Replikeo Prusa i3 Rework Build - Part 2: Assembly

Part 2 will describe the process of building my Replikeo Prusa i3 Rework. Having already taken inventory in part 1, I will continue following the wiki instructions with Y-axis assembly. Below are the pictures from the build.

Y axis assembly

Y axis assembly with carriage

X and Y axis assemblies

X, Y, and Z axis assemblies

Z Steppers added

Attach uprights to base and add X,Y steppers

I don't remember having any serious problems with this portion of the build. I was able to put what you see above together in a few hours. Some screws were too long as I had seen documented elsewhere. I just put some extra washers underneath them. On the z-axis threaded rods, the nuts did not fit snuggly into their housings, so I added a drop of hot glue to each. Other than that, I pretty much followed the instructions. Next was the extruder assembly.

The extruder assembly required a little teasing. It is worth noting that this is the only printed part that is included in the kit. As such, some trimming of support material was required. I was not overly impressed by the print quality. I plan to print a replacement at some point and expect mine to come out much better. The biggest problem was that the hole for the j-head was not round. Luckily the j-head is almost exactly the same diameter as the drum sander attachment on a dremel tool. A bit of sanding and it was good to go. Below are some pictures.

Assembly before stepper

J-head hole enlarged

Hot glue added to keep bearing in place

Fully assembled extruder before stepper

At this point the only things left to do were add the heated bed and wire everything up. Wiring will be in part 3, but I will put the heated bed pictures here. I debated for a while how to best attach the thermistor. Eventually I ended up using silicone sealant and some kapton tape I had. The wide kapton was not included in the kit, but many smaller pieces of the stuff included in the kit could be used if that is all you have. In the end, the silicone did nothing. I would just leave that off.

Thermistor included in the kit. Wires are presoldered and heatshrinked

Thermistor taped to heatbed

Printer ready to be wired

Its worth noting that I used springs to support the heated bed instead of washers like in the wiki instructions. I think it's fairly obvious how to do this; the springs are included in the kit.

At this point the only wiki page left is Electronics and Wiring. Part 3 will address wiring and initial software setup.

-Matthew

Replikeo Prusa i3 Rework Build - Part 1: Unboxing

About a month ago I decided to build a 3D printer. This only left me with the task of deciding what kind of printer to build. While I had dealt with the Makerbot we have at school, I did not want to shell out that kind of money for a prebuilt, so I decided to go the RepRap route. After consulting with a friend that has a RepRap and searching around online, I came up with a few options to decide between.

Eventually those options narrowed to two. I would either build an OB1.4 printer. Or I would buy a full Prusa i3 rework kit. With Christmas break fast approaching and not wanting to forget a screw and have to wait until next semester I decided to go with the full kit from Replikeo. At the time I couldn't find too many reviews on it, so I decided now that I have it up and running I would post a few things about how it went. I would encourage others that buy the printer to do the same.

Long Story - Short 

I would recommend this kit to anyone with a little electronics and mechanical knowledge (the basic knowledge needed to build any RepRap). I got it up and running in about 4 days. Maybe 25ish hours. While I have some improvements planned, it had everything I needed to get it going. I really like the injection molded parts. The electronics look genuine. I am glad I purchased the kit instead of sourcing my own.

Long Story - Long

I ordered the "iron" 1.75mm Replikeo kit for $350. Shipping from wherever to my house in Southern Tennessee (USA) was $90. Addtionally I ordered $23 of Hatchbox PLA filament from Amazon and a Full Graphic Smart Controller from Ebay for $25. Everything came for less than $500. 

Shipping took exactly how long they said it would. 3-5 days via DHL. I think I got mine in 5 days including a weekend. Mine was not beaten up like another post I saw. I was irritated that there was no parts list but HERE is the wiki page. Now here are some unboxing pictures.

All my purchases together. Replikeo box is one the right.

