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On The Line

Discussion in 'United States of America' started by Frankn, Mar 5, 2015.

  1. Frankn

    Frankn Member

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    Frankn Old Member lol

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    Well, I am still on the fence as far as purchasing a 3D printer. The R1 looks good. I can handle the mechanical s and electronics, but I have no experience coding. I am reading up on the C coding of the board and Sketchup. Hay I use to do the old fashion drafting and then 32 years at Xerox as a field service engineer. I have some ideas for toys that I would like to prototype with the machine.
    Who knows, maybe I can come up with the next Hoola Hoop. lol Frank
    hoola-hoop.jpg


     
    #1 Frankn, Mar 5, 2015
    Last edited: Mar 6, 2015
  2. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    Not sure why you would need the coding experience to use the printer.
    Unless you need to modify the firmware you should never need to look at it.

    Sketchup I can't speak to (we use Solidworks).
     
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  3. Frankn

    Frankn Member

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    View attachment 6605
    Thanks Mark, all those brackets,commas and voids were starting to get to me.
    Well Sketchup looked easy to work with, I read the dummies book. Solid Works looked a bit up scale for my purpose but maybe I will graduate to it later on.
    The R1 mechanicals look basic compared to some of the Xerox equipment I have worked on. I think I have seen every type of mechanical drive, chains, cables, shafts, pulleys, gears, timing belts, air pressure, fluid pressure, even a harmonic drive, ( don't ask).
    We even used stepper motors to index the sorters. A lot of the terminology names have changed like sketch instead of program , and shield instead of daughter board etc.
    I am still trying to figure out the info flow. It looks like it goes from the CAD design to a plugin that changes it to a STL which goes to the setup program software, board processor and then to the, ( I think) ramps which issues the actual signals to the motors for positioning.
    O well, experience is the best teacher. Thanks again, Frank.
     
  4. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    The ramps is a daughtercard for the arduino (which is a decently powered small computer).
    The Arduino has all of the code (firmware) and then RAMPS interfaces all of the I/O from the printer electrical bits (stepper motors, switches, heaters, etc) to the arduino.
     
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  5. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    So you cad up your 3D model and then use something else (MatterControl, Repetierhost, Cura, Simplify3D, etc.) to turn that into a control set (a list of GCode commands) that drives the printer itself. GCode is not new, lots of CAD/CAM machines (CNC, Routers and the like) have been using it for a good bit.
     
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  6. Frankn

    Frankn Member

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    Are the GCode and the STL the same thing. It appears to be a list of binary instructions for the board.?
     
  7. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    1) STL is a cad file export format. This is binary and can be imported into most 3D cad programs for editing the model.
    2) GCode is the text commands sent to the printer to drive it.

    Slicers turn #1 into #2
     
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  8. Frankn

    Frankn Member

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    Well, with several months, I know the basics, but still not into the coding. Abandon Matter slicer because it corrupted my only Sketchup STL I made for my toy project. Only got to print a couple. Now using Cura slicer with success.
    I also realize 3D printing is still evolving. I can handle the electrical end, but the software end evades me at times.
     
  9. mark tomlinson

    mark tomlinson ༼ つ ◕_ ◕ ༽つ
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    It is not like printing a word doc yet :)
    And, yes, it really is evolving a lot. Glad you found a combo that works for you.
     

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