Fun with Git

I've started collaborating on a software project with a friend and we're using a remote Git repository to share the code -- anyway, after banjaxxing some of his changes he suggested I read this:

It's a pretty good book and free -- well worth the read if you intend to use Git (especially with more than one person, and even more especially if that other person is even grumpier than me).

Setting up a Sanguinololu on a Mac

The printer kit we'd bought previously came with a Sanguinololu board as the controller.  This is basically a RAMPS device that has been squashed into one board with all the functions for controlling a printer built in.   You can read more about it here: http://reprap.org/wiki/Sanguinololu.

It's a pretty nice bit of kit and is certainly easier to wire up than your standard RAMPS, but is limited to one extruder, no support for fans and we're using it with a relay to turn the heated bed off and on.  From what I've read I think this is just the original kit designer being cautious.

It's also missing the extra LEDs present on some RAMPS which let you know when the heaters are on, and the expansion header is different so it won't work with the standard LCD screens or SD readers.

Anyway, it's what we have and I got it nicely wired up to drive our new printer.  When we setup the first one, we did so with Windows and there are plenty of instructions on how to do that.  This time I wanted to use my Mac to do the initial flash and setup.  Figured I'd share my experiences.

Now, I'm not saying everything I did is correct -- but it worked for me and hopefully it might work for you too...

First, I installed the FTDI drivers for the serial USB chip that's on the board.  I downloaded this from http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm as directed by the standard Arduino website (http://arduino.cc/en/Guide/MacOSX).

On the FTDI page there are a few options - for me (OSX 10.8.3) I grabbed the 64-bit Intel file and mounted the disk image once it was downloaded.

From the disk image, I then installed the latest version which seemed to work fine for me.

Now I had the driver installed, I next downloaded the Arduino software for Mac OSX from http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software.  The Mac version is provided as an App and you can just execute the downloaded file directly.  I did copy the App into my Applications folder so I could find it later, and it would show up on LaunchPad.

We're used to using Marlin, so I downloaded the latest version of the Marlin firmware from https://github.com/ErikZalm/Marlin -- just download the latest release, unzip it and put it some where you can find it later.

So, before you can build the firmware and send it to your Sanguinololu you need to modify the Arduino tools so they know about your board.  This is pretty straightforward, but neccessary.

From http://code.google.com/p/sanguino/downloads/list download the latest release and unzip it.  Now go back to the Arduino App you put in your Applications folder and right click it.  Select 'Show Package Contents' and left-click.

This will open a Finder window - double click the Contents folder, Resources folder, Java folder and finally the Hardware folder.

Grab the sanguino folder you downloaded and unzipped earlier (from http://code.google.com/p/sanguino/downloads/list) and drag it into the Hardware folder.  Your hardware folder should now look like:

With that done, you can close the Finder window and run the Arduino App from either LaunchPad or from your Applications folder.  If you installed the Sanguino folder correctly, you should see the Sanguino options at the bottom of the board list:

If the Sanguino options are not there, then you did something wrong -- maybe you already had the Arduino software running when you added the Sanguino extensions - if so quit it completely and re-launch it.

Now you can load the Marlin firmware and configure it for your Sanguinololu.  Navigate to the folder you had downloaded and extracted the firmware you downloaded earlier.  This should be a folder called Marlin-Marlin_v1. Open the folder, then open another folder called Marlin.  There should be a file called Marlin.pde.  That's the project file the Arduino software opens.  You can right click on the Marlin.pde and tell Finder to open it the Arduino App.  Once loaded, save the file and the Arduino App will let you know that the project extension has changed.  Go ahead and let it save a new copy of the project file as Marlin.ino.  In future, you can just double click Marlin.ino to load the project.

There are just a few more steps to get this working on the Mac -- you need to select your board type from the Tools/Board menu - I have a Sanguino ATmega1284p 16Mhz, so that's what I selected - you'll have to pick the entry to match your board.