Removed from the cardboard

Top removed exposing the frame

Steppers and Power Supply

ABS filament, electronics (in cardboard box), and rods protected below.

Threaded rods and smooth rods protected in packaging

I thought this was interesting. Apparently this kit was made just for me (that is my name).

Hardware and Electronics removed.

Electronics in anti-static packaging

All small parts laid out.

After getting it unboxed I took inventory of all the parts. While I did not bother to count all the small screws I estimated that I had enough of each. All the electronics were included. The one thing I would recommend is getting a longer USB A-> B Cable. The one included is tiny and inconvenient. I had one sitting around from my Arduino projects. The Arduino appears to be a "real" Arduino (or else a pretty good clone).

The injection molded parts are really nice. I don't see any of them breaking anytime soon, and it makes assembly very easy. While I would probably have used higher gauge wire on some components I am more or less pleased with it. The heated bed works well and the carbon fiber build plate is working well so far.

That is all I have for the unboxing section. Look for the next part (HERE) soon when I post pictures of the build.

-Matthew

DIY Arduino: ATmega328P breakout, Hackduino++

Today I wanted to share with the world something I have been working on. Say hello to the Matthewduino 1.0. Very original name if I might say so.

Features:

• Female headers on all pins
• Male headers in "servo" orientation with signal, power, and ground on all IO pins (except 13)
• Reset button
• LED on pin 13
• ICSP Header for easy programming
• 2.5 mm power jack (center-positive)
• 5V voltage regulator
• Jumpers switch sensor ports between onboard power and power from an external source.
• All the other stuff that comes with an ATmega328P 

It came into being because the usb to serial chip on the Arduino Mega on my robot burnt out some time ago. Now that I have my USBtinyISP, I can program it as detailed in previous posts. Great! The only problem is the ICSP Header gets covered up by the sensor shield. I could just rewire everything with wires and a breadboard, but that's no fun.

I had previously seen THIS website and decided that would be the way to go. I basically made a Hackuino with a built in sensor shield. It even has the Mouser project file linked. I noticed one of the components was invalid. Well I found a replacement fairly easily. HERE is the needed capacitor. Be sure to get at least two.

I ordered enough components for two ATega328P breakouts and some spares. I also threw in some ATtiny85's, an ATtiny2313, and an ATtiny84. Total came to under $30 with shipping. That isn't bad.

I may do a build post later; I have lots of pictures. For now, this is some of the other parts I needed.

• Protoboard: Ebay- 5 for $4.50: 5x Double-Side Prototype PCB, 50x70mm, Universal Board
• Male Headers: Ebay- 10 for $1.00: 10pcs 40 Pin 2.0mm Single Row Pin Male Header
• Female Headers: Ebay- 10 for $3.00: 10pcs 2.54 1X40pin breakaway Straight female header
• LED and 1k resistor- My LED came from Pololu. 
• Wire- Mine came off an old garage door opener.
• Jumpers- I used two off an old computer so that I can switch the male headers between external power and the onboard voltage regulator.
• 2.5mm Power jack- Mine came off an old cordless phone.

I have no doubt that Mouser also sells many of these things.

What did I learn? Well it took much longer than I thought it would to solder together. All told, I probably spent five or six hours soldering/figuring out how it went together. Likewise, I have a new found respect for printed circuit boards. They are good things. Also, make sure you have a decent soldering iron. I'm not a very experienced solderer, but my life got much easier once I got the temp set right. 

I never did any sort of layout before I started. I looked at some software for laying out protoboard circuits, but I wasn't familiar with it. I just dove in. It turned out well enough.

When I finally did get done, I rang it out with the multimeter and had to fix some broken joints. I had a bad MISO joint that kept it from uploading. I also wired the reset backwards. I fixed that, and now it works great. I may run into problems with it later, but I have another ATmega328P in the bag to play with if that happens.

Anyway, I don't have a schematic  but here are some pictures. I hope this inspires you to go work on your own projects.

