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Loot! The Gen Con 2013 Report

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Loot!

This year I brought home a veritable dragon's horde of stuff. It's so much stuff it needs CliffsNotes so here's the short version:

I got three new games, Star Wars Edge of the Empire RPG, Outbreak: Undead RPG and Shadows of Esteren RPG. We expanded our collections for other games, including Monsterpocalypse, Dust Tactics, Classic Battletech, Battletech A Time of War RPG, Pathfinder RPG, Call of Cthulhu LCG, and A Game of Thrones LCG. I got a limited edition copy of the new rules for Shadowrun RPG, and the quick-start preview rules of Call of Cthulhu RPG 7th edition. The core rule book for 7th ed. comes out this spring. For Desi I brought home a huge Squishable Cthulhu plushy, a zombie t-shirt, a Gen Con hoodie, Shadowrun bag, and a couple of patches, but her big haul was a collection of steampunk accessories that should pretty much complete her steampunk costume. I got a selection of dice to even out my collection from the bulk bins the last two years, even more Hirst Arts molds than I got last year, a GMing book, a few miniatures, the dice cup I've been after for a couple of years, and some Gen Con 2013 swag.

Detailed list below, which is mostly for my own benefit, but you can check it out if you really want.

Gen Con 2013 Report

The big, bold, headline highlight from Gen Con 2013 would be, "Shadows of Esteren Is Awesome!" The subtitle would be, "I wish Desi had been able to share it with me."

Shadows of Esteren

Shadows of Esteren is a dark, gritty, role playing game with elements of horror, steampunk, and Mideval fantasy. It's a new game, or at least the English translation is new, and it wound up winning a bunch of awards Friday night. When I bought the first book Friday afternoon, however, I'd never heard of it. I bought Book 0-Prologue on a whim because the vendor put another book I bought in this great big bag, and I felt like I had to get something else. Less than an hour later I'd gotten all three books, the Game Leader Kit and the set of map tiles that went with the intro adventure.

When I came back for my book, they invited me behind the table for this photo op. The guy next to me is the lead developer and the guy in the foreground is the lead illustrator.

The Shadows of Esteren booth after ENnies

You see, just around the corner from where I'd bought the first book I found the booth with the whole Shadows of Esteren team talking to people. These were the authors, illustrators, artists, designers and translators. They are all French, and only one of them spoke decent English. I talked to him first. He explained the whole thing to me through a thick French accent, but I got the gist. As he talked I grew convinced Desi would love this game. He described it as a mashup of Game of Thrones, steampunk, and Lovecraft. Perfect.

My table for Shadows of Esteren

I bought it all up, and set out to find someone running it. By some miracle I managed to get into a game Saturday afternoon even though the ENnies had elevated its profile and there were a bunch of generic-holding players in line ahead of me. It was even more luck that I got what turned out to be the best possible GM (called a Game Leader in SoE). The adventure was scary, paranoia-inducing, and atmospheric, drawing on Alfred Hitchcock for inspiration. One of our party nearly lost an eye to the birds. It also had cultists that you might find in a Call of Cthulhu scenario. It was every bit what the creators promised. Not only was Amanda Stewart, the game leader, spectacular, so too were the other players at the table. We actually did some role playing and played our characters, and I think we all did it well. SoE is a high lethality game, and none of our characters died, which was as good as a win.

Original art and inscriptions from the creators of the game.

To top it all off, I left book 1 with the SoE team overnight and when I picked it up the next day the illustrator had drawn some original art on the inside title page and everyone had signed it. I now have a one-of-a-kind copy of the game.

Will Call area Wednesday evening

Beyond SoE, however, Gen Con was a decidedly mixed bag for me this year. On the one hand, I did something I never do--the whole "shop 'till you drop" thing--which you can tell just by looking the rundown of loot. I brought home more stuff than I have ever done. On the other hand, Desi wasn't there. Desi's doctor said the noise and stimuli of Gen Con would be too much too soon after her concussion, so she couldn't go. It figures that the one time Desi gets all of the craft-type activities she wanted, a couple of which she's wanted to do for years, is the one she has to cancel. We got a refund on the event tickets, but the $74 badge was non-refundable at that point. Bummer.

One of my Shadowrun games

Desi's special activities were just about the only thing we had luck getting when registration opened. I got one ticket to one Shadowrun CMP event, and that was it. On the other hand, we (it was still we, then) got our ideal hotel, the Downtown Marriott. Having that hotel is just soooo nice. I went back to the room between just about every event, before the vendor hall so I didn't need to carry my gaming equipment through cramped isles, and after the vendor hall so I didn't have to lug my (often weighty) purchases to my next game. I got to lay down on the bed in the quiet for a few minutes, and slash water on my face. Plus, and I can't stress the importance of this, I didn't have to use the public restrooms in the convention center.

Everything was like that, back and forth, good and bad in more or less equal measure.

Dealer/Vendor Exhibit

A booth Desi would have liked in the exhibit hall

A booth I liked in the exhibit hall

I spent more time in the dealer hall than ever. Every day I went for more than an hour. Each previous year we'd start off trying to see everything, and then run out of time, abandon our systematic approach, and fly around trying to find the stuff we were especially interested in seeing/visiting/getting, blowing by the rest. This year I think I finally managed to see everything there was to see in the vendor hall.

Something Desi would want, and eventually bought virtually, through me

Since Desi wasn't there I had to shop for her. She actually did some of the shopping herself, vicariously, through me. With pictures, text messages and a couple phone conversations she picked out some things she wanted me to buy. The guys at the steam punk costume place were very nice about letting me take pictures and they got a kick out of the whole back and forth.

Games

Limited edition of the new Shadowrun 5e rules

I didn't have but one actual ticket for an event, but I ended up playing a few games. Firstly, the Shadowrun folks worked their tails off to fit generics into pick-up games. They short scheduled every table so they would have at least one seat of overflow for generics, and they scheduled not one, but five floating GM's to build whole tables of generics. This, they said, was a lesson learned from Origins this year, and they committed to not turning any player away.

Stephen A. Tinner, GM to the Stars, and he ran our first ever Shadowrun game. He was one of the hard-working floating GM's this year.

That was a promise they probably regretted about Friday evening. I played two games on Thursday, but the hall was loud and I wussed out of the 8:00pm slot. I played another game Friday morning, but when I went back Friday for the 8:00pm slot they were so packed to the gills that I gave my seat up to make room for a couple that had just been introduced to Shadowrun and were eager to play. They may have been able to fit us all in if I had stayed, but it would have been grim. Their portion of C Hall was just overflowing with players and the staff had this contorted expression somewhere between cheerfullness and the edge of insanity. They deserve a lot of praise. Every Catalyst Game Labs person, be they staff or volunteer, was exceedingly nice and eager to please.

I also played 13th Age, Outbreak: Deep Space, Shadows of Esteren, and the Walking Dead board game. That was it, really. I had made plans to play Mouse Guard that fell through, I couldn't get a seat at Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, couldn't catch drop ship into a Battletech Grinder. If I hadn't been so focused on shopping I could have played more demos in the dealer hall, and I particularly regret not taking the time to play the Battletech: Alpha Strike.

13th Age is a good game. It has good mechanics and a decent setting. I love the story-based character building aspect. However, for me it's just too much of yet another fantasy RPG. There anything so compelling about it that I would spend money on it. I can see a disgruntled Pathfinder or D&D player taking it up, though.

Christopher De La Rosa, author of Outbreak: Undead

Outbreak: Deep Space is an expansion to the Outbreak: Undead RPG. I had hopes of getting into the Outbreak: Undead game one table over, but they were full up with people holding actual tickets. Deep Space is an interesting game, and it's kind of in beta, sort of, which I guess is why the author and creator of Outbreak was our GM. That was really awesome! I only wish I'd been playing with better players. The guy on my right was a complete spazz who'd never played any RPG but Pathfinder. Not particularly swift, he just couldn't grasp some of the mechanics and none of the spirit of the game. Plus he kept saying that he was a technical sort of player, which was patently untrue and made his assertions grating. Add to that some truly horrible luck on the dice, and the session was a grind. I want to play the game again because that wasn't a fair trial.

