Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton lkcl@lkcl.net writes:
On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 11:23 AM, joem joem@martindale-electric.co.uk wrote:
remember joe, unlike even your own business there is no income yet, i cannot just drop $10,000 to $20,000 into tooling so unless someone comes up with that money things have to be done in a bootstrap sequence.
I fully understand, and I would donate where I can. (Some infrastructure goodies coming your way soon, and when I get enough resources, some EOMAs.)
Have you thought about 3D printer?
up until i was working here and earning good money... mmmm... no.
I bought 3 of these http://cpc.farnell.com/velleman-kit/k8200/3d-printer-k8200/dp/HK01193 (£409 + VAT) and they can make all the difference getting the plastic side going. Just add openscad and some good old rasp or a file :)
... you know what? what the hell, i'm gonna get one :)
You might want to look at:
http://hydraraptor.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/mendel90-updates.html
a few more quid, but really nicely designed by someone who knows what he's on about, judging from things like this:
http://hydraraptor.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/stepstuck.html
(most of the rest of the reprap folk are busy gluing heatsinks onto the insulated tops of the driver chips in the misguided belief that that might fix their problems, so it's very refreshing to see someone who can actually work out the underlying causes of problems.
Not that I know anything (good or bad) about the K8200. A very quick duckduckgo turned up this though:
https://duckduckgo.com/l/?kh=-1&uddg=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thingiverse.com%2F...
which seems to suggest that it's not that accurate out of the box. The "rough around the edges" comment in this:
http://www.jameco.com/Jameco/workshop/productnews/velleman-3d-printer-build-...
may be significant too, although I'd say that probably applies to all reprap style printers -- they all seem to be open-loop, with end-stops only on one end of each axis, so ... well that's another thing that nophead has addressed:
http://hydraraptor.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/only-way-is-up.html
If you don't mind rough-around-the-edges, then I have a mendel in bits in the cellar that I can flog you :-)
Cheers, Phil.