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You may also want to check out the previous assembly photos also featured on Slashdot. Pictures of the laborious assembly process went up several days after, and have been viewed by tens of thousands of people in the last few weeks alone.
A good thing, indeed! Rough high-level steps are as follows:. Within ReplicatorG, launch the embedded Skeinforge configuration application, which is used to take 3D design files in. This is necessary since 3D printers usually print in layers, starting with the lowest. Skeinforge is an extremely configurable system with an extremely shitty GUI. Even after calibration, you will need to periodically revisit Skeinforge to address build-specific issues. ReplicatorG build platform positional and orientation.
Use ReplicatorG to either upload a compiled. S3G files to the on-board SD card for disconnected printing, or stream the commands on the fly. Run the test job! The workflow is initially very daunting and cumbersome. It starts to make more sense after a while, but needs major work. Documentation is 4 of 5. The 5 is for comprehensiveness and getting me through the process, but -1 for ocassionally erronous images, ambiguous text, or omission of step.
You can print many of your own replacement parts if some break. Many small pre-fab printer shops have materialized in the last couple years, ranging from laser-cut wood frames such as Makerbot , to clear acrylics, metals, and, of course, printed plastics. Regardless of your chosen path, the electronic components are currently not printable in any high-quality manner, are best purchased from a vendor.
This includes mainboard microcontroller the Thing-o-Matic uses as Arduino MEGA , stepper motor controllers, stepper motors, power supply, end stop sensors, extruder controller, cables etc. Makerbot is a good choice for U. If you want a RepRap, the choice is more difficult. After an estimated 16 man-hour assembly effort, my brand new MakerBot Thing-o-Matic is fully assembled. The new motor should arrive early next week. This is an extremely abbreviated set of high-level assembly pictures for those curious about the process.
The assembly process is intense , to put it lightly. As the online assembly guide progresses, the instructions increasingly rely on your prior knowledge of repetitious concepts. After playing with external CD burners and evaluating various proprietary hardware options such as the Aleratec auto-flip burner , MicroBoard tower replicators amongst many others, I decided that the current commercial solutions are nice, but most definitely overpriced.
So I decided to develop my own solution. I decided to create all my replicated discs using LightScribe technology. This allows me to flip LightScribe CD-Rs upside-down in the burner and use the laser to burn custom graphics onto the top of the disc.
The plastic ones are more expensive, always crack, and are pretty much useless from the start since most people seem to rip their CDs nowadays anyway. Sleeves protect the disc, come in many colors, are far less expensive, even cheaper in bulk, and perhaps best of all can be printed on directly though ordinary laser and ink jet printer. My primary purpose for this buildout is to replicate audio CDs as quickly as possible for Sonic Binge Records: In particular, I need to quickly replicate a pancakes worth usually of audio CDs as inexpensively as possible.
The singleton pattern sucks. From a pragmatic point of view, it has two primary drawbacks: How do you configure a singleton without a parameter to getInstance , which would not be consistent with the intentions of the pattern?
This makes the code very inflexible, as developers intending to reuse it will be at the mercy of your pre-chosen configuration mechanism, which may not be appropriate for their circumstances, or even unit testing. Unit tests generally require control over the lifecycle of the class under test to fully validate proper state transition and contractual validity. If intentionally introducing a negative test results in an irrecoverable state, how do you throw out the singleton and start the next case with a new one?
What if your test case is creating a tricky concurrency scenario emulating multiple systems within the sandbox of a single JVM? What happens when you discover you need multiple instances of the singleton within your application? Additionally, unit testing of code using static singleton dependencies has a high potential of awkwardness due to an inability to swap out implementations for mock objects. Under the principle of designing for testability, quality and maintainability, hackishness is not a quality to aspire to.
Do as the Jedi do and use them with consideration and responsibly. The Makerbot Thing-o-Matic, fully assembled and ready to print. The Next Generation—which could recycle almost any object—the Thing-o-Matic and the like have already begun branching out from the 3mm ABS plastic spools used build the objects in the following pictures.
Unboxing of the Thing-o-Matic kit. See links for assembly pictures. My 3D model of an identical pair of custom solar cell brackets, done in Google SketchUp.
Rough high-level steps are as follows: Install the Arduino driver , if not already installed. Easy Download and run ReplicatorG, and try making a software connection to the machine. Use ReplicatorG to manually control all the machines widgets, and test each one for proper function.
Load up some plastic filament. Skeinforge interaction can be a frustrating chore. Once many initial configuration jobs are complete, your time in software will generally be spent across two applications:. ReplicatorG and included Skeinforge application , tweaking, compiling, and babysitting.
The Makerbot MK5 plastruder turns 3mm filament into hot, sticky plastic goo. ABS is essentially Lego plastic, and solid at room temperature. Grab a handful of Lego bricks to get a feel for the weight, texture, color of ABS.
At the melting point slightly above degrees Celcius, ABS turns into a half-solid, half-liquid ooze that is melty enough to extrude into the shape of your choice, while remaining solid enough to hold form long enough to cool back into a solid.
Many different colors of ABS filament are available. And shipping is not free. Revisions 1, 2 and 3 of the solar cell bracket, from left to right. Given the complexity of the machinery, you have a lot to consider before making the investment. You will almost definitely be the only kid on the block with this toy. Makerbot maintains the Thingiverse: Semi-automated batch jobs via the included Automated Build Platform.
All needed parts and come with the kit. Supplies such as ABS are also available from Makerbot. Four solar cell bracket are shown partially assembled into a larger structure. Generally not robust enough to run unattended.
Something, somewhere, is dying a horrible death and taking my whole operating system with it. Skeinforge—the software that converts your 3D models to tool paths—has an absolutely atrocious and ofter unstable user interface. The machine can be somewhat loud and obvoxious.
If you do this, you are making a very big time commitment. Questionable electronic sub-component failure rates, and one of my biggest complaints. The motor on my MK5 Plastruder was dead on arrival, and my power supply went out after less than a dozen prints.
I could just be unluckly, though. Lots of small custom components. Four iterations of the 20mm test cube: Competition is available, but thin and very fragmented. Special thanks to Ethan H. You can also grab an older model at significant discount. Another 20mm test cube being printed. The biggest barrier to entry is not price, but difficulty. No fabrication, assembly, software, design, calibration, of troubleshooting process is theoretically undoable by any able-bodied person, but the same can be said for rocket science.
You need a decent understanding of robotics, hardware, software, electronics and mechanics, need a little hand dexterity and a ton of patience. Consumer 3D printing is still in its infancy, but the Makerbot Thing-o-Matic and ancestry are clear and decisive steps towards a day when all forms of matter can be assimilated from raw materials as easy as loading a coffee maker.
My power supply has an fatal failure after a handful of prints. Makerbot has sent a replacement free of charge.
The blow-out seems to be a capacitor. I believe that the power supply may not have enough kung-fu to power all the components. I hacked in a new power supply with higher specs, but it didn't fit perfectly.
By flipping the disc over you can burn images onto the top using the drive lasers. Hardware Intel i5 bit CPU. Gigabyte motherboard with lots of SATA ports.