Steve Cooley Fine Art

My makerbot thing-o-matic has a problem with a drifting y axis, but only when a layer is complete. There’s lots of vague advice about how tight or loose the timing belt should be, but I’ve tried a dozen different tension guesses, and nothing seems to work without shifting the print mid-way through.

Now that I’m a dad, I’m starting to realize that I need to give my kids the cutting edge advantage like my dad did for me. For him, it was getting us an Apple ][+, at no small expense. It was a huge gamble, but my dad was right to take the risk. It paid off for my brother and I. It wasn’t just that my dad committed the family resources to an unproven technology, it was that he could see that this technology was the start of an important new path that his kids would have the option to travel down. The sooner we could start, the better. Who knew where the path would lead? Nobody.

For my kids, I think 3d printing is going to be one of the important tools of their lives. It uses the stepping stone that I was given and takes it further. Now not only can you visualize anything your mind can think of, but you can hold a copy of it in your hand. No doubt that 3d printing at home is in its infancy, much the same way that computers at home were when I was a kid. So, to me, 3d printing appears to be the most likely tool my kids can have to propel them into their future. In my opinion, a 3d printer in the home will foster: problem solving skills, imagination, healthy non-conformity, the concept of iteration, no fear of being wrong or failing, and hands on application of the scientific method.

So, I’m in research mode. Here are the links I can find to commercially available sub-$5000 hobbyist 3d printers. I’m mostly focusing on fused deposition modeling type printers. The other technologies I’ve seen for 3d printing are either experimental, lacking in resolution, lacking in base affordability, or the media is too specialized (and presumably expensive).

MakerBot Industries has one called the thingomatic. These guys have been at the heart of the maker/DIY front and honestly, they have a lot of momentum. Their machines are iterating very quickly, and they have a huge community rallying around their project. Their laser-cut plywood product is undoubtedly borne from the DIY mentality their product aims to foster. They have some super nice features like an automated build platform, and a new dual extruder head option. They’ve generated a lot of buzz about attracting $10M in investor funding, so it’s likely they will be able to afford support staff for the foreseeable future. Has Mac software available and/or printing from an SD card. Their wiki and build instructions are incredibly detailed. $1,299 kit, $2,500 assembled.

Reprap, represents the wild west of 3d printers. It sort of kicked off the DIY 3d printer revolution happening now. As such, it’s really focused on bootstrapping quickly with the least amount of time spent on worrying about what the machine looks like. (what the machine looks like?? Look what it’s DOING!) There’s no official source for parts. That’s kind of the point, though. It’s open source, so you need to find someone who will print our the parts for you (and you presumably pay them)

botmill surprise! a presumably reputable source for reprap based 3d printer design. No exterior enclosure, all wires exposed. This machine will undoubtedly appeal to the mad scientist crowd. $1,395.00 assembled. Pretty cheap, actually.

Ultimaker The videos I’ve seen of this thing are of it printing really really fast. Designed and sold out of the Netherlands. €1,194.00 base (kit)

UP! best consumer based enclosure design. The machine itself looks great. Sensible and clean. Definitely made to alleviate concerns about reliability and reputability. Looks like a real product. Compact. Comes with integrated software. Higher on the price scale. Has Mac software. You’d think they could price it under $2650+~$150 shipping. C’mon, China. What the hell. Alibaba says I can buy whole laser engravers for that price.

RapMan. Pretty. laser cut clear acrylic. Alibre sells software, so they probably will support the machines they sell for a while. With the revolution happening at the pace it is, your mileage may vary on how long they do support it. (5 years?)

Bits from Bytes 3DTouch lots of options for number of print heads. mo’ printheads, mo’ problems. It may be the most capable from an aspect of possibilities, but the workflow must be significant to munge multicolor GCode. Maybe not.. It’s probably right on the edge of being past the scope of being a machine for the home.

buildyourcnc’s white ant I have the buildyourcnc.com blacktoe 2×4 cnc machine and it’s great. Their white ant 3d printer is still in active development, and given the flexible nature of their design ethos, this could be cool. The downside here is that you can’t buy everything you need right from them. You have to pick up some of the required parts from MakerBot. Which is kind of a drag. What I think we owners of blacktoe and blue chick machines are waiting for is some word about why an extruder print head for our existing machines is impossible. I guess I could image why. I’d gladly replace my 3 axis control board with a 4 or 5 axis board if I could interchangeably use a router or a 3d printhead. GLADLY. Use the motion control table and hardware I already have for multiple tool heads? Yes, remind me why I can’t have this? A ridiculously large 2′ x 4′ FDM 3d printer. It’s probably impossible because its a ridiculous idea.

So, for me, time to make a verdict… and that task is pretty easy. MakerBot has the juice right now. I love how they’re dedicated to the movement and driving innovation. They have lots of instructions and a huge community. And funding, so more brains getting paid to focus on it means good things for the future.

