I finally came to the point where I had to figure out a heated bead for my Kossel Mini 3D printer. It is OK to print smaller objects using PLA plastic without a heated bed however to print larger objects or use ABS you must have a heated bed to prevent warpage.
Read moreKossel Mini 3D Printer Heated Aluminum Print surface
It is a bit of a chore to research all the different types of hot ends and attempt to figure out which one to sink your cash into. I have had over six different types of hot ends, by far the J-Heads have been the best.
I started out with Airtripper’s direct drive extruder on my 3D printer and while I liked it a lot I found out that normal stepper motors will not work. You need a hefty stepper motor and even at that I doubt the ramps stepper drivers can handle it. It is suggested to use a gear reduced stepper with something like a 4:1 step down, these are fairly expensive so I opted to build a Greg’s extruder which has the approximant 4:1 step down that I needed.
Read moreGreg’s Accessible Extruder Assembly for Kossel Mini
Here is a fun project you can do with your kids. It’s a project box with battery, switches, LEDs, vibrating motor, and whatever else you can come up with. it uses header pins and jumper wires to enable the user to connect circuits.
Keeping your hot end can reduce jamming, as the heat travels up the filament the liniment will expand sometimes jamming the hot end.
This fan duct bolts right on to a RepRap carrage and is meant for a 30MM fan. You will have to drill your own holes.
There are many options for 3D printer electronics. I like to use the Arduino Mega along with a RAMPS 1.4 board, as I already have lots of Arduino experience.
You can easily power a 3D printer using an ATX PC power supply. You will need to connect the green PS-ON wire to ground to power the supply on.
Read morePowering the Kossel Mini 3D printer and modifying an ATX PC Power Supply
You can chose just about any Bowden extruder for the Kossel Mini, I chose Airtripper’s Bowden Extruder.
Read moreKossel Mini Airtripper’s Bowden Extruder and Print Bed
There are several options available for the vertical movement carriage of the Kossel Mini. The thing is some options cost a LOT more money. I will show some options along with prices as of 1/1/2014.
1. Use MR12 MGN12C HIWIN rail and truck currently about $140.00 after shipping…
2. Use an additional printed carriage with Dual 623 V rollers currently around $80.00 after shipping…
In this video I assemble the push rods, effector, and auto level probe.
Push rods: They should be around 180MM and MUST be exactly the same length. If they are all a little bigger or smaller you can adjust in the software. Cut the head off of 12 M4X20 screws and screw the ball joint ends on to the rods, be careful not to split the rods so a tap may be needed.
Read moreKossel Mini Tutorial, Push Rods, Effector, Auto Level Probe and Hot End
My first 3D printer was a Prusa Mendel V2 Reprap, after seeing the speed and precision of my bosse’s Rostock Max and drooling over his Kossel mini I decided it was time to make another printer. (You can find my Prusa Mendel V2 Reprap post here) I have found that half the fun of 3D printing is building the machine… especially if you are the type that enjoys tinkering and fiddling with gadgets. I have also found that 3D printing is absolutely a hobby, though, I am to cheap to try some of the more out of the box printers that are developing nowadays. I am not sure if the urge to build things or my cut-rate pocket-book drive my DIY printing hobby more…
I found gathering all the info needed to dive into RC cars as a hobby kind of confusing. It helps a lot to have a mentor that you can ask questions but that is not always possible.
Making Cat5 Ethernet cables or repairing the ends is quite easy.
You will need a RJ45 connector, a crimper, and some strippers or a knife to strip the shield.
Read moreHow to terminate RJ45 connectors on Cat5 Ethernet cable
The useless machine is a simple box with a switch and motor, when you turn on the switch the lid opens and the arm swings out and turns off the machine and then retracts. It is so simple but brings a smile to the face of everyone that tries! The Useless Machine was not created by me, it can be found in Make Magazine and in numerous Instructables and DIY articles online.
Building my very first 3D printer was quite traumatic and time consuming but also fun and rewarding! I don’t suggest building your own unless you have a love for tinkering, and making. There are some other qualities that will come in handy such as tendency’s for hacking, electronics, and computers. As this is a computer controlled machine complete with a microcontroller you MUST know how to turn a computer on. Be aware that building your own RepRap is more like getting a hobby than getting a project.
Programming a button press with VB and your @Netduino, Event handlers and interrupt ports. In this tutorial I show how to program the Netduino to light up the onboard LED when the button is pressed, I then go into event handlers and latching buttons.
This is the first in a series of tutorials on programming the Netduino with Visual Basic or VB. You can program the netduino with either C# or VB but VB is now my language of choice.
Programming your Netduino with C# is fine and all, however, I am not going to do it any more. It is super easy to make the switch to a more forgiving programming language by the name of Visual Basic or VB.
In order to upgrade or replace the firmware in your Netduino you will need to download some software first.