Playing Shadows of Esteren was by far the best experience I had at this year's Gen Con. I hope Desi and I get a chance to play it together next year.

Detailed List

Squishable Cthulhu
12x Monsterpocalypse boosters
- 4 of unit and monster boosters from Rise, and
- 2 ea. from I Chomp NY.
Q-workshop tan suede dragon dice cup
Dust Tactics P-48 Pellican
Dust Tactics Horton HO-347
Dust Tactics Operation "Icarus" Campaign Expansion
Gen Con Rolling Bag/Backpack
2x Shadowrun laser etched clipboards
Battletech laser etched clipboard
Odyssey; The Complete Game Master's Guide to Campaign Management
Outbreak: Undead (RPG game core rulebook)
Outbreak: Undead Gamemaster's Companion
Outbreak: Undead Game Master's Screen
Shadows of Esteren RPG printed FAQ
Shadows of Esteren RPG Book-0, Prologue
Shadows of Esteren RPG Book-1, Universe
Shadows of Esteren RPG Book-2, Travels
Shadows of Esteren RPG Game Leader Kit
Shadows of Esteren RPG Loch Varn Tiles
Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG Beginner Game box set
Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG Game Master's Kit
Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG Roleplay Dice
Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition Quick-Start Rules
Monsterpocalypse I Chomp NY Strategy Guide
Battletech: A Time of War RPG Limited Edition Game Master's Screen
Battletech: A Time of War RPG Quick-Start Rules
Battletech: A Time of War RPG Companion rulebook supplement
Battletech Hexpack: Mountains and Canyons
Battletech Hexpack: Volcano
Shadowrun 5th Edition Limited Edition core rulebook
Shadowrun "Everything Has a Price" poster
Shadowrun 5e Quick-Start Rules
Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Watch Station
Pathfinder Flip-Mat: Battlefield
GameMastery Chase Cards Deck (PFRPG)
GameMastery Flip-Mat: Pirate Island Print Edition
GameMastery Flip-Mat: Country Inn
GameMastery Flip-Mat: Urban Tavern Print Edition
Pathfinder Dice Set: Curse of the Crimson Throne
Pathfinder Dice Set: Legacy of Fire
Pathfinder Dice Set: Kingmaker
Pathfinder Dice Set: Serpent's Skull
Pathfinder Dice Set: Carrion Crown
4x Pathfinder Battles—Builder Series: We Be Goblins Pack
A Game of Thrones CCG Iron Throne Edition Legacy Pack
A Game of Thrones CCG Valyrian Edition Starter Pack
A Game of Thrones CCG Ice and Fire Premium Starter Set
A Game of Thrones LCG Defenders of the North, The Wildling Horde Chapter Pack
A Game of Thrones LCG Defenders of the North, A King in the North Chapter Pack
Call of Cthulhu LCG Sleep of the Dead Asylum Pack
Call of Cthulhu LCG Bag of Cthulhu
Battletech Behemoth Hvy. Tank
Battletech Jagatai
Gen Con 2013 2XL Dragon T-Shirt
Gen Con 2013 2XL Orc T-Shirt
Gen Con 2013 L Dragon Hoodie
Battletech 2XL Black T-Shirt
"Your Zombie Survival Plan Will Fail" woman's T-Shirt
Shadowrun Purple Cinch Bag
Steampunk derringer set
Steampunk twin knife garter holster and knives
Steampunk working wrist sun dial and compass
Steampunk goggles
Steampunk nautical spyglass
Steampunk leather gloves and holder
12x Hirst Arts Molds
2x samples of Merlin's Magic pourable castle stone
3x iron on patches (2 Cthulu, 1 Shadowrun)
Gen Con 2013 Commemorative Dice Set
Set of 4 tentacle miniatures
Bag of bulk dice (hand-picked coffee mug)
Pathfinder goblin promo mini
Pathfinder 2013 pin
Catalyst Game Labs pencil
Gen Con badge holder and 4-day badge

Pathfinder Subscription Picked Up
-Pathfinder Pawns Bestiary 2 Box
-Pathfinder Adventure Path, The Worldwound Incursion
-Pathfinder Player Companion, Demon Hunter's Handbook
-Pathfinder Campaign Setting, Demons Revisited
-Pathfinder Player Companion, Faiths & Philosophies
-Pathfinder Core Rulebook, Mythic Adventures

Dice

81 d4's
23 d6's
14 d8's
118 dice total
$0.11/die

Hirst Arts Molds

57, 58, 59, 221, 272, 301, 302, 326, 327, 328, 329, 330

Loot! The Gen Con 2012 Report

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 20 Aug 2013 23:08:00 +0000

For some reason I posted this to Facebook last year, but it didn't make it to the blog.

LOOT!

1. Cyberpunk Chrome rulebook (won at Basic D&D event)
2. Paranoia Big Book of Bots (bought for $1 as they were closing up)
3. Starfleet Academy fiction (won at Paranoia Trek event)
4. Kevin's d6 dice for Shadowrun
5. Dust Tactics Terrain Tile Set
6. Chessex Megamat, factory second (grid not aligned to edges)
7. Shadowrun T-shirt (we each got one)
8. Shadowrun: Runner's Black Book (signed by author)
9. Shadowrun: Core Rulebook
10. Shadowrun: Aresenal
11. Shadowrun: Street Magic
A. Gen Con 2012 t-shirts (Desi got hers, mine had to be ordered.)
B. "Cupcakes: They're what our brains taste like to zombies!" t-shirt for Desi
C. Cyberpunk hat for Desi
D. Dust Tactics expansions: Luther medium Panzer walker, Hot Dog medium assault walker, Laser Grenadiers squad, Red Devils squad.
E. Monsterpocalypse boosters (monsters and units, 4 each, I Chomp NY and Rise)
F. Battletech reference tables assortment
G. Hirst Arts molds (10)
H. Shadowrunner's Toolkit
I. Call of Cthulu Roleplaying Game (published 1999; Desi won for best roleplaying)
J. Call of Cthulu LCG (living card game)
K. Dice from a random pitcher scoop (388 dice)
L. "True Dungeon Survivor" pin
M. Red, small, d6's for Shadowrun
N. Cthulu LCG expansion packs (2)
O. Pathfinder Minitures Black Dragon (the only thing I got at the Paizo booth)
P. Commemorative Gen Con 2012 dice set (Desi had to run to get them, two sets)
Q. Shadowrun dice for Desi
R. D&D Minis assortment from Cool Stuff Inc.
S. Industrial strength superglue
T. Dice bags for Desi (one for Shadowrun d6's, one for general dice)
U. Wrap around skirt for Desi
V. Rose tinted round glasses for Kevin's cyberpunk costume
W. Battletech minis from Iron Wind Metals
X. Shadowrun Doc Wagon T-shirt for Desi
Y. True Dungeon tokens
Z. Battletech terrain tiles, Cities and Roads & Lakes and Rivers

Facebook Post

Got back from Gen Con 2012 yesterday and today shot the picture of the treasure hoard we hauled home. Gen Con was a lot of fun this year, in spite of Desi having and giving me a cold!

In summary: we survived the Wed. event/day I planned relatively unscathed, played the Shadowrun intro (great!), then "You Too Can Cathulu" (Desi won book for best roleplaying), Paranoia Trek XI: Reboot to the Head! (sang Journey song sock puppet karaoke as Lt. Warf), Dust Tactics (learned a bit), Pathfinder Society Special (kinda sucked), Vampire the Masquerade (Desi walked out, almost wished I had), Basic D&D in a monk brewery taken over by frog-people (fun!), True Dungeon (a lot of fun, but too expensive), and on our last day we went back for some more Shadowrun. It's our new favorite game. The GM we had was just awesome.

