Hey guys, at the moment, I’m printing better parts for my Reprap huxley using my makerbot, and during the wait I’m designing a larger printer. A lot larger. The makerbot has a build platform of about 100mm by 100mm, I’m looking at build platform of about 6 foot by 6 foot. The makerbot can print little knick knacks, small parts, and art pieces, but this would be something that would open the door to printing very useful parts.

The Machine

Since it’s to a different scale, the timing belts and rods normally used to make repraps won’t work nearly as well. I was originally thinking of using bike chains and sprockets hooked to gears and steppers, but I just thought about how complicated it was to do that so I gave up on it, and came up with another system for the x and y axis’ I haven’t yet thought of anyway better to control the Z axis (up and down) than with a longer bar system, if you think of anything tell me.

I’m planning on using makerbot electronics, since from what I’ve seen it’s pretty scalable, and if it works with the replicator G software, and they develop skeinforge, replicator G, and the makerbot firmware on their own, then it’d be kind of like reinventing the wheel if I was going to use reprap electronics. So assuming that the software’s taken care for, then all I should have to do is the hardware design.

The overall design is going to look a lot like the traditional mendel, with the triangular frame, but it’s going to have larger reinforced printed joints. The second noticeable difference is going to be the x and y axis. Since this thing is larger, and it can’t use timing belts then I’m going to try and take stress off the axis’ by having the steppers mounted to the platforms and then having a gear and track system so the motors are basically pulling and pushing the axis’ directly.

The Bill of materials so far is the following:

Nine 3/8″ 6′ Threaded Rods (They’re pretty rigid, easy to find, and $5 at home depot)

Six Smooth rods (maybe printed rails?)

Makerbot electronics (Arduino Mega, Makerbot shield, Extruder controller, 4 Stepper controllers) If we could make this all ourselves it would save a lot of money and help a lot.

…and that’s it, the rest of the machine will be printed by my other printers.

The one problem

Ok, so you have a large 3D printer. To get your large 3D printer to make something you have to put your 3D model through software that cuts the 3D model into 2D slices, it also adds plastic support if there are overhangs and puts a fill pattern inside of your 3D printed piece, this software is crucial. It can sometimes take a minute or two to process a small object that’s 4 inches tall and wide (with a 1.75mm nozzle). But now imagine you’re using this program to process something 6 feet by 6 feet (by drawing it with a 1.75mm or 3mm nozzle…). Realize that the time is probably going to be exponential. You have about 5 things your software is going to do to make that 3D object. So I’m predicting that for the current software that is out there that it’s going to take about a DAY just for your computer to process, before the printer can then take another day or two to print the object.

Years ago I did work on distributed computer processing projects, that processed huge things like this. There’s even some pretty simple software out there, that would just need some interfacing with some distributed computer software like Condor. So if anyone has the programming know how, or not, and they think they can do it. Please tell me. This is going to be the next hurdle for 3D printers.

So sort of like the problem mentioned above, the system would only be using 1 extruder. Obviously you could make it go faster with two. Or three or four. You could have them on the same extruder platform, or you could have them all be independently working on making your part, but you’d then have to remake your processing software. If you had them independent then you could just make it so all four have 1 quadrant of the same printing board. Which would be easier to program. Have the software split the 3D model to 2D layers, then split the 2D layers into the fourths of the printed board, but do it knowing that the Y axis is being used by all four extruders.

I don’t know about everyone else, but this is very exciting to me. If you want to help, try getting the parts I listed in the BOM, or help me when I start putting it together.

The paintening of the lounge room has begun. It’s off to a pretty cool start. Brianna Miller, Daniel Brauch and her friend Hannah Jackson worked on this swirley cool mural. It looks great from the classroom windows too.

Daniel Brauch, Brianna Miller, and myself (Ronnie) came in today and started painting up and working on the chill room. Thomas Kay helped sheet in the remaining parts of the wall I started last week with James and we got the big wall painted. After they left and some other folks showed up for the evening I got started on painting the floor so we can start moving things into the room and get the classroom looking more like a classroom and less like a mess. PICS!

And part of the reason for painting the wall was to prep it for a little decorating by Bri Miller. You may have seen some of her paintings hanging around already. She’s gonna be doing a mural for the chillroom over the next week or so and it looks like she’s pretty good friends with ROYGBIV.

Thomas also worked on finishing about 3 more tables with John Patterson’s help tonight as well. Kick ass work guys!

So there’s been a fair bit of activity around JaxHax the past couple weeks. We’ve had a fair bit of materials donated and paid for in Bawls funds to help build out more walls; John Patterson’s been making a bunch of tables from the tops we’ve found and old boardwalk lumber from MOSH we scored a few days ago; Jerry Basillion’s pile of dumpster dived super nice but broken office chairs have been reassembled from 6 broken chairs to 5 nicely working chairs; and I (Ronnie) showed one of our newer members James Matheney how to build a bike from a pile of broken bike scraps, from assembling broken bearings in a grimy crank to breaking and assembling chains with a screwdriver, bench vice, and hammer, which has also been pretty fun to ride around the space.

We also had the fine people from MetroJacksonville.com pay us a visit and wrote up an article on us a few days ago: http://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2012-feb-jaxhax-a-makerspace-arrives

Anyway, without further adieu, here’s some photos from what’s been going on lately:

Also, I’ll be teaching the first of JaxHax’s classes on flux-core MIG welding next saturday. All members are welcome to sit in and try their hand striking an arc!

-Ronnie

It’s been running reliably for a 2-3 weeks now, but here’s the first video of the JaxHax arduino driven door system. It’s already had the wiring cleaned up, the code simplified and scaled down to only need one arduino instead of two, and still needs a little more revision to make adding and disabling new key tags simpler, but it’s entirely functional, and we even have the big red button of science working correctly instead of using the diminutive red button of magic.

Hi all, over the last week we’ve started running network cables, setting up our server cabinet, setting up some cable management, and we’ve had a lot of computer hardware donated to the space. We also found a cornucopia of desk/flat counter tops in good shape that just need legs and we’ll have more classroom workbenches than we’ll know what to do with.

In light of all this I took it upon myself to clean and organize the electronics working areas and the classroom in general tonight. He’s a video. Now for sweet sweet sleep.

-Ronnie