2012-10-31 17:28 by Jonathan Buford

#MakiBox Midweek Glimpse - Made to Measure

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This week is filled with testing a stronger gear box and connecting up the rest of the extrusion system to start test prints.

The photo is the magnetic rotary sensors we are using for tracking the filament output. These chips sense the angle of rotation of a magnetic field precisely enough that we will have around 0.03mm or better accuracy on the movement of the filament available.

We've been doing some reconfiguring of hosting, preparing to switch to the new site, and inadvertently ran into some extended routing issues on the Makible.com site that should be resolved. We will be bringing the new blog/store/forum live soon that will focus on MakiBox.

Stay tuned later this week, it is likely to be some hot messy plastic getting laid out in geometric patterns.

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2012-10-27 17:10 by Jonathan Buford

#MakiBox A6 Weekend Update - Smooth Extrusion, Check!

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Finally! Yes, finally, we have very smooth and strong output from the pellet extruder and can start the final integration into the Alpha units.We spent the last few weeks taking the last extruder design that had a reasonable output and tuning that up so that there is no binding up and that the output force is sufficient to extrude at a low enough temperature.

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2012-10-24 16:16 by Jonathan Buford

#MakiBox Midweek Glimpse - In The Zone

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We are deep in the design space of melt zones and thermal gradients this week. In the pic is today's test rig using a composite of brass and stainless to test if there is a broader, more uniform gradient along the barrel, with a focused heat source at the nozzle. The nozzle looks like it is doing what we need, but the brass barrel worked too well and ended up melting the whole load of pellets when we bumped the nozzle to 240C.

In other news, our revised USB interface firmware is shaping up to not require any drivers across all platforms, so really will be a simple install or even just an executable program.

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2012-10-21 16:03 by Jonathan Buford

#MakiBox A6 Update - Work In Progress Week

Here at the MakiLab, there are so many things that are happening, but, they are all in progress.

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2012-10-17 17:21 by Jonathan Buford

#MakiBox Midweek Glimpse - Powering Up

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This week, we are working towards getting the system together as soon as possible. It looks like we have some progress in smoothing out the output from the pellet extruder, so we will be in a good position to feed it through the print head soon. 

 

The photo is of the prototype power board that has the power socket, switch, and fuse on it, and distributes power to the main board. 

We may also be moving to our new site this week, so there may be a new look coming. For those that have registered for updates here, you will need to create an account on the new site, but this will also be the home for support for the MakiBox with integrated forum and everything.

For those that missed the Hangout, check out either the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrKKl6tiD70

Or you can read Ross's summary if you don't have two hours to spare.

http://savorywatt.com/2012/10/13/makibox-hangout-2-summary/

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