Brain Drink

Long Time, No C’s.

ziplock666 — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 15:30:04 +0000

It’s been close to a year since I posted my last update. I have a few semi-bullcrap excuses:

School. It got tough, fast. In fact, I drafted a huge article but never posted it, for that reason.
Life. Hey, I’m 14. I do have a life outside of this (albeit, a very small one).
Procrastination. I can’t manage anything, time-wise. Ask my friends and family.
The biggest one yet: 3D printer!

Yes, folks, I do have a 3D printer now. It’s not fully assembled yet, but it’s getting there. Praise for Kimberly and Lambert over at TechZone for the amazing and very cheap laser-cut version of Mendel, the second generation of amazingly awesome RepRap project’s printer. I will be posting pictures in the next update, as right now I can’t find the camera.

On the topic of printers, I have to say that Mendel is probably the greatest thing for the RepRap community at this point. It has sparked a few companies (TechZone, UltiMachine, and FlemmingCNC to name some), generated a large amount of press (check out the RepRap blog for more info), and spawned several derivatives (check the Blog of Blogs and the forums for more news). And it’s only been ~9 months! The 3D printing community is very active at this point, and is a very exciting new field. It’s akin to the computer revolution of the 1970′s, except data can be shared world-wide instantly (high-speed internet FTW). As Bre Pettis (founder of MakerBot to those who don’t know) said, “The only other way to get a whistle from Germany to New York in 30 minutes is through a missile- and that’s a bad idea!”

So, to recap:

Sorry for the extreme delay.
New 3D printer!
Mendel!
Exciting new stuff!
Whistle-Missile (or not!)
More posts, videos, and photos on the way!

See you all in a few days!

-Adam

7805 and TDTWWA

ziplock666 — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 01:51:34 +0000

I just went to RadioShack and Vintage Stock today. I got a 5v 7805 voltage regulator (always handy in electronics!) and some pre-formed breadboarding wire for prototyping. Also, at Vintage Stock, I got Nine Inch Nails’ The Day The World Went Away, which is a single from their 1999 album “The Fragile”. That brings my Nine Inch Nails CD collection up to 3 releases. Anyways, I’m gonna go listen to music and prototype now!

Have a fun Make-cation!

‘Struding

ziplock666 — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:35:28 +0000

If you’ve been paying attention to the Make: Blog recently, you would’ve noticed a cool little machine called the CupCake CNC. It’s produced by MakerBot Industries (http://www.makerbot.com/), and is built off of the RepRap project (http://reprap.org/).

Makerbot is a company run by Zach Hoeken (http://www.zachhoeken.com/), Bre Pettis (http://www.brepettis.com/), and Adam Mayer.

RepRap and CupCake CNC have a few things in common. They are both Additive CNC machines. That means that they take a piece of plastic (usually ABS, but sometimes HPDE) and push it through a nozzle. That nozzle has a heating element in it that turns the plastic into something you can mold and shape. The nozzle/ plastic pusher is called an extruder.

The extruder, also known as the print head, is mounted on the XYZ translation stage. This stage is made of three stepper motors, which are motors that have a little accuracy in their movement.

The translation stage is moved by the electronics assembly. In past versions of the RepRap, these electronics have included the PIC microcontroller, the Arduino (which was the brains for the first version), and the Sanguino (which is embedded on the Generation 3 motherboard). These all do the same basic job; the only difference is capability. With the PIC, usage is hard, you need a serial to TTL logic convertor, and the compiler is wonky on most machines. With the Arduino, you are limited to smaller sized projects. With the Generation 3 electronics, you can print anything that can fit in your machine.

The CupCake CNC wrapps up all of the messy details of a RepRap (finding and buying parts) and puts it in a nice shell. The CupCake CNC includes everything you need- The electronics, the frame, hardware, mechanics, everything- and puts it in an easy to assemble and use package.

You know what the coolest thing is, though?

You can print the parts for a RepRap in a CupCake CNC. That makes it a RepStrap- a machine that “bootstraps” the furtherment of the RepRap.

The whole point of the RepRap and CupCake CNC projects is to bring rapid prototyping and production to the masses. That idea even takes root in the name- RepRap stands for Replicating Rapid Prototyper. And, to top it all off, the design in open source, which means anyone can share, modify, sell, or exploit the design. I could mod it and make my own model. You could, too. Again, the entire project comes back to production. The robot (RepRap Darwin, that is. He’s the official v1) is designed with affordability in mind. Almost all of the machine can be reproduced in another machine. The only thing you need is some metal rods, metal ball chains, stepper and regular motors, electronics, and some nuts and bolts. Even then, the ability to produce the electronics in the machine is being worked on.

