After frying two DC/DC converters last time round I had another go at putting together a power supply for the Raspberry Pi controlling my RepRap using an ADP2303 IC. The new circuit still can’t power the Pi, but at least it is now able to hold a 5V output voltage with a small load on it.
I have never had much success with analogue electronics. This weekend I wasted 6+ hrs trying to get a pretty simple circuit to work. Then I fried the parts so I can’t work with them any more, this at least is a blessing as it can no longer suck up time and generate additional frustration. […]
In my last post on stealth printing I described how I set up pronterface and VNC on a Raspberry Pi to control Squirty from an iPad. This lets me have the printer set up anywhere in the house rather than having it at my desk in the bedroom. Having it in the living room makes […]
In my last post I wrote about the problems I experienced trying to print the dial gauge holder. The belt kept slipping out of the x-carriage causing the print to fail. Each time it failed I dutifully took the carriage apart and put the belt back. I even put some tape on the bottom side […]
Many 3D printing forums and blogs lecture on the quintessential importance of a perfectly level print bed. Achieving this state of printing nirvana is however a tedious and difficult task. Checking the height of the bed at various points requires you to move the print head to that position and then carefully lower it until […]
I’m very excited to have a stand at the Singapore Mini Maker Faire in July and I’ve been working to tidy up two projects to exhibit. One is a refurbished version of my Beerbot (last seen here). The aim behind Beerbot is to be able fetch a beer from anywhere in the house and bring […]
Working to connect a Raspberry Pi to a reprap made me think about resurrecting my BeerBot project. I worked on this in 2012. It is a robot made of a lego mindstorms kit with a raspberry pi sat on top of it. The pi acts as a mini web server broadcasting images from a webcam […]
3D printers make a lot of noise. The noise can have an almost musical character, especially when it is printing circular objects, however its musicality tends to wear off if you are be exposed to for long periods. Unfortunately 3D printers are also very slow. A big print can easily take 12 or even 24 hours. […]
One crushing criticism that has been aimed at home 3D printing is that it has no real practical use. People who take this point of view usually claim that far from being the vanguard of a new industrial revolution home printers are actually only really used for producing deformed yoda heads. In this post I […]
One of the most common questions that people ask you when you tell them that you have a 3D printer (shortly after they ask you can you print a gun) is how accurately can you print? My answer to this question has always been stolen from RepRapPro’s specifications page where it describes the accuracy of […]