Build Session #8 - Nov 3rd 2011, The MakerBot is completed

H, Ryan and Julia too came over to print our first parts. We went to Thingiverse and picked a little kitten toy thing. And it worked. H brought it home and gave it to his kids.  And the MakerBot has been pretty busy since then. 

Mars Rover parts

Mars Rover parts

Mars Rover parts

Mars Rover parts

Mars Rover parts

Some of the things our MakerBot has made

Notice the honeycomb interior structure of solid objects

Mars Rover

Build Session #7 - October 27th

H and I finally got the Firmware uploaded. The problem was due to the version of the Arduino driver I had loaded. Once that was sorted out everything went smoothly. We did the motor and heater testing described in the online instructions and things were working, except the extruder motor and the X-axis motor were both moving in the reverse direction than they should. This was a bit mysterious because we were pretty careful when we wired up everything. But it was simple to just use the control panel in ReplicatorG to reverse the motor directions, so we didn't even need to open up the electronics area again. We got the extruder to make a very nice filiment of melted plastic, so we were pretty happy.

The first strand of plastic. The MakerBot is alive!

Yea!

ReplicatorG control panel

Build Session #6 - October 20th

H, Ryan and I went through the calibration process for the servo motors. It required a volt-meter so we made a trip to Home Depot to buy one.

Publish Post

But we were unable to get the MakerBot and computer to communicate to each other and therefore the firmware would not load onto the motherboard. All we could figure out was that it seemed to have something to do with using the com port. We called it quits 11pm. Ryan went home and H and I went downtown and met up with Steve Lehman for some wildness.