LesHall
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Posts posted by LesHall
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Okay so I have made an attempt at testing this idea. What I did was kind of poor judgement. Long story short I thought the Ultimaker would fail in printing at the tippy top of this kitty cat model when printed with zero infill, one layer shell, and three layers top / bottom filament. Well the Ultimaker being as awesome as it is, managed to print the top with east, grace, speed, and agility as it always does!
I was hoping to push the printer beyond it's limits then add my internal support idea and have it work, then finally to print with infill for a comparison of apples to apples.
So that idea is shot but with a tougher print that actually does push the Ultimaker beyond it's limits, like a really long bridge, then I will be able to compare.
Les
Les make it happen!
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OK, so anyway here goes with the story. I printed a kitten statue back about a year and a half ago on my ROBO3D and it had a hole in the top of it's head and some messy filament deposited across and around the hole. This, I reasoned, was due to the slope of the head and surrounding area of being like a flattened down sphere.
Well I went to do a test of an internal support idea that I had, in which I put a rod from the throat of the kitten, running internally to the center of this dome, to help with the bridging. Long story short when the printing was done I found no difference between the rod sample and the unmodified sample. The Ultimaker was so damn good at doing it's job that the kitten was printed flawlessly with or without my help of the internal support!
That goes to show you what an amazing printer we have. I feel so fortunate to have one.
Les out!
Les make it happen!
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I had a ROBO3D as my first printer. They were just out of kickstarter and struggling to meet orders which they did and now they've got a decent product at an amazingly low price for all the printer quality and performance that you get. So its a great printer now, but back then sheesh! What a sucky printer. Hahahaha - funny how things change!
Back then the wiring harness was a rat's next of cluttered mess trapping heat onto the RAMPS board, which got so hot it melted the bed heater connector among other failures. I'm lucky the thing did not go up in flames. So for that reason, I think the print quality was a bit off which is why I told you all that, so now we get to the point here, which is a tail of two kitties.
Say what? Yes, a tail of two kitties. Wait I have a Skype call. More in a jiffy.
Les out!
Les make it happen!
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Well as a newcomer, I'd rather see what Sander calls a "mature" forum than the opposite. Consider the ESP8266 forum - a wonderful technology so disruptive that people are flocking together to use it, well when I went to read it there was so much asking for help it seemed like the whole forum was filled with only that! No content!
Now clearly that was and is not the case, just the nature of the product being so powerful, so amazing, and so new. Just wait ti Ultimaker releases a metal printer or somesuch, that'll crank up the heat (so to speak)!
Les
Les make it happen!
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Boink! Went my brain when I suddenly realized this concept, the Internal Support, that apparently in retrospect has been nagging at me for some time. What if we changed our slicers to add support on the inside of the part just as we often do (when necessary) on the outside of the part? Wouldn't that boost print speed dramatically?
OK, so we've been using infill since forever, and we have all watched with patience and acceptance that infill is usually necessary. We try to tweak the infill percentage and come up with all sorts of infills and infill only where necessary, which are all helpful techniques, so why use internal support?
Well Im kind of wondering about that. Why is support external and infill internal? Why don't we use external infill and internal support? It seems to me that some sort of branching structural support, placed on the inside of the part, would be more efficient than a fixed pattern.
In addition to that, we have support touching build plate versus support everywhere, how about support from lower internal surface of part to upper internal surface of part?
These are questions that I'd like to discuss. Your comments/suggestions are welcome as always.
Les
Les make it happen!
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na na na na na na na na na na BATLAMP!
Hhahahah! Funniest thing I've seen in a while, thanks for the laugh!
Les
Les make it happen!
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Can you see what this says?
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Hi Guy, thanks for your interest. Well, our initial goal is to work only with the minimum possible platform, at the suggestion of e-NABLE's founder and spokesperson - John Schull. So with Jon's direction I chose to make the device report it's own battery voltage up to the cloud server that Ro created just for this purpose. So that's for starters.
Then after that are the super hero powers. OK that takes some explanation. You see, at e-NABLE we have noticed an amazing phenomenon which goes like this... Our recipients are mostly kids with limb differences, most notably a disorder which causes one in 2,000 kids to have no fingers on one or both of their hands. These kids have been teased into depression and sadness by their peers for being different. Well, when they get a hand or arm from e-NABLE, it's a real cybernetic device attached directly to this limb difference.
