RepRap Research Foundation

Jeez… I haven’t posted here in a while. Sorry about that! A whole bunch of stuff has happened, mostly we’ve been working on the next generation of RepRap technology. Hopefully you’re keeping up to date with the project on both the builders and main RepRap blogs. I usually just post here to give updates on what is available on the RRRF store.

New Items

One of the new things I’ve been spending quite a lot of time on, are the prototypes for the next generation of RepRap electronics. These boards have been designed to work with the Arduino, an excellent open-source microcontroller project. The products listed below definitely all work, but keep in mind that the software to drive them has not been developed yet.

* DC Motor Driver Board v1.0

This board drives 2 DC motors at up to 750mA each. Perfect for driving an extruder motor, etc. You can easily interface it with your Arduino to do all sorts of other stuff as well. You can even use it to drive a small stepper motor!

* PWM Driver Board v1.0

This board takes a PWM signal and amplifies it with a TIP120. It can handle up to 5A per channel, you’ll need heatsinks though! Perfect for driving an extruder heater, fans, or solenoid. Or any other thing like that you can think up. Rad!

* Stepper Motor Driver Board v1.0

This board takes our current stepper controller board, removes the PIC, adds a L297 stepper controller chip, and simplifies the overall board. It has a few major improvements: half stepping, current chopping (much smoother stepper driving!), and a host of other improvements. You can probably even use this board with parallel port based CNC software, since it implements the very standard step/direction interface.

Coming Soon

* Cast Extruders

I finally got my extruder molds, and I’ve been spending the past couple weeks learning how to do castings well, as well as making a bunch of castings. There are only a few minor hurdles remaining, and then I’ll be ready to put these kits up on the store. Hopefully I’ll also be able to offer two versions as well: the offset design and the older, direct feed design. They will also be alot cheaper than the last stepper kits, which is definitely good news.

* McWire Cartesian Bot

I have done quite a bit of building and testing on the McWire design, and have hopefully solved the remaining design hurdles. If all goes well, I’ll be sending the design to get lasercut here in a month or so, and will have that up and available for purchase shortly afterwards. I’m very happy with this design so far. Its easy to assemble, easy to disassemble, reliable, and looks both steampunk and futuristic at the same time. Yay!

* Kits

I’ve been looking into what it takes to make kits, specifically how much time it takes, and if its worth it to make kits. I’ve decided that its definitely a good idea, and that it would save people money, make it a lot easier for people to get involved with RepRap, and just generally make the whole process a lot better. I plan on starting by making kits of the new electronics boards, extruder kits, and then hopefully cartesian bot kits. From there, its a simple matter of creating a mega-kit that is just a collection of those 3 kits. Once we have that you’ll be able to order a RepRap kit and assemble it over the course of a weekend. Awesome!!!

Filed under: Foundation News, New Products