Glad we're home. Both rested up today and good to go. Thanks to Liz McKenna and Susan Faragher Bannon for their help with the pets while we were gone.

Hirst Arts

53, 60, 65, 66, 202, 250, 270, 300, 320, 321

Dice scoop

d20: 114
d12: 50
d10: 115 (1/10:96/18)
d8: 35
d6: 64
d4: 10

D&D Minis

Fomorian
Taer x3
Werebear
Protectar
Standard bearer
Medium Silver Deagon
Dire ape
Agent Cacalry
Bullywug Thug
Choker
Crucian
Guard of Mithral Hall
Displacer Serpent

Battletech

Chevalier Light Tank
Davion Infantry
Innersphere Battle Armor
Madcat II
Night Wolf Mech
Dragon Fire
CPLT-C4 Catapult
Uziel Mech
Rommel/Patton Tank
KGC-000 King Crab
Condor Hvy Hover Tank

On 3D Printed Guns

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 06:42:00 +0000

Dear Rachel Maddow and Staff:

Tonight's story about gun control, and the 3D printer component in particular, were interesting, but I have a lot of questions that perhaps you can explore in future discussions on the subject.

First, a correction: only the 3D printer you showed, a Makerbot Replicator 2, costs thousands of dollars. Saying they cost thousands of dollars or more is misleading. You can buy fully assembled and ready-to-use 3D printers for as little as $500. Most models on the market today, kit-wise at least, cost somewhere between $800 and $1,200. I can build a RepRap, which is a printer that makes most of the parts you need to make another printer, for around $400. And it's not like it was hard to do--I just followed the recipe there on the Internet, free to all.

I'm a teacher at an art school who teaches 3D printing and design, and so a lot of people--including my mother-in-law--have been talking to me lately about 3D printed guns, as you might imagine, so I've been giving it a lot of thought. So far I've tended to react in these discussions with my own questions, which I do sincerely wish will soon get some public consideration. They nibble around the edges of the BIG question, which is, how should society respond to the progress of technology itself?

1) Do you know that a 14 year old built a nuclear reactor in his garage? And if it's possible for a 14 year old genius to teach himself to do that, and do it without institutional resources, how much dumber can a 20 year old be and still get the same result? How about at 30?

2) Did you know there are hundreds of amateur bio-labs in the U.S.? Those are just the registered ones.

3) Do you have any idea what people are doing with home-built autonomous flying drones? How long until someone hooks a pipe bomb up to one (or a dozen) of those and flies them into a crowd five kilometers away?

4) So, if we're worried about crazy people using powerful weapons to commit heinous crimes, what do we do about the crazy people who will be building their own robotic, chemical, biological or even nuclear (dirty or thermonuclear, you pick) weapons in their basements?

Isn't the real problem not the availability of any particular technology or machine, but rather the availability and free exchange of information? To quote a favorite movie, "You can't stop the signal, Mel." The kid could build a nuclear reactor in his garage because of the Internet. Aspiring bio-engineers can learn just about everything they need to cook up lethal bacteria on YouTube. People with a common interest can find each other and collaborate from opposite sides of the globe, whether that interest is baseball cards or DIY rocket guidance systems. And you can't stop the signal.

The central thesis of your show's introductory essay tonight was, if I understood correctly, that people who think that a problem like gun control is impossible to address--even given a sticky wicket like 3D printed guns--are wrong because circumstances change and where there's a will there's a way. Perhaps that's true in the limited sense that for any single given societal problem there will eventually be a policy solution. That philosophy, however, neglects entirely one hell of a big paradox.

It can take just one person to make a thing. It takes at least two people to have a culture of making a thing. It takes at least three people to make a law about the thing. The more people you have in the system, the slower the response. Information technology increases productivity in inverse proportion to the size of the system, so individuals can make bigger and better things, and spread the culture of making those things faster than a society can devise rules to govern the things individuals are making, and are being propagated by culture. By the time you have a rule for one thing, a dozen new things have popped up and need rules, and the knowledge of the things are already out there, being shared, multiplied, mutated.

As Ray Kurzweil (who was just hired by Google to build the world's first artificial intelligence, by the way) says, the pace of technology's progress is accelerating exponentially. If I'm right in my previous formulation, that means that the gap between innovation and effective societal response is growing exponentially too.

In short, we're fucked.

Because it's just a matter of time before it becomes trivial for an amateur to cook up some nerve gas in their basement and set off the canisters in some subways. Meanwhile we may have finally come up with some way to keep crazy people from printing up their own guns and going on a killing spree. Yay us!

---

If that seems kind of out there then let's address the problem of 3D printed guns directly:

How do you even approach regulation to prevent it? Are there any conceivable ways to get in at the issue at all? Isn't 3D printing a gun a different kind of problem altogether from any other problem we've had, not just in scope, but as an entirely different paradigm? Consider the following issues:

1) Short of a true AI, can you create a computer algorithm that will recognize the shape of all objects--however novel--that could be used as components to make a weapon? Ask a computer scientist.

2) Even if there were such a program, how would you require all computers to analyze all potential 3D models to filter and recognize such objects? How do you prevent programmers from creating and surreptitiously sharing programs that circumvent the filter, or hobbyists who engineer computers from components or first principals so they don't obey the regulation at all? You'd have to hard-wire the filter into every computer chip allowed into the country, wouldn't you? Can we do that? Even so, won't we eventually have the capacity to personally design and manufacture our own chips?

3) Is it possible to prevent amateurs from creating their own designs (of whatever,) allowing only professionally produced and regulated models printed on 3D printers? How? Perhaps more importantly, do we want to, since it will come at the cost of so much innovation and progress?

4) Do we limit the sale and possession of 3D printers only to select, authorized, industrial, and regulated/monitored users?

5) What is a practical, effective method or mechanism for preventing hobbyists from engineering and building their own 3D printers, which are after all, built using readily available consumer goods as materials.

I understand that 3D printed guns are a salacious, irresistible topic. It's a very sexy story. Beyond the gratuitousness, though, what is there really? Why worry about "weapons" instead of the "crazy" part of "crazy people using weapons" problem? Not to put too fine a point on it, but where does it take us--whom does it benefit.

Considering the response of the music industry to the invention of the MP3, it is not too conspiratorial to suggest that patent holders are clear beneficiaries of stories that stoke fears about 3D printed guns. 3D printers break 600 years of patent law--they overturn the whole idea of the patent as a mechanism for the preservation and cultivation of wealth. 3D printers, and the whole micro-manufacturing movement in fact, threaten the last relatively safe domain of intellectual property, the making of physical goods. If you look deeply enough you see that the technology coming on line now challenges nothing less than…well...all of commerce. They disrupt scarcity itself. How can any economy function without scarcity. It can't. That freaks some people out.

Personally, I can't wait.

Three Little RPi, All in a Row

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 05:48:00 +0000

My 3 Pi + 0.14159265 for the case.

element14 delivered my third and last --for now-- Raspberry Pi. Now it's time to get down and dirty with the experiments.

What I've learned so far is that the audio is a challenge to set up. Some HDMI displays need a little help, and that when it comes to video, the hardware is willing, but the software is weak.

As you can see I found a case I could print on the RepRap, though it took me a few tries with adjustments to the scad file to get it to fit right.

The Raspberry Pi community is coming through with some awesome support, notably a fan magazine called MagPi. They're working on their third issue already.

My next objective is to do something with the GPIO pins. The MagPi is going to help out there since its the subject of a lengthy article in the 2nd issue.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Thoughts for ArtServe Interview

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 06:32:00 +0000

Computer interface in a shoe box.

