This page is a blog of my first RepRap build, made over a period of about seven months. If you don't know what a RepRap is then head over to
reprap.org, basically it's
a machine capable of printing 3D objects; including many of the parts needed to build itself.
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Initial Design Decisions
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After much research and deliberation I've decided to buy a set of Mendel parts off EBay but replace the electronics and driver software with my own, at least for now. This decision is driven primarily by cost: a full set of electronics on EBay costs about $350 inc shipping to Australia but I could make them myself for a fraction of that. Plus there are some features that I would like to add such as full USB support etc. I'm going to make the electronics PIC-based (specifically the 18F4550) which will make USB 2.0 support fairly trivial. For the front-end I'll use WPF (Visual C# Express), mainly because it's free and quick and easy to develop on. The firmware will be run host-side in a managed C++ class library (Visual C++ Express) which I'll statically link to the front-end. For the end-stops I'll try nopheads trick of using microswitches, I can always replace them with optos later if they don't work out. For the motor drivers I'll probably stick to Pololus, but I'll keep an open mind about that...there's a shortage of them at the moment and it'd be nice if there was a cheap and easy way to replace them with discrete components and standard ICs. Collectively, this should allow me to develop a full set of USB-driven electronics for around $30, plus the cost of the motor drivers. As an added bonus the firmware will run host-side, which will make it much easier to develop and debug future extensions with Visual Studio.
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