Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Fireworks box.
What does it mean? Banjo playing rabbit under an amanita. Dancing elf? Pink thing playing sax?
Sunday, June 13, 2010
On The Substantiation of Downloaded Things
I've realized that there is a world of people out there that spend hours upon hours making very very very accurate 3d objects for use in animations etc. And they are printable.
Yes, it takes a bit of tweaking but with a basic path of,
Download somebody's 3d object (in poser, or obj or whatever) that they made to make
some game or something better or maybe just for fun and a dream of fame and riches
Load it into blender (for poser things you need extra scripts but they are also out there
for free somewhere)
Clean it up if you want,
Export as a .stl
Import it into netfabb studio (also free in basic mode) and make it all manifold and shit, put it on the xy plane, resize it to make you happy, and save it back as an .stl
Open with skeinforge and slice it up (for those who don't do this often, this is the evil-scripting demon that figures out tool-paths for the print head as well as the codes to turn it off and on, temp speed, basically tells the machine what to do)
Save that puppy and then load it into ReplicatorG (the printer controller) and press print.
And some amount of time later you get something that sorta kinda looks like you thought.
Now go back to blender, clean it up more, try some different skeinforge settings, maybe play some different music in the background to keep it calm and go boy go.
Now the next question is....
what are the copyright issues around printing someone's graphics?
If they say I can use them for any non-commercial purpose I guess that means I can print them. But I suspect they'd be a bit baffled by them getting used for something that they didn't even think possible.
This is a very interesting time to be alive.
Very interesting indeed.
-nat
Tintin's rocket.
Grabbed the 3d obj file off a graphics sharing site. Imported it into blender. Outputted a stl. Opened that in netfabb, resized it, put it in the right place on the xy plane, saved it. Opened it in skeinforge, sliced it (generated the tool path and gcodes), saved that. Opened it in replicatorG and pushed print.
3d cg to physical object, two hours.
I feel very cool right now.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Side gig making noise.
Arduino with wave shield thru 7watt amp=loud thing that plays wav files for installation.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Re: My world
be careful if I were you...
On 16 May 2010, at 20:24, smonkey wrote:
<2010-05-16 14.21.56.jpg>
Mark Pilkington
mark@strangeattractor.co.uk
===============================
http://www.strangeattractor.co.uk/further/
Further: Beyond Strange Attractor
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Fixed?
So it was oozing by the threads on the barrel. I think because the ptfe (white tube thing) got too soft at temp over time. I put a hose clamp on it and have been slowly tightening it over the past half hour.
Hopefully by now the abs has been sqquished out and its tight.
We shall see.
These extruders are the weak point. I think next cahs influx its time to get one machined out of aluminium. Same parts, just not plexi.
Since I can get the cad files it should be affordable.
Now to try a test build.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Uh oh.
This large chunk of abs slowly extruded out of the back of the extruder where I couldn't see it. I hate to think how long its been leaking.
I think the ptfe piece got too hot and distorted and let goo leak out around its threads.
This means the last few tests are flawed since the abs was at least partially going that way.
Tho this does explain why the past few tests were janky.
Sigh...now to fix it....feh...perhaps find some ptfe and drill the right sized hole. Doesn't really need to be a tube. Just as long as it fits in the space.
Breakthrough! Eureka!
A breakthrough today. I realized that one doesn't tell the slicer/gcode generator what you want the bot to do, rather you tell it what it can do.
So rather than the setting "extrude speed" be saying how fast it should extrude, it says how fast my machine extrudes. So if not enough stuff is being deposited, I have to lower the value rather than raise it!
This is a huge deal. Now I can make prints very tight!
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Saturday, May 8, 2010
It Worked! I made a ...um.....box!
It worked. I made a thing. I printed a fucking THING!
Its a little box for calibrating.
Whew...there were some rough times this afternoon before I figured out the proper way to turn stuff on in the correct order to work...but..it does!
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Tip done.
Note to makerbot staff: every time you change the kit you should have a stranger come in and assemble a kit following the directions.
The nozzle assembly directions mention a nut, then show it in pics, then it dissapeaars, then they mention it again, but still no pic.
Need better pics there.
But that aside I think I did it.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
and one last thing before I sleep
"Nat, you love customizing things, why didn't you paint or stain or somehow otherwise make your makerbot cool like I've seen on the interwebs?"
And my answer is,
"If someone can put off putting the thing together long enough to let paint dry? They are a far stronger soul than I gunga-din."
I want this sucka done and making things and no pretty pretty is going to slow that down.
heck, if I had my druthers I'd be pulling an all nighter. Sadly work and an aging body that doesn't tolerate lack of sleep sez otherwise.
Hmmm....that seems awfully complicated.
Until now I have been laughing at the estimated build times (I've done the whole thin so far since...um build stage was done at 4:15 and its now 11:40 minus dinner while watching an episode of top gear...so...6.5 hrs give or take), but this looks like it might actually take two hours. Perhaps its time for bed. Sadly I've got work tomorrow (deinstalling an art show I built at the chicago cultural cente for christine tarkowski). Hopefully it'll just be a few hours (shows down, morrow is load out).
To be continued...
Xy stage !
Tight is how tight? How bout a ballpark here guys...like...."tighten till a matchstick can't push the belt without breaking" or something.
I'm tiring....soon I will need an ice cream cone.
Peeling the paper off the plexi!
Nobody's ever licked this before! It was made in a machine and never seen by humans before now!
Oh...I digress....
back to the build.
Hmm...first big issue....
So...I didn't get the power supply from makerbot (I had a free one here) but now we see the error in my ways. A non standard fan position means it won't fit in the place it should go.
For now my answer is don't mount it and try to find a better one later. Hope this doesn't bite me in the ass too much later.
Electronics in!
Note to makerbot, you should mention that the bolt heads go on the opposite side from the electronics so the nuts touch the boards.
X-y stage complete!
Oh, and from earlier...a tip...
If you pour baking soda on super glue it kicks off immediately and adds as a filler. Works great on the magnets.
Makerbot! X-stage done!
The cupcake assm. Begins!
Note so far: the pulley kit isn't labled like in the directions. It isn't supplemental anymore I guess.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
J.A. Preston Cyclecar
Here's what it sounds like!
| Goodwood of the north, Cholmondeley Castle 08 | DQ |