Today I had an interview with Jennifer Baum, a writer for ArtServe Michigan. They're doing an article on the Kalamazoo Makers Guild meetup group. In preparation for our discussion Jennifer was kind enough to supply me with some topics we might discuss and I jotted down some notes while I thought about what I would say. Here are those notes and roughly what I said.

About Kalamazoo Makers Guild...

The Kalamazoo Maker's Guild is a group of people interested in DIY technology, science and design. We more or less pattern ourselves after the Homebrew Computer Club that founded Silicon Valley. Like them, our members tend to have some background in a related profession, but that's by no means a prerequisite. This group is about the things we do for fun, because they interest us, and anybody can be interested in making stuff. We meet every couple of months, report on the status of our various projects and sometimes listen to a presentation or hold an ad hoc roundtable on a topic that catches our interest. "Probably the most useful aspect of the group is that you start to feel accountable to the other members of the group and you're motivated to make progress on your project before the next meeting."

How did it get started...

When I gave up my web design business I ended the professional graphic design association I'd formed on Meetup.com, and then I had room on the service to start another group. MAKE magazine had really caught my attention. I did a few projects from the magazine and thought it would be fun and helpful to know other people who were working on the same kinds of things. The group didn't get going, though, until about 8 months ago when Al Hollaway from the posted to an online forum about RepRap 3D printers at the same time I was building one. He wanted to meet and talk about RepRap. I told him about my Meetup group. We joined forces and here we are.

Meetup.com?

Meetup.com is a great web site because it's a web service that's all about meeting people nearby in person to share a common interest.

About membership and kinds of projects ...

The group is growing steadily now. We have twenty something members and we're seeing membership tick up at an increasing rate month to month. We have a high school student who is working designing assistive devices for the blind using sonic rangefinders, one member who last meeting showed off a prototype of computer interface built into a shoe box, and another member is on the verge of completing a working DIY Segway (the self-balancing scooter) made using a pair of battery-powered drills for motors. Al should be done with his RepRap 3D printer and I've just finished my 2nd. At least two other members are in some stage of building their own 3D printers. I'm building both a laser etcher and a 3D scanner right now, and I'm excited to start playing with the products of a couple Kickstarter projects I've backed. There are a few of us about to start building CNC milling machines, and there's been a lot of excitement in the group around the brand new, hard-to-get Raspberry Pi (a $25 computer.) Almost all the members so far have dabbled in a bit of Arduino hacking. One member is designing a flame thrower for Burning Man. Another is making a calibration device for voltage meters. So, there's a range of things going on.

Where do I see this headed....

Our approach to this group has been to learn from the mistakes other groups have made. All of the other groups I've seen in Kalamazoo start out with facilities and try to bring in members to support and justify it. Getting people to work on actual projects that interest them is something that comes later down the road. It's the, "if you build it they will come" approach. Those groups quickly get into trouble managing the building and funding, and they go away. We're coming at it from the opposite direction. We're gathering together a community of makers first, people who are already doing things on their own. Once we reach a tipping point then we'll worry about the next step, like getting a hackerspace put together. That kind of bottom-up approach is, I think, much more sustainable and durable, and it fits in with our modern culture (particularly in the maker subculture.) It was good enough for Homebrew, so it's good enough for us.

About impact...

Silicon Valley came out of a group like this, so the potential is there for us to have a big impact on the community. Being a college town we have access to a lot of smart people, and Kalamazoo has a strong progressive, energetic, entrepreneurial vibe going on. I think what's more likely, though, is that we will have an impact in aggregate with all the other makers--groups and individuals--around the globe.

"Makers aren't just hacking new technologies, we're hacking a new economy. We're trying to figure out how to live in a world without scarcity."

The unsung official slogan of the RepRap project is, "wealth without money."

I don't know that another story like Apple is likely to happen again. Steve Jobs relied on a very traditional, very closed model for his business, as did most of the people of that era who went on to make a name for themselves in technology. The ethos of that time was centered around coming up with a big idea and capitalizing on that idea to the exclusion of the competition. It's interesting that even then this view was at odds with that of his partner, Steve Wozniak, who was content to build computers in his garage and share what he learned with his friends at Homebrew. In this way Wozniak was much more like the modern maker/hacker and is probably one of this hobby's forefathers.

Makers/hackers today are all about open-ness and sharing -- not in a hippy, touchy-feely kind of way, but in a calculated way that weighs the costs and benefits of being open verses closed. The success of Linux and the ever increasing number of open source software, and now hardware, projects has proven that there's enormous power in being open. "We tend to think that's the way to change the world."

About the Maker Movement....

I know there are a lot of people who are keen to talk about the "maker movement" but I'm not so sure that I would characterize it as a movement. If it is, then it started in the 60's with people like my dad who were HAM radio enthusiasts and tinkered around with making their own radios and antennas. I think that what we're observing and calling a movement is really an artifact of reaching the steep part of Moore's Law. Ray Kurzweil is famous for talking about this phenomenon. The pace of advances in technology is itself accelerating, it's exponential, and moving so fast now that if you're not paying close attention things seem to pop out of nowhere. For makers, technology has reached a point where Moore's Law has forced down prices and increased the availability of things that just a few years ago were far out of reach. We're just taking those things and running with it. In effect, we're just the people paying close attention.

About me...

I started college in the engineering program at WMU, but I couldn't hack it and dropped out. I went back to community college and got a degree in graphic design. In my professional life I've been paid to be a web designer, photographer, videographer, IT manager, technical document writer, photo lab manager, artist, and I've even been paid to be a poet. For fun I do all those things and also play guitar, peck at a piano, and watch physics and math lectures from the MIT OpenCourseWare web site, do exercises on Khan Academy, play board games and roleplaying games, and commit acts of crafting -- woodworking and model making. For work, I now teach at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. I've taught web design, digital illustration and this fall I'll be teaching classes in 3D modeling and 3D printing with the RepRap 3D printer I have on loan there. I live near downtown Kalamazoo with my wife and many pets, including a 23 year old African Grey parrot named KoKo.

Post interview notes...

I mentioned SoliDoodle, the fully assembled, $500 3D printer. The big hackerspace in Detroit is called i3detroit. Also, Chicago has Pumping Station: One. I'm on the forums for both and will be visiting each this summer. The presentation about 3D scanning we had was from Mike Spray of Laser Abilities. You can actually see the entire presentation on my YouTube channel. Thingiverse was the web site that I kept going on about where you can find 3D designs for printing.

Raspberry Pi First Impressions

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 19 May 2012 14:30:00 +0000

It's my Pi!

The long wait is over and I finally have my hands on an actual Raspberry Pi. Initial impressions was that I'm really nervous about getting this protected and supported in a case. It's no more vulnerable to abuse than any other PCB, but a case will give me some peace of mind.

Getting the SD card was easier than I thought it would be, and the instructions at http;//raspberrypi.org/downloads were clear and easy to follow. One caveat, however: they don't explain that the partitions need to be adjusted after you dd (the command for copying the image onto the SD card) the image onto the card. It gives you a filesystem partition of about 1.7 GB and if you have a 4GB card, a bunch of it is going unused if you don't fix it. I used gparted on an Ubuntu computer to move the swap partition to the end of the unallocated space and then grow the filesystem partition to fit. I'm pretty sure it would be a bad idea to change the start point of the filesystem partition, and I didn't.

It was a little dicey on first boot. I was a little dissapointed because it didn't sync up with my plasma TV via HDMI right away. I got some horizontal lines going across the screen. Information to help me troubleshoot this issue is hard to find, and the search function on the Raspberry Pi forums is, as one element14 user put it, "about as useful as a fish on a bicycle." I punted and switched over to the RCA output and that was no problem. Then I tried HDMI on the presentation projector, and that was fine too.

Getting the audio to work was a small saga, which I can not now relate because the file containing my notes are on the Raspberry Pi.