So, take the time to build a RepRap or CupCake CNC. It’s fun, and it serves a greater purpose, too. Once you have one, it becomes all the more easier for another person to get one- with your help, of course. Also, with a 3D printer, you can make your own stuff, eliminating the need to buy the same product.

At the last time I checked, it cost about $400-$500 to build a RepRap. A CupCake CNC costs $750 to $950, depending on which kit you buy, and the same machine costs $2,250 to buy fully assembled. Those figures may seem steep, but compared to the other 3D printing project, Fab@Home, which costs about $3000, it’s pretty inexpensive. And, compared to a commercial 3D printer, which can run you $30,000 to over half a million dollars, it’s down right dirt cheap.

This is the first article of many about 3D printing. I can’t wait to see what you print!

Slide to the left…

ziplock666 — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 04:48:39 +0000

My TouchShield Slide arrived from Liquidware a few days ago. The reason for the delay was a school trip and me working on some still buggy code. The project I’m doing is going to let you send data from the computer (text strings) and it will be transmitted via XBee’s to the TouchShield. The Arduino acts as an XBee to TouchSlide converter, and also does some signal filtering. I keep hitting problems with the code, so I have to add an ASCII lookup table to get it to work.

Xbee Madness!!!

ziplock666 — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 02:17:23 +0000

I got two of the Xbee Sheild Remixed from Seeedstudio, and they arrived today! It so fun to mess around with them. I can’t wait for my birthday present, which is a TouchSheild Slide.

XBee Shield!

ziplock666 — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:15:05 +0000

I just finished up my homemade XBee shield. It’s made of a ProtoShield from Adafruit, some resistors, two LED’s, an XBee module (of course!), a mini-breadboard, and an XBee Breakout board from SparkFun Electronics. Cost me ~$30 to build, instead of paying $80 to buy one.

Githubby

ziplock666 — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:10:41 +0000

I just started using Github, which is sort of like Sourceforge, but better! I created a fork of the Liquidware guys’ branch of the Arduino IDE, just to add some updates they missed. My github profile is here: http://github.com/ziplock

Bespin Madness (And Arduino, too!)

ziplock666 — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 21:24:34 +0000

I just learned about the Bespin online IDE.

http://vimeo.com/3195079

Here’s a link to the beta:

http://bespin.mozilla.com

It’s really cool, and the guys over at the Arduino project are working on a way to get full Arduino capability into it. Speaking of the Arduino, I came up with a few new ideas for it. In fact, I just finished my Nuovo, which comes complete with an XBee socket and is all through-hole components. This version uses an FTDI cable instead of an FTDI chip, so there are NO surface-mount parts.

I also had a few project ideas. One of them was to attach a GPS Shield from Ladyada and an Accelerometer shield that I came up with. This project would be put in an Otterbox-style container and used as a flight recorder. Too bad I can’t take a GPS on an airplane.

My accelerometer shield is just a PCB with a punch of female headers for attaching popular accelerometers.

Twitchy

ziplock666 — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 05:52:38 +0000

I made the Servo example from the Arduino IDE, and took it to class. Everyone loved it. Also, I made an Arduino To-Go kit. I keep it in an old SparkFun box. Look quite nice, actually…

My ISP is wacking with my interweb connection, so I can’t access Flickr right now. Guess photos can wait

Exposition of Rangefinder

ziplock666 — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 22:05:02 +0000

I showed off my range finder in one of my classes today. Every was saying this: “Ooh! Cool!” They had never seen an Arduino, or a PING))), or an LED! They didn’t understand that it was a simple project, and that the code was a few lines. Bah!

But the good news is that I’m starting an electronics workshop at my house. Many people seem interested, and I’m going to start them off with the basics, then build up their knowledge in a set of many workshops. Each one is about 2 hours, and since no one even knows what a resistor is, I have to start at the beginning. But by the end of the class, I’ll have them (my class of 5-10) using the Arduino. I’m even thinking of buying Arduino’s for them.

That was my goal in the long run, to get people to use Arduino. I really do want other people to know that they can do all sorts of things with Open Source technology and have fun and learn something. I want people to learn about and use Open Source as a principle in their lives.