Some people have been battling to find the correct firmware to drive the Techzone monilithic board.
Here's the one that I got from the guys at Techzone.
It works great for me using Repsnapper host software.
Techzone monolithic firmware
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Sunday, November 14, 2010
First weekend of my RepRap build
OK so I've gotten a bit carried away in the excitement of building my Mendel that I haven't posted any updates for a while.
Its been 10 days since my RepRap kit arrived and I must say I've impressed myself with the progress to date. I was expecting it to take a lot longer to build.
The wiki & forums at www.reprap.org contain a wealth of information, but to put it lightly, its somewhat disorganized. Anyway I love a challenge, and if this thing came with a simple set of instructions the job wouldn't be half as satisfying.
Last weekend a friend of mine (Stephen) and I worked almost the whole weekend on this build.
It was really daunting looking at the massive pile of bits and pieces in the beginning, armed with very little in the way of documentation or instructions.
Its funny how in the beginning you really don't know what to do and it seems like the task is impossible, but you kind of get into a zone where you pick up a piece and just by looking at it you can figure out where it fits. The RepRap design has been really well thought out.
The build started at about 10:00 on Friday morning and by 23:00 that night we had all the mechanical bits assembled and begun working on wiring up the electronics.
The new Techzone monolithic electronics really is a great piece of work, meaning we only had a single motherboard to work on. Previous generations of RepRap electronics have typically consisted of several boards to control the various motors and drive the machine.
Most of Saturday was spent trying to get the firmware loaded onto the card and getting the host software talking to the machine.
Eventually some time around midnight I received a response to my email which I had sent to Lambert from Techzone earlier in the day (unfortunately our time zone difference means that they are not available during our daytime) he informed me that the card had shipped with the correct firmware pre-installed, but in my haste I had flashed it with an older firmware which was not compatible. He had included the correct firmware in his email which I duly uploaded and like magic, the host software and the machine started to converse.
I like to quit while ahead so I decided to call it a day and go get some sleep at that point.
Its been 10 days since my RepRap kit arrived and I must say I've impressed myself with the progress to date. I was expecting it to take a lot longer to build.
The wiki & forums at www.reprap.org contain a wealth of information, but to put it lightly, its somewhat disorganized. Anyway I love a challenge, and if this thing came with a simple set of instructions the job wouldn't be half as satisfying.
Last weekend a friend of mine (Stephen) and I worked almost the whole weekend on this build.
It was really daunting looking at the massive pile of bits and pieces in the beginning, armed with very little in the way of documentation or instructions.
Its funny how in the beginning you really don't know what to do and it seems like the task is impossible, but you kind of get into a zone where you pick up a piece and just by looking at it you can figure out where it fits. The RepRap design has been really well thought out.
The build started at about 10:00 on Friday morning and by 23:00 that night we had all the mechanical bits assembled and begun working on wiring up the electronics.
The new Techzone monolithic electronics really is a great piece of work, meaning we only had a single motherboard to work on. Previous generations of RepRap electronics have typically consisted of several boards to control the various motors and drive the machine.
Most of Saturday was spent trying to get the firmware loaded onto the card and getting the host software talking to the machine.
Eventually some time around midnight I received a response to my email which I had sent to Lambert from Techzone earlier in the day (unfortunately our time zone difference means that they are not available during our daytime) he informed me that the card had shipped with the correct firmware pre-installed, but in my haste I had flashed it with an older firmware which was not compatible. He had included the correct firmware in his email which I duly uploaded and like magic, the host software and the machine started to converse.
I like to quit while ahead so I decided to call it a day and go get some sleep at that point.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Arrival of my Techzone unassembled Mendel kit
Finally my unassembled RepRap kit arrived in the post.
Its really nothing more than a pile of nuts, bolts, bearings, motors, belts, rods and some lasercut wooden parts to hold this whole lot together.
Looking at the pile of bits & pieces sprawled out in front of me I realized how big a job lay ahead, especially considering there is no documentation supplied.
RepRap 3D printing - The beginning
3D printing is gonna be the next big thing...
I've been looking for a way to produce a certain plastic part to serve a specific function.
The part is small & not extremely complex, yet it needs to have very specific dimensions.
I've spoken to many local experts in the field of plastic fabrication and the consensus is that the "only" way to make this part would be by thermoplastic injection molding.
Injection molding would set me back about R20K - and thats before I've even produced the first part.
Fair enough, once the initial outlay is taken care of, the parts can be produced in their thousands at a few cents per part... but I'm not there yet.
At this stage I only want a few hundred at most to see how the market responds.
So in order to test the idea, I've been dabbling in resin casting with silicone molds, aluminium sand casting, hand making the part out of silver (which produced an excellent master version of the part BUT it took 3 days).
I then made a vulcanized rubber mold of the silver master, with the intention of casting the part out of aluminium via lost-wax casting... but the 10% shrinkage which comes about through this process proved to be a problem and at this point I wasn't up for another 3 days of fiddling around in my dad's jewellery workshop and keeping him out of work at the same time.
Somewhere along the way in my extensive web research I came across 3D printing & Rapid Prototyping.
I immediately assumed that this was way out of my league as the commercial printing solutions would cost WAY too much. Outsourcing the job to a commercial 3D printing service would cost hundreds of Rands per part - again not economically viable.
It was then that I stumbled upon the RepRap project.
A RepRap is a sort of DIY 3D printer which can print things out of plastic.
Here's some of the key features of a RepRap:
I've been looking for a way to produce a certain plastic part to serve a specific function.
The part is small & not extremely complex, yet it needs to have very specific dimensions.
I've spoken to many local experts in the field of plastic fabrication and the consensus is that the "only" way to make this part would be by thermoplastic injection molding.
Injection molding would set me back about R20K - and thats before I've even produced the first part.
Fair enough, once the initial outlay is taken care of, the parts can be produced in their thousands at a few cents per part... but I'm not there yet.
At this stage I only want a few hundred at most to see how the market responds.
So in order to test the idea, I've been dabbling in resin casting with silicone molds, aluminium sand casting, hand making the part out of silver (which produced an excellent master version of the part BUT it took 3 days).
I then made a vulcanized rubber mold of the silver master, with the intention of casting the part out of aluminium via lost-wax casting... but the 10% shrinkage which comes about through this process proved to be a problem and at this point I wasn't up for another 3 days of fiddling around in my dad's jewellery workshop and keeping him out of work at the same time.
Somewhere along the way in my extensive web research I came across 3D printing & Rapid Prototyping.
I immediately assumed that this was way out of my league as the commercial printing solutions would cost WAY too much. Outsourcing the job to a commercial 3D printing service would cost hundreds of Rands per part - again not economically viable.
It was then that I stumbled upon the RepRap project.
A RepRap is a sort of DIY 3D printer which can print things out of plastic.
Here's some of the key features of a RepRap:
- The majority of it can be built out of parts which are fairly easy to source (the mechanical & electric parts)
- A working RepRap printer can print a large majority of its own parts - in other words a RepRap can clone itself - or even upgrade itself to the next version when it becomes available
- Its open-source, meaning that the plans and instructions to build one are freely available and reproduction of it is encouraged by the community.
- Even the software required to draw your 3D models and print them is open-source and freely available
So to keep a long story long, I went and ordered the parts to build my own RepRap Mendel (Mendel is the current version of RepRap).
Now I am eagerly awaiting their arrival by courier - at which time I have no doubt there will be several days and nights of tinkering to get it all built up, calibrated and tested so I can begin printing my first plastic parts.
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