I have two more units on order with element14, which I'm happy to see both have delivery dates now. This first one was from England through RS Components. I'll have it a whole month before the first one from Newark element14 gets here. I registered interest with RS in the first hour of the announcement, and at element14 about 9 hours later. Not sure how that 9 hours really accounts for a month's worth of delay. I suspect things are just especially slow at element14.

This is a repost of my article on WixsonIT. Follow updates there.

Enclosure Dissaster!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 17:27:00 +0000

The Hains printer in the semi-finished enclosure at the Makers Guild Meeting.

The the enclosure for the Hains /was/ in final stages, needing just windows, front door(s) and lots of work on attaining the piano finish that I want for the case exterior. The rough edges of the particle board, especially around the openings for the windows, is giving me fits. And I am a bit stuck about what to do about the front door. Fourteen inches is too wide for a door, I think, but dividing the door into two seven inch doors means that there will be an obstructed view from the front when the doors are closed. Plus, figuring out how to lock the doors when they close in the middle like that is challenging. I've decided to use t-nuts instead of printed trapped nuts for the screws that hold the case on to the base. T-nuts are awesome, and will give a nicer, cleaner profile on the inside of the case. They will also be less hassle than would be designing then printing up the bits I need for the trapped nuts.

Note: I said /was/ in its final stages.

I was in such a rush to get the enclosure finished before the expo at the KIA that I was slapping layers of paint on it right up until the night before. The paint wasn't completely dry, so the case got stuck to the base. In short, I busted the top of the case hammering on the underside to get it unstuck.

In my rush to repair it I fail to think things through sufficiently and break the case in two more places.

Yeah, so.... I think it's salvageable, but it's going to take some thinking.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

RepRap SitRep

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 06:19:00 +0000

The Hains is due for a rebuild, adding longer leadscrews and the MakerGear Z-axis stabilizer clamp (a.k.a., lower-z-bar-clamp, right and left), and replacing the fender washer pulleys with printed ones. Before I dare tear down the Hains I have to first get the Desmonda working. For the Desmonda the rods are all cut, parts are all gathered, the heat core just needs it's final cook to be ready for assembly into the hot end, and construction of the frame has begun. I still think that if it weren't for the fact that I'm trying to figure out the exact length the rods need to be to use acorn nuts on the ends I could get it done in a day.

By the way, so far I've figured out that the triangle frame pieces for a Prusa should be exactly 370mm long, the x/z axis crossbars at the top need to be exactly 440mm long, and the x-axis crossbars (4) need to be exactly 282mm long. Still working on the lower z-axis bar, lead screws and drill rod. I'll be posting an updated instruction set for cutting the bars when I get them all sorted.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Glenwood Dr,Kalamazoo Township,United States

Wood Shop Buyout

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:33:00 +0000

This weekend I bought out a woodworking shop. It wasn't planned. I just sort of happened. Someone Desi knows told her he couldn't work any more because of his health and needed some money for medical bills. He produced a list of his tools and Desi brought it home to me. Thanks to Zim and his truck, I was able to go out Saturday and take the whole lot off his hands.

I paid $1,750 for the whole bit, which is too much, but it was for a good cause. By my guess I would have paid $2,370 for all those tools new. Some of the tools are decidedly not new. The old table saw and sand paper of dubious value notwithstanding, I paid 80% of what it would have cost in a raid on Lowe's.

So, now I have a nearly complete woodworking studio. The highlights are: table saw, 3 routers, rotary cutter, jig saw, joiner, miter saw, and compressor with nail and staple guns. I have a complete inventory drawn up. To finish it off I would probably need a planer, drill press, band saw, and lathe.

Printing Colbert is Hard

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 05:20:00 +0000

This is supposed to be the bust of Stephen Colbert, but it kind of reminds me of that scene from Total Recall. Travesty, both the movie and the print.

I've been troubled by this issue from the start. All my big prints have failed in similar fashion, most regrettably the Makerbot plates for Mendel parts. Small prints are no trouble. It seems happen most during the travel phase of the print, as it moves any long distance without extrusion. I've tried a lot of things, including slowing the entire print, travel and all, down to a crawl.

The famous Art of Failure article describes this problem as an issue with insufficient current. I've been playing with the current on the motors a lot. I turn them up until they stutter from too much juice, and I can't seem to make any headway.

I have to solve this, though, because students are going to want to print some largish things.

3D Printing Web Site - Open3DP

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 20:55:00 +0000

Al pointed me to an interesting web site today, Open3DP. I think I may have seen it before, but it's worth taking note of here so I'm glad to revisit it. The top article today is about a new book from the same people who wrote the Build Your Own CNC Machine.

What 3D Printers Are Good For

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 16:17:00 +0000

A lot of times I'm asked what 3D printers are good for, as in, why would someone want a 3D printer besides the cool factor. Xnaron on YouTube posted a project update for an antenna tracker, his own creation, and all the structural components for the machine are printed on his RepRap. There's a lot of innovation going on here, and 3D printers enable makers to make more complex and intricate designs than they might otherwise be able to fabricate.

Intro to Digital Illustration at KIA

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:45:00 +0000

In the Summer semester at KIA I also want to teach the Intro to Digital Illustration class I taught last year. I've modified the the course description a little bit to hopefully bring more people in.

Intro to Digital Illustration

Prerequisite: Basic Drawing Class or equivalent experience

An introduction to fine art on the computer desktop. In this class students will learn to create illustrations for print and digital display on the computer using Adobe Illustrator. Scalable vector graphics programs like Adobe Illustrator take advantage of computing technology to produce beautiful images with a graphic style, at any size. This class provides students practical instruction in the basic use of the features of the Adobe Illustrator program. Students will apply their knowledge of art theory to create original art suitable for printing and framing. Students will have the opportunity to print their best illustration to keep.

Materials: I buy a box of paper $50, and it uses ink for the Epson printer.

Course Description for Summer 2011 Class

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:38:00 +0000

The plan is for me to teach a 3D modeling class at KIA in the summer, an 8 week semester. The course descriptions are due today. Here's mine.

3D Modeling with Blender

Prerequisite: None

Design 3D objects in Blender, a free program used to create everything from sculptures to feature-length animated films. This introduction to Blender is aimed at creating sculptures, particularly for designs to be printed on a 3D printer. Basic modeling features of the program will be covered, and students will have the opportunity to print out their digital creations on a RepRap 3D printer to keep. Each student will be able to print one object, scaled to fit within a 150mm x 150mm x 100mm print envelope, with a maximum resolution of 0.5mm.

Materials: I need to buy $50-$90 worth of plastic filament and $30 worth of blue tape.

The 3D Printer Class I Want to Teach

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 17:15:00 +0000

My department head at KIA found this class in New York that's like what explained to him as one of the classes I want to teach. The only difference is that I'll be doing it with a RepRap instead of a Makerbot. After reading this page, though, it's hard to write a class description that doesn't sound like a complete ripoff, but I swear I thought of it first!

Here's what I have so far:

3D Printing

Prerequisite: None

Turn a digital design into a real, three-dimensional object at the click of a button. Experience 3D printing, a cutting edge technology that turns electronic files into physical shapes you can wear, use or display. Artists, innovators and makers of all kinds will enjoy learning about this modern marvel, but it will be of particular interest to sculptors, jewlers, and modelers. Students will download a 3D model file from the Internet, prepare it for printing, and get hands-on experience with a RepRap 3D printer to make the object to keep. Students will get a preview of software they can use to design their own 3D models suitable for printing. A single print can take hours, so students will schedule time with the instructor to print their model outside of the regular class schedule, and must be available to monitor the print for its duration. Students with previous experience in 3D modeling are welcome to bring their own design for printing. Only prints of up to 150mm x 150mm x 100mm can be accommodated. Students who complete this course may be given access to the printer for the duration of enrollment at the KIA.