To the kids this is major coolness. All the other kids want to know about their peer with the robotic device. Suddenly the kid goes from being unpopular to being the most popular kid in the class! This works wonders for their self esteem. Well, multiplying this effect is the fact that super heroes are so popular today. We have learned that making the hands have superhero themes really helps to further amplify this effect of popularity. Everyone wants to meet the kid with the superhero cybernetic hand!
Well about a year ago I was thinking of this whole phenomenon and we were just beginning to make prosthetic devices that LOOKED like superhero themed appendages - superman, batman, wonder woman, all that jive. I got to thinking and it occurred to me: "We're engineers, technicians, fabricators, designers, CAD operators, and every aspect of technology pretty much is represented by our e-NABLE members, so why not utilize all that talent into making the hands REALLY do superhero stuff? Starting with electronics, and possibly later getting into mechanical stuff, I made an effort that I called "Spidey Sense" which gave the hands super directional hearing.
Then I kind of left e-NABLE for a while to pursue a water project because I thought it was an opportunity to do the greater good, so Jon asked me to summarize my work in an Instructables article which I did. Then after some months I came back to e-NABLE and sometime after that I became enamored with the amazing game-changing IoT WiFi chip from China called the ESP8266. I made a wearable network scanner just for fun and being so excited about it I wanted to share with my friends at e-NABLE.
That's when I posted a cheezy photo of me with the scanner. Well, in the process I mentioned that we could make the prosthetics "Phone Home" and I think it was Jon who asked how small one of these chips could be and how much would they cost? Then the project went from there. I started doing the engineering of the thing and don't you know the work was fast, easy, and fun.
Sometimes in our work efforts it's like an uphill climb and other times it's smooth sailing. This was the latter, as if it were something that was meant to be. Well anyway, some folks like Chuck and Vikram and others made contributions and a guy named Ro who works with our servers made a simple cloud server at my request. We have since upgraded this server into an MQTT cloud instance.
Well I have news of our meeting last night but that will have to wait a bit because someone is messaging me on Skype. I'll tell more of this tale and better answer your question, Guy, in a while.
Les
Make history!
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Two Hearts from me, thank you Edge! And... good start ultiarjan, you're ahead of me!
Les
Make history!
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OK so I got to working on the wrist-mountable portion of this project and I downloaded a customizable stretchy bracelet from Thingiverse (YouMagine only had one that required NinjaFlex and I havent bought any 2.85mm ninjaflex yet; being an Ultimaker user now, I am breaking my Thingiverse habit and tending toward YouMagine). The goal is to attach the whole thing together as one piece with stretchy bracelet holding it on the wrist.
So yeah I got to working on that and I'm printing out some test stretchies, and I go into hte #ultimake chat and talk with someone. This someone asks me questions that basically lead me to the idea that I could use some of my extra ESP266 chips to perform network scans just like this wrist wearable with the goal of trilaterating the mobile phones around my room! This with a little bit of software on the computer could plot the locations over time so that I would have a record of people outside my room listening (and be aware of that) as well as evicence of them entering my room!
Anyway, paranoia aside, It is a fun idea to track wifi with IoT chips like that, so I am already making plans for a second "Maker Game" project on the trilateration device installation. Wish me luck!
Les
Make history!
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May the 4th be with you!
I see what you did there!
It was with me, I made some progress on two projects and interacted with some nice people, some not so nice but what ya gonna do? I started out thinking of teaching a class on building a WiFi scanner then someone sort of led me to the realization that I could make a WiFi locator - even better! And I have all or most of the hardware to do it
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Hey all, guess what? You are invited to be an early participant in a game of Making things. The very nature of the game is forming now just with myself communicating with some friends. It's kind of more of a virtual makerspace than a game, though the goal is to emphasize a larger picture that is very fun.
In this game each of us is Mentor or Student and we can all be Mentors of things we are good at doing as well as Students of Mentors who are expert in the doing of some thing. For example, the thing I'd like to do first is be a Mentor to Students who would like to build a wearable IoT WiFi scanner. This is a thing I created some time ago using a wifi chip on a breakout board and some example software for starters.
Probably the best thing is for me to be the first Mentor and see how it goes. We can shape the form of the "game" via online participation. In fact, we can use the Ultimaker communication resources - the forum and the chat - as our comm platform. Here is a photo I took of me being all excited about having built my first version of the scanner.