-Matthew

Recent Purchases: Mini-reviews

Well I thought I should mention some of my recent purchases that made the below project possible. I'll try to make this brief. If you haven't seen that project, go back two posts.

ATtiny85: I got this off of eBay for a few dollars. In the future, I will probably buy them somewhere else, but I just wanted one, so that was the cheapest thing to do. I am pleased with it.

Solderless Breadboard: 830 point solderless breadboard. MB-102. Also from Ebay. $4 shipped. I like it. It is twice as big as my other ones and the roominess is nice.

MB-102 Power Supply Module: Thats the thing on the left. It works really well. I am quite pleased. It takes a center positive power supply or a male usb A. It is switched and can provide 3.3V or 5V. It plugs right into the power rails of the board. $2.15 shipped from Ebay.

Jumper Wires: Yes I sold out and bought some ready made jumpers. I'm glad I did. They are stranded and thus much easier to work with. I was getting all my plain white wires confused. The colors make it easier. Note that I did not get an even distribution of colors. I got 65 total and maybe 3 were black. $2.39 from Ebay. I've only found one so far that doesn't work.

10K pot: I got these from Ebay a long time ago. I don't remember how much they were, but it was a few dollars for 10. They work ok. They were 10 +1-2 K. But for my purposes they were ok. A slight annoyance, the pins aren't long enough to go into a breadboard. Had to solder on some...

Male Headers: I got ten 40 pin rows of them for $.99 (Ebay-China)

HXT-900 Servo: These are my favorite servos, hands down. Cheap. Simple. Reliable. They are sold under various names much as sg-900 and towerpro. They are the 9g servo from HexTronik Ltd, the company that manufactures everything for Hobbyking. Get these servos HERE. And if you manage to strip the gears, get the replacement HERE. Its also worth noting that they sell a 5g version HERE. I did a write-up about HobbyKing in one of my first posts. I also got my first Arduino there.

Other: I also got 10 paper prototype boards from Ebay for $1.38. They had a bit of a chemical odor and were not the best, but they will do for messing around. Hobbyking also sells some higher quality stuff that I have bought. The green stuff. Its HERE. That stuff is pretty nice.

I have got some female headers as well for various projects that I have in my mind. They seem pretty decent. I got 10pcs 1x40 breakaway female headers for $3 from Ebay.

USBtinyISP: I put this last because I really have already mentioned this quite a bit, but I love this thing. It is extremely easy to use. You might look into the tinyProgrammer instead if you just want to do ATtinys, but this was $15 on Ebay from a US seller. It is high quality and I love it. Check out some of my past posts tagged USBtinyISP.

That's all I have for now. Go forth and spend you're hard-earned money.
-Matthew

New Source for Cheap Parts?

Ok. I just found a great website online and had to tell people about it. I have never ordered from there but I no doubt will soon. http://yourduino.com. They have all kinds of cheap started kits and stuff I've been ordering from eBay for about the same prices.

They also have several Arduino Compatible micro controllers that I would look into. Some have built in servo connections and such. If I hadn't just ordered some stuff from elsewhere, I would probably be buying something from there.

Things that caught my eye:

• Their shields (the motor controller shield)
• Their micro controllers (YourDuinoRobo1- $17)
• The pre-made drive platform
• The cheap stepper motors
• The various sensors
• The starter kits.
• The jumpers, resistors, etc.

Some of the starter kits actually looked pretty good. I didn't look too in depth. I'm sure some stuff is missing, but it might not be a bad place to start. The robot platform doesn't look to shabby either. I didn't check shipping on the heavier stuff, but some of you might want to look into it.

I realize this is a bit out of the blue, but I honestly am not affiliated with them in any way. I just stumbled across their site when looking for cheap stepper motors and then saw the micro controllers  Then I saw the shields. Then I starting going through practically every page.

That's all I have for today If anyone has bought stuff from there please comment. I would personally love to know what kind of service they provide. 

See you later,

Matthew