Materials: I have to buy $50 - $90 worth of plastic filament and about $30 worth of blue tape.

I think I have too many "students" in there, maybe.

Stuart and I have talked about making this a three week course, taught twice during the Spring semester, and then I will teach an 8 week class on Blender in the summer. Class descriptions are due Monday, so comments are welcome if you hurry.

How to Build a MakerGear Hot End: a Video Guide in HD

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 18:14:00 +0000

A complete series for building a MakerGear hot end, from unboxing to finished piece, in excruciating detail. Over an hour and a half of step-by-step demonstration, filmed as I worked, learned and discovered.

STEP 1: WRAPPING THE HEAT CORE

STEP 2: FIRST CERAMIC APPLICATION

STEP 3: RETOUCHING THE CERAMIC

STEP 4: FIRST CORE COOK

STEP 5: WIRING THE HEAT CORE

STEP 6: FINAL CERAMIC APPLICATION

STEP 7: FINAL CORE COOK

STEP 8: THERMISTOR ASSEMBLY

STEP 9: FINAL ASSEMBLY

UStream of Prints

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 19:13:00 +0000

Video streaming by Ustream

Don't forget my UStream channel where I'm doing live broadcasts of RepRap prints on a semi-regular basis, and when it's not live, watch past updates recorded live. I announce live streams on Twitter [@kwixson] and on Facebook. So follow me and check in on the prints to see what's cookin'.

Prusa Mendel Reprap: Calibration Step Four

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 19:21:00 +0000

Test cubes. So many test cubes.

Now that you've had your glorious moment with the first print on your printer, it's time to get down to the business of making your prints spectacular. That process begins with a download from Thingiverse. Spacexula's calibration objects are the standby of all RepRappers getting their machines tuned and settings set. The page for the calibration set is quite informative, but really the big deal is printing the 20mm x 20mm x 10mm cube. You'll see a lot of this object coming off the printer.

So, download the set and print the first one of many cubes. When it's printed one of the first things to check are the dimensions. You calibrated the steps_per_unit in firmware earlier, but now is the real first practical test. Get some calipers and measure the width, depth, and height. Go back to prusajr's calculator and make adjustments to the firmware settings. Remember that the line width will throw off the measurement with the calipers by one full line width. So, whether you print 20mm wide or 100mm, an accurate print will measure one line width too wide. Subtract that width from your measurement for the calculator. If you have a .35 nozzle that value is somewhere in the neighborhood of .54mm.

Print the cube repeatedly, measuring and adjusting the x, y and z firmware settings until you home in on the precision you expect. Don't overdo it, though--it can only be just so precise.

Calibration Step Four: Understanding Skeinforge

The good news is that there are only a few really important settings. The even better news in my opinion is that with Skeinforge there are lots of things you can customize and fine tune. There is a program based on Skeinforge called SFact which claims to be simple to use and simple to calibrate. It's not to my taste. Skeinfoge can be a little intimidating at first, but you can get the hang of it quickly if you try. Take it from one beginner to another.

The essence of the following settings has to do with calibrating the machine's flow rate. How much and how fast should the plastic flow out of the nozzle. How fast should the machine move relative to the flow of plastic out of the nozzle? Getting these answers right is the difference between good prints and bad.

A Few Important Settings

Line height and width over thickness ratio (on the Carve tab), filament width and packing density (on the Dimension tab), infill ratio and shells (on the Fill tab), and the feed rate and flow rate (on the Speed tab). With the starter profile you got in Calibration Step Two, you should have some decent defaults and the test cubes shouldn't be too much of a mess.

Dimension

The first stop for Skeinforge is the dimension tab, and there your destination is the filament diameter field. It's important to measure the filament you are using at several places along a 100mm length, and in several angles. Rotate the calipers around the filament. Take down all the measurements and average them. The packing density should be 1 for PLA, and .85 for ABS. Packing density accounts for the stretching that occurs when the filament passes through the pinched wheel extruder. ABS is softer than PLA and stretches more, so it is a bit less "densely packed"than PLA.

Carve

Carve is a very important tab. Line height and width over thickness (often said as w/t) work hand in hand and can greatly affect the quality of the prints. In the calibration set from Spacexula there is a thin wall model whose purpose is to fine tune these two settings. The line height is supposed to be around 80% of the diameter of the nozzle. For a .25mm nozzle, for instance, the ideal line height setting is .2, which is exactly what I'm using to print at after a lot of experimentation. Width over thickness is the setting that tells the machine how much wider the line should be relative to it's height. A perfectly round extrusion profile wouldn't put much of the surface area in contact with the lines above or below, so a somewhat flat extrusion profile is better. Typically a good setting is somewhere between 1.5 and 1.9.

Speed

One issue you might notice while printing test cubes is that maybe the filament gets jammed, or sometimes the extrusion kind of delaminates (doesn't stick down) and bunches up around the nozzle while doing solid layers, or you have trouble walking that fine line between motors skipping steps and having the power turned up so high your motors fry. These can all be symptoms of too high a speed. You will want to print as fast as you can get away with, but which doesn't cause these or other problems. Really the speed you can achieve depends on your motors. With my motors (and nozzle -- they're related) I haven't been able to print reliably higher than 40mm/s. The feed rate and flow rate must be the same number. They are different fields, from what I understand, because Skeinforge used to calculate flow rates differently. I could be wrong, but that's what the best expert on the IRC channel is saying, and I've been able to get good, quality prints by sticking to his advice.

Later, when you get some experience printing, you'll want to come back to the speed tab to work with the settings for bridging prusa parts, be sure to try the quick bridging calibration piece on Thingiverse.

Fill

Lastly, there's fill. Of course, the fill settings determine how the interior of the model is supported. The infill solidity ratio is the key setting, and can be anything from 100% (1.0) to 0% (hallow). PrusaJr says he prints RepRap machine parts with a 20% (0.2) fill. I feel more comfortable printing them at 30% or 35%. For small parts, especially gears, I often use 100% fill.

Also, you can choose what kind of fill pattern you want in Skeinforge, a notable feature not available in SFact. I heard an engineer on the IRC channel say that with the hex fill pattern you can achieve 30% greater strength with the same amount of fill as line fill patterns. I like to use hex, personally, and I don't find it takes very much longer than line fill patterns to print. Besides, it looks cool!

Once you get all of the previously mentioned settings dialed in, you might want to come back to the fill tab and take a look at the oft unappreciated grid extra overlap setting. Changing this value will adjust the distance between parallel lines of solid layer fills. If you notice that the top layer of your print has gaps between the lines, you'll want to increase this a bit.

Done

That's Skeinforge in essence. From here you can do like I did and go to the Skeinforge manual and go through each setting one by one. A lot of the things you just won't tough. Regardless, when you get done with Skeinforge there's one last thing you can do to get your machine set up for happy printing.

Next up: Calibration part five: Bookends

Prusa Mendel RepRap: Calibration Part Three

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 20:42:00 +0000

In Calibration Part Two I offered an entrée into RepRap firmware, and I know you're probably excited to start printing. Good news, that's what happens next. The thing that's needed now is the program that slices the model into layers and writes the program for movements of the extruder head. The program for that is called Skeinforge.

Skeinforge can be used as a stand-alone program, but also as a plug-in for pronterface.py. With it, you can load a file that has not already been sliced and diced into gcode, the step-by-step instructions sent to the printer. Normally you load the gcode file directly into the printer host, which in this case is pronterface.py.

If you haven't already, download Skeinforge and extract the folder into the printrun folder. The thing you need to do to get Skeinforge working as a plug-in for pronterface.py is simply ensure that there is a folder called skeinforge containing all the Skeinforge files in the same folder as pronterface.py.