I took it out to the front of the building and it kept picking up new devices and dropping them on the next scan, I figure it was the cell phones in the cars that were driving by, perhaps? Not sure as I am no expert on the subject.
At any rate, it's an interesting project and you can plan your own implementation of the wearable and write your own software from the examples. I'll even make a badge and provide the badge file to you upon successful completion of the project. Oh yes, we will have Show and Tell at the end of the project.
So if you want to build your own WiFi Scanner along with me building my second one and teaching you in the process, just reply to this thread voicing your input. Thanks.
Les
Make history!
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I feel flustered! I printed the robot at two different sizes and tried different ways (wire, screws, and cotter pin) to mount the legs. I don't have long enough screws in my hardware collection to mount both legs with one screw.
At this point I will need a little while to chill out and see how things improve, and I would like to make the suggestion that we make a robot that works and does not require hardware. After all, print in place is one of our talents.
I can see the feet on the bed, the body supported to waist height, and bridging creating mounts for the legs. I have done this type of thing before with good success.
Les
Make history!
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Printed this for the wife - the names of all our family. Printed in ABS with a 0.8mm nozzle and 0.4mm layer height. The printer was left open, no paper or cardboard covering it. Obviously it did not distort or delaminate during the print. It took around 8 hours to print at 60mm/sec and 45mm/sec for outer edges.
The only thing that went a bit wrong was that I did not print it solid, so it leaked a little. That was easy to fix, I simply washed the inside with acetone, and minutes later it was dry and waterproof.
What a clever fix to wash it with acetone! How long has it been watertight now?
Yeah that struck me as pretty nifty too!
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I have printed two robots now and neither walks. The larger one I printed in PLA with 100% infill to give it some weight, the smaller with 20% infill, it is very light. I don't know which direction to point the feet and I don't have any M2 hardware to use, so I have wire. No way to keep the legs apart. what am I doing wrong?
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Oh, what the heck! I cannot resist a good contest, and now that I understand it better I'm in! I printed the robot and use a piece of 22 Gauge wire to join them at the shoulder where the legs meet. It won't walk.
The robot is printed in PLA which is very smooth and I've only tested it on smooth surfaces, so it's just not moving or skittering away. I do have some nuts and bolts (stop that grimmacing) in one of those 1.001 pieces kits from Harbor Frieght, but I don't think I have M2. M3 yes but not long enough anyway. Therefore wire.
Why won't he walk?
Les
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OK, I'm going to begin with the notion that you understand a bit about us at e-NABLE and what we do. If you're not familiar with e-NABLE then I suggest you go to this website where you can get up to speed and even get involved if you feel so motivated. This topic is laser-beam focused on one category of e-NABLE which is the addition of electronics to the hands as part of the "Phone Home" effort. Other electronics efforts do exist as well, this is the one I started and several people have made contributions along the way".
So what is "Phone Home"? Isn't that what the alien who crash landed on Earth said he needed to do in the movie E.T.? Yep, he had to build a radio transmitter or some such gizmo in his technology to send a message back to his home planet as to where he was so they could save him from the sickness he was developing by being on Earth. In the same sense, minus the sickness bit, our mission with the Phone Home project is to send messages via the internet from the prosthetic device back to the cloud server at e-NABLE.
When I had some success playing with the amazing and game-changing chips called ESP8266, designed in China for IoT (Internet of Things) use, I was excited for sure! I had done very little internet programming and here, by following Adafruit tutorials and using Adafruit software on the Adafruit hardware that I had purchased (did I say Adafruit enought times? OK, you get the picture, this project relies heavily on Adafruit at least in it's current form), I managed to get an actual chip by itself to communicate with my phone via website interactions. Like wow man that's techie stuff!
So being all excited and trying to imagine ways that I could show and tell it with my friends, I naturally went to the e-NABLE google group and showed a photo of myself holding my phone and the bulky but functional wrist wearable device I had constructed to do local network scans. It was not yet an e-NABLE project but was about to become one. It occurred to me to add a comment that if we put these things on e-NABLE prosthetics, they could "Phone Home" with their usage data, to tell us how much the prosthetic is used, or mainly if it were still used at all over the passing of time.