If price is a sensitivity for you, buildyourcnc’s white ant would be a good choice, with botmill coming in a close second. If I was in the Netherlands, I’d probably go for the Ultimaker. UP! sure looks nice, but I can’t fathom why it’s so expensive. Cut the price in half and then it’s a horse race.

sCCweet (cheesily said: “shweet”) for the Korg iMS-20 is a MaxMSP compiled application for mac os x that connects to your iMS-20 app through your existing MIDI connection (figure that out ahead of time). It randomizes the parameters of the iMS-20 at an adjustable rate so you can explore different combinations of settings that you might otherwise never run into on your own. It’s pretty random. There aren’t a lot of controls. Think of it as a spelunking tool for this synth. Enjoy!

Download “sCCweet for the Korg iMS-20″

I got an arduino ethernet shield for xmas, so I wanted to check out if I could get it talking to quartz composer… and… I did! woot.

I needed a way to carry my Square credit card reader when I’m not using it, and since it’s a headphone jack connector, I thought it would be pretty simple to make something out of Shapelock and some stuff from my junk drawer. It was!

Trial, meet error:

I’ve been working for about 6 months on finding a suitable silicone rubber material to use when making the keys for my beatseqr project. I started on this journey right after I’d set up my blacktoe cnc router. I knew I wanted a clear rubbery material to put in between the LED Tact switches on my circuit board for the user to push. This is a pretty well understood paradigm, so I figured there had to be a low-volume, relatively low-cost way to at least do some research into the feasibility of being able to do this. Of course you never know everything you need to know when you just start stabbing wildly at solving a problem that doesn’t have an obvious solution.  So, below is a small sampling of the attempts I’ve made.

Continue reading ‘Silicone Rubber test results and comparison’ »

alrighty, then.. so I’m starting to get my bearings with how all the software works to run jobs through the blacktoe CNC router. I switched from cambam over to sheetcam and now I’m getting really good results. There’s still a certain amount of strangeness, probably all my fault, so I’m still learning what works and what doesn’t. Here’s a video I did to show how the blacktoe does with machinable wax:

The end result is a mold to use for casting translucent silicone into for use in my beatseqr project, as a replacement for the hand-cut-and-sanded acrylic buttons that I’m currently using. You never know how an experiment will really go until it’s over, and now that this experiment is over, I’ve learned a lot and will make a bunch of adjustments:

1. change the silicone product from tap plastics platinum cure translucent (way too wobbly for this application) to smooth-on sorta clear 40. I saw this product at the Maker Faire this past weekend and really liked the firm quality of the cured product. I think it will be a really good candidate. Smooth-on dragon skin 30 was my second-best candidate.
2. cut a new button mold using the techniques I’ve learned by doing this one.
3. adjust the height of the button to be not as tall as this test.
4. adjust the flashing surrounding the buttons to be not nearly as tall. I had it set to be 0.1″ tall, and that’s probably 0.08″ too much. all I need is for it to basically be thick enough to keep all of the buttons together, and that’s it.
5. think about how to diffuse the LED light going into the button… this new silicone is water-clear… so … I’ll need a way to adjust that quality so it looks good. maybe just a sheet of paper under the silicone flashing… we’ll see how that goes.

So… progress continues. I’ll post the result of the next prototype when it’s done.

Welp, I decided on which CNC rig to go with. I wanted to keep my options open for the future, so I decided to go with a bigger rig than I had originally planned on committing to. I decided that I could commit several continuous days in a row to assembly, setting up a major section of my garage, and purchasing a couple-few extra things to accommodate the buildyourcnc.com Blacktoe 2×4.

Here’s the timelapse of the build:

Here’s the first run:

And here’s the first real job I ran with it:

Woohoo! Very happy!

After inquiring around about prices for lasers, I’m coming to the realization that maybe what I need isn’t a laser but a CNC rig.  I’m lucky to live near enough to Techshop that making the occasional drive up there is doable, but not a sustainable ongoing possibility with my family time needs.  So take a look at the research I’ve done into who the top contenders for desktop CNC could be for an almost total n00b to the sport.

Alright, so I know the G-code exists and that most every interesting machine that I want to work with understands how to work with that, so now it’s up to me to complete the equation. This list isn’t meant to be exhaustive, and by no means am I an expert on the topic, but based on what I could digest from their websites, this is what I took away from it all.   When I priced things to be as ready to run as possible starting with no previous equipment, here’s the ballpark figures:

These prices assume you already have a computer… duh. And they don’t really take the cost of software into consideration, which is probably ok because there are a lot of software packages out there so I’ve heard. They do different things and cost different amounts of money… so it’s hard to factor it in easily. The other thing I haven’t factored in here is speed. And because I’m inexperienced, I don’t really know how to gauge that, other than to see that the Blacktoe is fast as hell. Ok, so I get that these machines all have an “inch per minute” speed rating… I would suspect it would also depend on 1. your router, 2. your gcode, and 3. the material you’re milling… so given those parameters, what does “high speed traverse” mean? Just how fast the machine does what it needs to do when it’s not doing a cutting maneuver? That’s my best guess.

So, those are the current contenders. Did I miss anything substantial? Leave a comment and let’s get it on the chart.