You can open the stand-alone application by navigating to printrun/skeinforge/skeinforge_application and running the file skeinforge.py. Like pronterface.py, Skeinforge is a Python script, so you may need to take steps to permit the program to run, and of course you will need to have Python and associated dependencies installed and operational. Run the program once and a hidden folder will be created in your home folder called .skeinforge (as in, dot skeinforge). This is where the printer profiles are kept.

To get printing quickly, you can download and install a profile that Spencer Renosis maintains as a service to beginners. He's quite proficient at creating profiles that provide a great starting place for printers. He has instructions for how to use the download, but essentially the process is to replace the .skeinfoge folder on your computer with the one he provides. A word of caution, as of this writing his profiles are a little behind the current release of Skeinforge. Profiles for different versions of Skeinforge are incompatible. If it looks like his profiles have not been updated to the most recent version of Skeinforge, the package of files usually contains the version of sprinter and Skeinforge he is currently using on his printers. You can change over to those for the time being.

Open Skeinforge again and select the most recent stable profile for Extrusion, which has the date of the profile and the version of Skeinforge used to create it in the name. The README file has specific information about the name of the profile. Close Skeinforge.

Now it's time to print! Open pronterface and load a file. I wanted to start with something fun, so I downloaded the Movember Ring from Thingiverse.com. On that page of Thingiverse you can see two files at the bottom of the page ready for download. One is the SCAD file and the other is the STL. SCAD is a file format of OpenSCAD, a 3D modeling program and the top of the 3D printing toolchain: 3d modeling program (OpenSCAD) > stl > gcode (skeinforge) > printhost (pronterface) > firmware (sprinter) > printer.

The STL file is the intermediate format of a 3D model, and it's ready for slicing in Skeinforge. The STL file doesn't represent any particular software, it's just a kind of model format. STL is to 3D modeling what a JPEG is to Photoshop.

Download that STL file and select it as the file you load into pronterface.py. You will see messages in the pronterface monitor pane showing the progress of Skeinforge as it prepares the file for printing. When it's done, a small image of the base layer of the object will appear in the layer preview pane.

Warm up your nozzle to the appropriate temperature and hit the print button. Obviously, connect to the electronics first. Your printer should start going through the motions. Watch with amazement as the extruder moves to home and then moves around the print bed. It's awesome to see the printer exhibiting printer-like behavior the first time!

Keep close and be ready to hit the on/off switch on the power supply at any moment that something seems not right. It's possible that you will need to restart the first print several times to make adjustments. Usually the nozzle is not the right height over the print bed the first time and some tweaking is necessary.

Don't expect too much from the first print. Work any problems and try to get a good print by ensuring the bed is level, the nozzle is the right height, and the temperature is where it should be. But if the first print looks a little messy, that's still okay. You're finally printing and that's very cool.

Next Up: calibration step four, Getting to Know Skeinforge

Prusa Mendel RepRap: Calibration Step Two

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 21:52:00 +0000

In Calibration Part One I tackled physical calibration. Part two of the calibration process is in the firmware settings. I used sprinter firmware to start with, but have recently switched to marlin. Marlin is almost identical to sprinter in configuration, so this information will work for both. If you have a different firmware, the idea is basically the same. I'm also assuming you will be using RAMPS 1.x, the Arduino IDE and pronterface.py in this tutorial. If you are using RAMPS, and you want the marlin firmware, be sure to use the link above to get the "non-Gen6" version. I won't be going into the particulars of each program I name in this tutorial. Look for upcoming posts for an examination of each piece of software.

Step Two: Firmware and Temperature Ballparking

Fortunately, this is rather straightforward. What you will be aiming for is that when the bot is instructed to move +1mm on the axis, or to extrude 1mm of filament, it actually does that to within 0.02mm. That is about the maximum positional accuracy of your typical Prusa Mendel RepRap.

Open the Arduino IDE
Open the firmware .pde file (i.e. sprinter.pde)
Switch to the configuration.h tab
Scroll down to find the line:

float axis_steps_per_unit[] = {80, 80, 3200/1.25,700};
Open pronterface.py and connect to the electronics
Power up the power supply and make sure each motor moves in the correct direction with small moves. If it doesn't move in the right direction, STOP. You either need to change how you have your motors plugged in or you need to change the direction the motors move in the firmware (in configuration.h).
Home the X axis and press the X +100 button in pronterface
Did it move 100mm? Measure it to find out. The X axis is easy to measure when the nozzle is close to the print surface. Make a mark on the blue tape under the nozzle at home, and then where it lands after X +100, and measure the distance.
Use the RepRap Calculator to figure out the new steps_per_unit value for the X axis.
Enter 100 in the desired movement field
Enter your measurement of actual movement in the next field
Copy and paste the steps_per_unit value from configuration.h for that axis in the third field of the calculator. The steps_per_unit values are in the order X, Y, Z, E and each value can be an equation instead of a numerical value. So the default value for Z is 3200/1.25, meaning 3,200 divided by 1.25. You can substitute the actual value for the Z parameter.
Copy and paste the new calculated value (up to three decimals) back into configuration.h and save the file
Exit out of pronterface.py
Press the reset button on the electronics
Upload the firmware to the electronics
Rinse, repeat until that axis is as finely tuned as your margin of error for measuring will allow. Additional refinements to these values can be done after the machine starts printing.
Rinse and repeat for the Y and Z axis.

Ballpark the temperature.

The thermistor attached to a hot end is not calibrated. So while 185 deg. C might be the right temperature for PLA, it's not as easy as setting the temperature to 185 in pronterface.py and forgetting about it. You'll need to find the melting point of the plastic you're using and then start printing with a temperature that is a reasonable setting somewhat higher than that minimum.
Heat the nozzle up to a good starting temperature. For PLA you might want to start at 185 deg.

Caution! If this is the first time you have turned on the hot end, monitor the temperature carefully and if it soars way past the target temperature (by more than 10 degrees) or doesn't register much of a change in temperature, turn the power supply off immediately. Don't freak out if the hot end starts to smoke, though. The first time or two of heating the nozzle, it will smoke.
Set the speed on the extruder (in pronterface.py) to about 150 and extrude 30-50mm of filament.
Immediately turn the nozzle off (set the temperature to 0) and keep the nozzle clear by removing the ooze and wiping the nozzle tip with paper towel.
When the temperature has reached room temperature again, turn it back on to 185 deg. and turn on print monitoring
Watch the tip of the nozzle carefully. Note at what temperature the plastic starts to ooze out of the nozzle again.
Set the temperature at the observed melting point and try to extrude a small amount (5-10mm)
If it doesn't come out at all, try again and grab the filament. Feel to see if the filament is still going into the extruder. As long as the filament is moving, keep hitting the extrude button until something comes out.
If the filament isn't moving, turn the temp up four degrees and try again. Give the filament a little push to get it moving again. Caution! You may have clogged up the teeth of a normal hobbed bolt at this point. If you get a lot of slipping that you didn't before, you will need to open the extruder and clean it up. I used a cut-thread bolt, so I'm not too worried about clogging it up.
If the extrusion is slow, great, you're in the ballpark. Your starting temperature is about 10 degrees higher than that.

How to tell if the temperature is too high.

The plastic actually drips out of the nozzle of the idle extruder and forms droplets
Air escapes the nozzle, making little bubbles at the tip
Your test prints stick so hard to the blue tape that it's impossible to remove them without tearing the tape
You get a lot of blobs and your lines have the appearance of melting down over the previous layer, perhaps sliding off the side a little.
There is a strong smell of cooking plastic (there is always a smell, but overheated plastic has a strong scent)

Next Up: Calibration Part Three is an introduction to Skeinforge.

