Printer, Leonard, Project Leonard, RepRap.

Time for a quick update on my RepRap build, Leonard. Some of my part orders arrived at the weekend (kudos to thingfarm.org for great customer service) so today I finally started on assembling the frame and was pleasantly surprised at how fast everything went together. Utilising the Prusa build guide available at reprap.org I managed to get the basic structure put together in around an hour.

Everything now needs tightening and squaring up, but I’m more than happy with progress so far.

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Project Leonard – My Own RepRap

Published on November 6, 2011 in Projects. 0 Comments Tags: CNC, Leonard, Project Leonard, Prusa Mendel, RepRap.

Today I have started a new robotics project, Project Leonard. Leonard is to be my first CNC style automaton based on a RepRap design. I hope that the machine will afford me capability for home 3D printing, engraving, light milling and more. My thinking is that once I have completed the main unit (3D Printer) I will be able to then use it to develop and implement as many interchangeable CNC based attachments that I can think of.

For those of you not in the know:

RepRap is an open-source desktop 3D printer capable of printing plastic objects. Since many parts of RepRap are made from plastic and RepRap can print those parts, RepRap is a self-replicating machine – one that anyone can build given time and materials.

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Broken

Published on November 3, 2011 in News. 0 Comments

Hi folks some of you may have noticed a complete lack of postings as of late and the fact that the website is completely broken. This is due to a move from my old and rubbish hosting to one that has a decent up-time and none patronising support staff.

I aim to get things back up and running smoothly before the new year and thought that I would take this chance to also have a bit of a revamp etc. the wiici and blog sub-domains have gone completely hay wire at the moment – sorry about that.

Rest assured that I am on the case, d

OpenNI in WPF via EmguCV

Published on July 1, 2011 in Kinect. 2 Comments Tags: EmguCV, IR, Kinect, OpenNI, WPF.

Another quick demo showing the Kinect’s IR stream running in a WPF app. This time the image is created as an EmguCV (OpenCV-C#) Image Gray, ushort.

As you can see the quality is greatly enhanced in comparison to the last attempt. If you look closely you can make out the IR dot markers and also the grid pattern.

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