Friday, May 3, 2013

Finally a start on my InMoov

Printer arrives!

My printer arrived about a week ago and I proceeded to assemble the little guy with a lot of help from the MakerFarm assembly docs and videos. I also had several help sessions from Colin at MakerFarm. I must say that I would have been completely lost without all the help.

Anyway it is together and printing most of the time. Still a bit of an adventure but worth it. Here's a couple of pics:


It is a linear bearing Prusa from MakerFarm. Rat's nest of wires I still have to straighten away.


Here's one from the other side. It is currently printing the large wrist piece for my InMoov. It can't be seen because the extruder is hogging the camera.

This shows some more of the clutter in my work room including the filament spool up above.

Beginning to work on my InMoov.

I have gone through the process of printing out the pieces of the test finger, assembling it and writing a simple Arduino sketch for testing. Here's a picture of the finger and my idea of a 9 volt power supply.


and a little video with the finger fingering.



Like the nail polish??



I am currently printing out the pieces of a right hand, forearm and rotating wrist in anticipation of assembling the first part the my InMoov. Also, work is underway on a control program for Raspberry Pi that I am writing in 'c'. I will be using Adafruit's 16 servo control board and one or more Raspberry Pi's.

I must say that I am having a great time. I just need to find more time to blog about the whole process.

9 comments:

  1. If you hang the y axis smooth rods under your frame you may gain an inch of z height?

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    1. Good idea! If I take it apart at some point I will try that out. On looking at the arrangement of the Y stepper and belt in relation to the lower threaded rod, there may be interference if the clamp brackets are inverted.

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  2. Well I'll be dipped! I looked back at the building instructions for the prusa kit and I installed the clamps upside down! I always wondered why the angle of the belt from the Y stepper went up instead of flat.

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  3. Cool looking printer. I like the color. By the time you build your second or third prusa youl be able to put them together in your sleep.

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    1. Well, I tried inverting the clamps and it doesn't work. The bed hits the clamps.

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  4. Bummer are you missing bed leveling springs or something like that? My printers have a carrige bed leveling springs then the bed on top of the springs. Yours must be very close

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  5. My printer has a laser cut board with the linear bearing holders on the bottom. There are short 3 mm screw standoffs with the heat board on top, maybe 4 - 5 mm above the laser cut board. Clipped to the top of the heat board is glass with Kapton. When I inverted the clamps for the Y smooth rods the laser cut board hit the clamps. I looked and I could probably put some kind of spacer between the board and the bearing holders but that would take away a lot of the advantage of inverting the clamps. Could you send a picture of your y axis stuff? Maybe I could see a better way to do mine.

    Thanks

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  6. Sure ill send an address to some pictures when i get off work in the morning. The big board that the glass rides on should have springs or some adjustment for the bed leveling. Its not a huge gap but enough that the bed just clears the top of the pulleys by a hairs width. My printer has no springs i put a piece of soft foam in between the carage and the bed and use bed leveling bolts to pull it down fairly tight. Ill send some pics for you soon

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  7. I uploaded some photos here. http://s180.photobucket.com/user/brw_racing/library/?sort=3&page=1

    I zoomed in on your photo's and think i see how yours works now. I have not noticed it done like that before.
    I think this shows how different printers can be even though there the same

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