If you’ve been following Midsouth Makers you know that we’ve been building. using and tweaking our 3D printers for a while now. Well thanks to a kind donation by LulzBot we now have a dedicated 3D printer at the space for member use! The printer is an AO-101, a MendelMax 1.5 variant.

The AO-101 currently uses 3mm filament and can print in ABS, PLA, Nylon and even Laywoo-D3 wooden filament.  We  have it setup to allow for remote printing on the LAN, using either OctoPrint or Repetier-Server. We recommend Repetier-Server due to it’s stability.

The AO-101 will be using a donated a 1U server as the host computer. Repetier-Server will allow you to load a gcode file and control the printer. We will be exploring webcam functionality for use in monitoring and in generating time-lapse print videos.

We will need the following items to get our new 3D printer setup and functional:

• Filament- Currently setup for 3mm:
  • ABS
  • PLA
• Webcam- Logitech C110 or C270 preferred (we’ve already tested and confirmed stability)
• 120mm silent PC case fan

AO-101 Specifications

• Build Area – 190mm 200mm 100mm
• Hot-end – Budaschnozzle 1.2
  • Extrusion temperature range – 180C – 240C
• Filament- Currently setup for 3mm and can reliably print the following material types:
  • ABS
  • PLA
  • Taulman 618 Nylon
  • Laywoo-D3 Wooden Filament
• Heated Print Bed (65C-110C)
• Borosilicate Glass Bed  with PET film on one side for printing with ABS and bare glass on the other side for printing with PLA
• Integrated Filament Mount for either loose coiled filament or spindles for spooled filament

Current AO-101 Modifications

• Nozzle Fan for printing in PLA installed but not hooked up
• RGB LED lighting (white for now)

More information on the new 3D printer can be found in our wiki.

If you’d like to use it, please contact Claudio, Ben, Dan or Cliff- more information will follow. In order to have access to the 3D printer without one of us present you will need to have had verified prior experience with a RepRap 3D printer, or attended an upcoming class on running & troubleshooting 3D printers(TBD) or be able to demonstrate the appropriate knowledge.

Please show our thanks and appreciation to LulzBot and the RepRap community!

Here are a couple of videos Dru made to show off the progress of his bubble bot.

Great Scott! What’s the date? Oh thank goodness, we’ve still got time.  Listen, I know this may sound “heavy” to you, but we’ve got to get you to the Midsouth Makers soldering class on October 8^th at noon or the consequences could be dire! I can’t tell you why it’s important without creating a temporal paradox, but I can promise you that learning how to build a RBBB (“Really Bare Bones Board”) Clone will be pivotal in your future in some way.  An RBBB is one of the smallest, most affordable arduino-compatible boards available right now.  You don’t even need any plutonium to power this baby, just plug it straight into the breadboard that the Makers will be providing to all the class participants. How many gigawatts is it?  Where we’re going, we don’t need gigawatts, just bring a soldering iron and the rest will be provided. Once you’ve completed this class, you’ll have you’re very own arduino compatible microcontroller, power cable, data cable, and breadboard to build it all on, the combination of which should help you save you from – oh no, I’ve already said too much! Hurry and sign-up on the events page at the following link: http://www.midsouthmakers.org/events/.  Then you too can say, “I finally made something that works!”

Details

Class: Soldering Part II: RBBB Clone

Cost: $35

Date, Time, & Location: October 8th  at the Space at Noon.

What to bring: Soldering Iron

What you get: An arduino compatible microcontroller, power cable, data cable, and a breadboard to build it on, plus a greater knowledge of soldering and circuitry.

You must sign-up before the day of the class so that we know how many parts to order!

You can do so at the following link: http://www.midsouthmakers.org/events/

Dan's Rep rap Prusa 3d Printer

I get a lot of blank stares and strange looks when I tell people that I am working on a 3D printer. As such I’d like to set out to explain what one is as well as show off what I’ve completed on mine thus far.

So you ask, “What exactly is one of them there 3-Dee printer things you’re talking about?” In short, it is a rapid prototyping machine. Since I’m sure that clears it all up and removes any further questions you have in your mind, I’m done here and everyone’s good to move on to the next blog right? No of course not. The best explanation I have is it’s a machine that takes a plastic material, melts it down, and places a thin layer of the melted plastic one layer at a time until you have a finished object. It is a printer that works like your old school inkjet printer but also moves on a 3rd axis to make non flat prints.

Claudio's RepRap Prusa

The idea is as follows. What do you do when you want to develop some brand new, earth shattering, world stopping, sign of the apocalypse product that has never been in existence before and it needs a custom part that even Nostradamus didn’t predict? You design it of course, in your favorite 3D modeling software like Google Sketchup or Blender or any of the other dozens that are out there. The show stopper before was how you went from a digital model to something tangible that you could hold in your hands and break if you are one of those accident prone individuals. It always meant that you had to go pay some exorbitant amount for a machine shop to make you just one of that item, and heaven forbid that item didn’t fit the needs on the first round. I’m sure you can imagine where the price would go up rather quickly in development. So why not just make it out of cheaper material and something that works just well enough to serve as a proof of concept. Well, that’s exactly what the 3D printer does for you.

A handful of months ago two of the other members at our hackerspace and myself all decided we wanted to build our own Prusa 3D printers. No real defined reason behind it other than we knew we wanted our own printers, and that if we had one it would open new possibilities to us. Since there is no real completion point for these things, it would simply be that once we had it “working” we could use it to create new items and repair or replace old ones that were no longer available. That in a nutshell is the appeal of having such a device and the driving force behind our continued development of them. One of the single most awesome things about this particular printer that we are building, the Prusa. Is that it’s relatively cheap, easily reproducible, modular, and upgradeable. Currently we are in the process of getting them fine tuned and working to some extent. From there we’ll be able to spend further time using it to upgrade itself and improve it’s quality. Expect to see more details in the near future right here on my very own blog enlightening all of the saga of blood, sweat, tears, cursing, and agony that is the way of life a homemade 3D prototyping machine is.

Sonny recently shared his current progress of his UAV Quad Copter project and included a test flight video.

So today I had my first real flights with my quadcopter UAV.   The setup is pretty advanced and it takes a lot to get up to speed.  I’ve learned a lot from my build.  I made custom printed PLA motor mounts, which have worked out really well to hold them on the end of aluminum pipes.  Unfortunately the cross in the middle which is also PLA could not handle the rough landings and cracked.  I’ve secured it for the time being, but I think I’ll be milling something better Wednesday.  If I can work out the stability issues, I’ll bring it Friday.  Anyway, check out the first flight/set of flights.