In this post I’ll describe a safety system I’ve put together for Squirty the RepRap that should prevent the type of catastrophic thermal runaway that I experienced a few weeks ago. The system could work for any printer with a little modification (but obviously use at your own risk!).
Following on from the previous post I redesigned the z-probe holder to position the microswitch closer to the nozzle. I also forked the latest version of the Marlin firmware to correct some problems I was having with the leveling behaviour. The video below shows that the autoleveling seems to be working, but I need to […]
By far the most frustrating part of 3D printing with Squirty the RepRap has always been the strange dance you have to do to get the Z distance correct. I use a strip of paper and carefully pull it back and forth underneath the nozzle while trying to bring it close enough to the bed […]
Antony Monjauze had a question about whether OpenSCAD could be used to create a shell from an imported stl. At first I thought this wouldn’t be possible. It seems like to create a shell you would need to know something about the geometry of the stl you were importing, and OpenSCAD can’t tell you anything […]
Last month I posted about installing a ducted fan on Squirty. After installing the fan I read issue 42 of MAKE magazine and became excited about two ideas to try for testing out the ducted fan. As is often the case, I got a bit distracted trying out these ideas so it’s taken me a […]
The suckiness of Squirty’s ability to make nice overhangs and bridges has been getting to me recently. I have been really impressed by the cool support-free prints created by LeFabShop on thingiverse but then have been disappointed when I find that they don’t quite work for Squirty. Their elephant turned out nicely but when I […]
After the creation and destruction of the case for Squirty I’ve started designing a replacement. This gives me a chance to make some improvements to the original design and is also an opportunity for me to learn to use Github, which has always been a source of wonder and mystery for me.
About 1 year after I started working on it I have posted Project Tombstone on Thingiverse. It took the approach of Halloween to make me finally upload it. You can view it here. It builds on the randomisable grassy knoll that I described back in February. I first printed around March, but I had to […]
As mentioned in the last post the Raspberry Pi I have been using to control Squirty the RepRap suddenly decided to stop connecting to my home network. It would work with a different wifi dongle, but not with the one I have been using for the last year or so. The “broken” dongle was able […]
Building Squirty the RepRap has always seemed like a one step forward, two steps back kind of exercise. The last weeks have been a two step back phase.