The response was very supportive of continuing R&D exploration in that direction! This I found very exciting so I said I would work further on the project which I have done, off and on, for the past six months since I think around November of 2015 I think maybe? Or thereabouts. Anyway, I have not worked on it much lately and I think another e-NABLE volunteer has made some progress since my latest progress, and I need to catch up with him, Ro Ortiz who is like a super monstrously amazing e-NABLE engineer in my book. More on Ro and his contribution later, let's wrap up this post and I'll get back to telling more of the tale of Phone Home, e-NABLE style soon enough!
Your comments, questions, and really any positive input you have to contribute are quite welcome!
Les
Make history!
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I wish I knew what you was going on about LesHall
Lol skint, let me explain. e-NABLE ....
(^.^)~ mew
haha Les, the e-NABLE bit I do understand...its all that techy electronic language you speak that bamboozles me lol
OK skint, I'm going to explain it in more non-electronics-expert terms over in "what have you made" as per Sander's suggestion. You can find the convo there in a jiffy.
Les
Make history!
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Wow that is very impressive!!
Care to share some of your work and progress here on the forums?
You are one of the reasons where at some point people start removing their own limbs because prosthetics will be way cooler and more advanced than a regular plain hand. mehhh.
Sure, I can share technical details especially related to the 3D printing aspects of the work, but also the electronics and software that I am stumbling to create. It's not just me either, several people are helping out, most notably Ro Ortiz who is sort of the keeper of e-NABLE's web programming. Maybe it might inspire some folks into helping out?
Where should I post it?
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Yes that was very helpful, Robert! I especially liked the bit at the end about saving and loading profiles!
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Oh maybe that was the problem, it wasn't dry yet.
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I feel so "stoopid"! I read somewhere during my initial familiarization with my brand spankin' new Ultimaker 2+ (yay) that with a heated bed, PLA does not require glue to get good adhesion while printing and good release when done. I tried this for a while and all was good, then for some goofy-dumb reason I thought "well, I'll just add some glue", thinking it would hold even better.
That's where I went wrong, because I was printing Loubie's Aria Dragon (with wider proportions, just my preference) and the early stage of the print lost adhesion to the bed and just got some stringy deposits on it. Not knowing how to diagnose the problem, i exacerbated it by adding EVEN MORE GLUE (extra duh on top) which produced the same problem EVEN EARLIER in the printing on the second try.
It was only when I felt the bed and realized that the glue was cooked dry by the heat of the bed that I realized my dilemma. So I cleaned the bed and did not apply glue and so far, knock on wood, the print is flawless! So lessons learned eh?
Les
Make history!
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Greetings kelechi, it is with a happy heart that I greet you! I have been wanting to establish communications with someone in Africa for charity purposes.
I volunteer at two places, one of which is all about making clean water for people who need it. To that end we have developed two methods of cleaning water and are working on more as well. I am hoping to establish an outlet for our technologies that involves a 3D printer located in Africa.
If you are interested in running off a few simple prints with the possibility of helping people clean their water supply, please reply in this thread or contact me via email (deltamodulator(at)gmail(dot)com).
Les
Make history!
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I wish I knew what you was going on about LesHall
Lol skint, let me explain. e-NABLE is that charitable organization that makes the plastic hands for kids (and adults) who have upper limb differences such as the birth defect that causes 1 in 20,000 kids to have no fingers on one hand. They grow up shy about their limb difference due to teasing from other kids, but when they get an e-NABLE hand - for free - t;hey become temporarily the coolest kid on the block - what's cooler than a robotic hand for a kid?
Well I do R&D as an e-NABLE volunteer, and my thing is adding electronics to the hands. The latest thing is adding IoT so the hands can "Phone Home" with usage data as well as communicate with each other and with peripheral devices.
I was just in a great mood because I got the hand's electronics talking with the server's MQTT (pronounced "mosquito") messaging protocol. Such things are a mystery to me, networking and communications, so I was elated to have gotten it to work. So now you know what I was on about!
Les
Make history!
p.s. I am further elated by my Ultimaker 2+ printer, it's truly the cat's meow!
(^.^)~ mew
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Internal Supports
in UltiMaker Cura
Posted
that's a good idea, I can use meshmixer to hollow out the piece, but how can I get the slicer, in my case Cura but really any slicer to create support inside of it? Do I have to remove the bottom? Or will using support do it?
Alas, my cat Schrodinger disappeared in an ultraviolet catastrophe! So sad...
Les
Les make it happen!