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 […]
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 […]
If you are used to using the version of Slic3r that came with your version of pronterface (V 0.9.9 for me) and then download the new version (V 1.1.7) you may be horrified to discover all of your print profiles have gone. You then may be even more horrified when you open the old version […]
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 […]
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.
I recently had to print about 30 unique items with a similar geometry but with different detailing. They were all an awkward shape to print – there was no way of aligning them so that there were no overhangs. I found a way of batch processing them to get them all ready for printing.
This weekend the Wife and I had a booth at Singapore Mini Maker Faire. This is the second year we have been and the first time that we had a booth. The Wife exhibited some of her oil paintings as well as some sewing creations. I showed the BeerBot and Squirty. Given the breadth of […]
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.