You need to select the serial port that your board is on - this will only appear if the board is connected to the Mac and is powered up (USB power will do for this).  In my case I use the following setting:

dev/tty.usbserial-A104M4B

Yours might be different, but it should have tty. at the start of it. You can try compiling the firmware and sending it to your board to make sure the connection works, but before you do that, make sure you set the board type to 62 in configuration.h.

That's it - you now should have your Mac talking with your Sanguinololu and you can configure the firmware to suit your printer.

Enjoy!

PVA Glue

After my hairspray fun yesterday, good old PVA glue came to the rescue.  Makes the print bed look like crap, but things certainly stick well to it!

Printing without hold

I needed to print a part today for a new printer design we're working on -- more about that later -- the MM1.5 was busy, so it was time to try using the MM2 to print it.

We've been printing on the MM2 pretty well, but had kapton tape layered on the glass.  Unfortunately due to an earlier accident (someone typed 1.2 instead of .12 as the Z position in a G92 command) the bed ended up looking like this:

As you can see, the head ended up scratching up all the tape as it moved back across the bed.  Fortunately it didn't scratch the glass or even break it.

So the tape was removed, the bed heated and printing fun began.

First layer seemed to go down ok, but after a few layers I felt comfortable enough to walk away and let it continue its work.

Fortunately, I came back and caught it doing this before I stopped the print.  The print had come free of the bed during printing and was being dragged around by the head as it spewed pumpkin colored PLA all over the place.

Not good.








Based on a recommendation from our  resident 3D printing expert, I decided to give the glass a quick blast of Garnier Fructis Style -- with EXTREME control -- initially the  results seemed to be positive, the printed part stuck nicely to the bed and everything seemed to be working out just fine.

Sadly to say, this was not the case. As the print approached the end of its run, the part came loose and I ended up with a melted mess on top.

I think I'll be able to use the part at least to test the belt motion it was designed to fit as the mounting holes are mostly complete on both sides.

I guess we'll end up covering the bed in Kapton tape again.

On the plus side, the orange PLA looks great against the blue plate on the MM2 - if only it had stuck better.

Color Swatch

Here's a color swatch of our PLA in Spocktapus form.

In other news, we're still working on our custom printer design as well as the MendelMax 2.0 beta printer. We'll have more detailed updates soon.

Mendel Max Custom Build

We're having a lot of fun with the 3D printer and ended up ordering a Mendel Max 2.0 beta (more on that later) as well as another Mendel Max 1.5. This time around our plan is to really customize the MM1.5 printer and see what we can do to reduce the part count, improve the looks, and perhaps improve some functionality. The main thing that annoys me with the MM1.5 and most Reprap printers is the triangle top.  It's not really needed, adds extraneous parts, and makes the printer feels more cluttered. Everyone that's seen our printer likes to watch it print, so it'd be nice to open it up and improve viewing angles.

The first step was to get rid of the triangle top. While it's completely possible to just remove the entire top section of the printer frame and have the Z travel rods attached only to the bottom frame with no connections up top, we decided to borrow from the design of the MM2.0 and went with vertical extrusions to support the Z rods up top. I designed some custom brackets to attach the rods at the top, and some right angle brackets to support the vertical extrusions along the base. Here's what we've got so far. (Custom parts are purple.) You can get the right angle bracket model from http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:59398

Modifications and Additions Part 4

We finally got around to redesigning the back mounting clip for the power supply. We have 1 back clip, 1 side clip, and 1 foot holding the power supply under the printer. You can download all the parts from http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:57765  Here's a shot of the mountings from underneath the printer. Back clip is green, side clip is blue, foot is grey.

Colin made some clip mounts for the 2020 extrusions in OpenSCAD so I decided to create a filament guide that clips on to the top of the printer frame. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:55776

He also bought a LED light for the extruder and a rocker switch to turn it on/off. Seemed like a good idea to make a clip on housing box for the switch. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:57849
Here's the rocker switch we used https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8837?

We'll probably replace the LED light with something else, but here's what we currently have http://dx.com/p/39mm-2w-9-smd-led-126-lumen-6500k-white-dome-light-dc-12v-51002?rt=1&p=6&m=1&r=4&k=1&t=1&s=&u=51002