Hello to y’all out there!

Today I printed my first pieces*!

* I printed a lot of calibration pieces while working on it, but the don’t count as real pieces, I guess..

The first two are pieces of a safety cap for my power bar which powers my printer. Until now the main switch was uncovered and could easily be pressed by accident, shutting down the whole printer and ruining the print.

They came out, I would say, well, considering the fact that this is a printer made out of scrap wood and build while I had no idea how to do it right :) (This whole project is more of a learning by doing kind’a thing)
They might be looking awful on the pictures, but in real, they look well. And this isn't the finished state, I'm still working on it.


Some different angles of the power safety cap:

After printing the safety cap, I printed a cylinder with no top and bottom layers, no infill and only one shell. I really have to confess, that I thought this wouldn't come out as good as it is now. There you can see, that my printer is quite accurate. Each layer is on top of another, nearly no shift.

That's it for now. I will make a video about my printer, but only in a few weeks time.

Cheers,
JHL

Almost Done!

Hi Folks,

I honestly thought that I would post more and especially some vids about my printer. But, yeah, I was lazy and the whole thing ran not like I expected it to. (As you might have guessed, I'm pretty inconsistent with my online presence)
I build a heated bed out of strip-board, re-engineered the whole X-axis-slider and Z-axis (now out of aluminium), bolted it all down to my table, to reduce vibrations and wrote some code for the firmware.
Long story short: I got it to run as I wanted it to, so I'll post a video about that soon.
For now, I'm gonna leave you with this picture of the current state of my Printer.

Cheers,
JHL

Update 02.07.15

Quick update:

My internet connection is now faster and able to upload vids, but I haven't received an important letter for some hardware tweaking I have to do. The German Mail is currently on strike, for 4 weeks now, and there is no end in sight. Without the letter, containing a few non public datasheets, I'm not able to test my Firmware. So please be patient, a video is coming, when the German Mail is not longer on strike and I received my mail.
I pray, that this strike ends as soon as it can...

Cheers,
JHL

Code work

Hey Folks,
my 3D Printer now works fine. I rewrote my code a little bit and redesigned the thread-communication. But there is way more work to do. I have to write a piece of code that does control the temperature of the nozzle and the heated bed with a PID-loop instead of just switching on or off depending on what the measured temperature is. And I've also not yet implemented code that calculates G1/G0 movements while executing a G1/G0 command. That causes some stutters in especially circles which are made of several lines, because my script doesn't supports G2/G3 commands yet. So I'm going to write a piece of code that calculates the movements while driving the previous Command and pushes the data into a queue.

You see, there is a bit work to do but don't worry, at June the 26. I'll get a faster internet connection and then I will be able to upload a video for you. Until then I'll design the code as best as I can.

Cheers,
JHL

PCB's arrived! Finally!!!

Yesss,

my pcbs finally arrived this afternoon. Now I'll solder all the parts on and do some tests as I mentioned in the the post earlier. Then I'll write more in detail.

But for now: Take a look at these beautiful pcbs. I my opinion it seems to me as if a self made pcb, manufactured so awesome like this, is like a painting, like art itself. ;) I'm deeply impressed *-*
The manufacturer was iteadstudio, for those who want to know. I can highly recommend them, very cheap prices(10pcs for around 28$), medium delivery time (~2,5 weeks including manufacturing (Yeah I had choosen the cheaper type of shipping. There is also a more expensive option, which would be faster)) and the result speaks for itself.

Cheers,
JHL

What I'm doing...

Ok folks,

I misjudged the time that I would need to get the electronics working for my current project (hint: it's a 3D Printer).  Etching PCBs myself hasn't been a problem, until now. There is so much detail on it that it's very difficult to make them on my own. So I decided to get them manufactured. That was last Thursday. I guess they may arrive next Wednesday or Thursday. Then I will solder the components on and do a some testing with my own Firmware. When everything is working fine I'll post it here, so stay tuned. But to give you a quick sneak peak, here is a photo of the printer(Yeah, it looks cheap, but I build this thing out of stuff I had laying around, in 24 days(1.12.2014 - 24.12.2015)):

Cheers,

JHL

btw: The orange stuff under the Printer is Ferri-Chloride, once I dropped it on there accidentally 

First post and introduction of myself

Hi,

this blog is empty, for now. But in the next few weeks I'll fill it with posts about my current projects im working on, in my freetime. These are not just a technical nature but also some software and philosospic stuff. I'm an 15(almost 16) year old german teenager who likes electronics, software and the outer space. One day I would like to study aerospacetechnology. But for now I'm going to school. So if someone found this blog through coincidence or mystical forces( :-) ), however stay tuned, there will be some content coming in the near Future.

Cheers,
JHL