"Hains" Prusa Mendel RepRap: Building an Enclosure, First Steps

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 17:58:00 +0000

Slowly but surely I'm putting together a box to house the "Hains" Prusa Mendel RepRap machine. The enclosure will have a nesting top secured along the bottom with 20 #6 screws and custom designed (and printed on the "Hains") nut holders. There will be a windowed door on the front with a lock to keep idle hands off it until they can be properly trained. I'm thinking slim windows on the right and left, and a 9" square window in the back. It's all MDF except for the 1" hardwood square dowel used in the frame of the base. The back will have an access port for the power supply, probably with a printed faceplate, and there will be a special on/off switch inside the enclosure. For special effects I'm going to mount some PC lights inside and give it that cool, modded computer look. The finish will be ultra gloss black.

Ran into a bit of a problem last night as I discovered that I'd glued on the wrong trim piece. Had to chisel it off, and I'd done such a good job laminating it to the other wood that it was like carving off a solid hunk of wood -- very hard to do. I did eventually manage to get it reasonably close to normal again and attached the correct piece of trim. I can really only add one piece at a time so it'll be three more days until I get the base finished and can move on to the top.

"Hains" Prusa Mendel RepRap: Goes On a Field Trip

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 15:30:00 +0000

The "Hains" got let out of the house for the first time last Saturday when we attended a meeting of RepRap enthusiasts and makers at the Kalamazoo Air Zoo. That's me stalking around in black, and the "Hains" is there on the table being inspected on the left by the machine's namesake herself. New member Chris is there on the left next to the pizza. In all we had nine people at the meeting. Quite the turnout!

Alan Hollaway (on the right) organized the meeting through the RepRap Michigan Google Group and through the Kalamazoo Maker's Guild Meetup Group. I thought he was so good at putting this meeting together I made him an assistant organizer for the Meetup group. Kyle Mendez (center) wants to build a RepRap the size of a room. John de Longpre (on the left) came down from Grand Rapids and these are his pictures.

Dean Piper (on the right) also brought his machine. He's sporting a new MakerGear Plastruder and a custom heated print bed under glass. He hooked up to the projector and gave everyone a demonstration of printing and the software.

I printed a whistle (which didn't turn out great and broke) and Dean printed a RepRap Merit Badge.

"Hains" Prusa Mendel RepRap: Printing Prusa Parts

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 03:00:00 +0000

The "Hains" Prusa Mendel RapRap 3D printer has begun to replicate. It's printing parts for the "Desmonda", the second machine I will build. As you may be able to tell from the photo above, the quality is very good, and it's about time!

That quality was hard won and well earned. I've been lax in posting to the blog because I've spent weeks and weeks tweaking, fixing, modifying, calibrating, and test printing, often putting in 14-16 hours a day. You could say there have been some bumps on the road.

Here are the highlights of the challenges I've been dealing with over the last month and a half.

Temperature

The first prints were such a disaster (see Movember ring first print, above), I now know, because I was setting the temperature too high. I set it to 210 at first, the default temperature for PLA plastic. Then I read that setting it at 185 was a good starting place. Even at 185 deg. Celsius, though, the plastic was oozing out of the nozzle like crazy when idle, and printing a real mess. Sometimes it would even burp plastic, which I came to realize was gas released from the plastic when the temperature is too high. Essentially, it was boiling. Lesson one: the thermistor (temperature sensor) is not calibrated. So, when the computer is set to 185, that doesn't mean the nozzle is actually 185 deg. I started lowering the temperature, and until I got down to 149, the prints got better every time I did a test print. I now print with it set to 152.

Bearing Upgrades and Modifications

The pulley design for the RepRap turns out to be quite problematic. The metal fender washers don't move in the default design, so the belt rubs up against them and causes a lot of friction. You have to turn the motors WAY up to counter it. It also makes things irregular and generally hard to manage. I used a combination of techniques to fix this problem. For the front and undercarriage pulleys I loosened the nuts on either side of the fender washers so the washers could rotate freely, but cemented the nuts in place with loctite. On the back pulley next to the motor I cut a nylon washer in half and glued it back it together inside of the fenders. They are low friction and rotate when they need to. But that's an ugly hack. The X-end idler could be taken apart, so I upgraded the pulley there. On Thingiverse.com there is a bearing upgrade object, and it comes standard on machines from MakerGear and others. Lesson two: these upgrades will replace the fender-bearing design on every machine I make from here out.

Bad Parts

As I start to print my own RepRap parts, and after having worked with the parts I got from eBay all summer long, I've come to kind of loath them. So much of my trouble has come down to poor quality parts that I couldn't guess how many hours they took up in testing and tweaking. Notice the crack in the pulley gear in the photo above? Yeah, now you start to see why this has taken me so long, right? In addition to bad gears, the X motor mount and X end idler are really quite poor, causing the smooth rods to be out of alignment with each other, and I suspect, not entirely perpendicular to the Y axis. The extruder idler came small and out of shape, and I've had to bore it out a few times to make it so the extruder won't bind. Lesson three: get good parts! The guy I got the parts from is well intentioned, I have no doubt, but I think these Makerbot people aren't the best candidates for producing quality parts. They're the type that are attracted to the instant gratification (or as much as can be had right now) of an easy kit they can throw together in a weekend. The RepRap people, on the other hand, tend to be kind of obsessive about their machines because it takes so much to get them working right. You have to know a lot more to use a RepRap. So, I would say that parts made on a RepRap will tend to be higher quality, as a rule, than parts made on a Makerbot. MakerGear has some really fantastic parts, and if I had to start over again I would have bought their parts. I would have bought their kit, frankly, but that's a point I'll come to shortly.

Wrong Parts

This was probably the biggest problem of the entire project, from start to finish causing me headaches the whole way. First there was the issue with the stepper motors. The parts list I got from the guy on eBay included a link to a supply of stepper motors, except they were the wrong motors for a RepRap. They weren't the right size (dimensionally) and they didn't have enough holding torque. Then there was the matter of fasteners. I didn't know what I was doing, for a start, and then the parts list I got from the eBay seller had parts for an SAE Prusa, but a metric Wade's extruder. I got all confused and now have a large assortment of various screws and nuts that weren't of any use to me in the project. The pulley gears were at the heart of it, in the end. I spent weeks of calibrating after the first print, all of it wasted because the eBay seller included a link to the wrong belt. It's the kind of belt that is used overseas, and is metric. So they didn't match the printed pulleys that came with the parts. I first bought replacement printed pulleys of the same size because I thought the problem was bad parts, and then bought the manufactured pulleys when I finally figured out the problem was wrong parts. Lesson learned: don't believe the parts list supplied by the eBay seller. Do your homework, hard as it is, and understand which nuts and bolts you'll use by walking through the instructions one step at a time and counting it all up.

Belt Tension

While trying to hunt down the backlash problem caused by using T5 pulley gears and XL belting, I learned a lot about belt tension. In the process I managed to pull off a short and messy print I could turn around and put to use right away. It's called a Y-tensioner, and is probably the first thing I downloaded and tried to print off of Thingiverse after the Movember ring and test cubes. It allows me to adjust the tension of the Y axis belt, the most inaccessible one, with a hex key without having to take the print bed off. The X axis belt has to be done the old fashioned way, and boy what a pain that is! Lesson learned: yes, there is such a thing as too tight on the belts. I'll leave it at that. Suffice is to say that you're shooting for a Goldilocks zone when it comes to belt tension: just right.

Z-Constraints

My prints were pretty good, but there was room for improvement. Early on someone had pointed out to me that it appeared that I had quite a bit of wobble in the prints, meaning that the layers didn't stack right on top of each other exactly. That can happen when the leadscrew for the Z axis (up and down) orbits a bit because the motor shaft doesn't line up exactly with the center of the leadscrew and the nut in the X ends. In my case, you may have noticed in an earlier post I mentioned that the Z clips I got from the eBay seller snapped during assembly. Well, they did, and I replaced them with rubber tubing (thanks Tonokip) but the leadscrews definately were orbiting. ScribbleJ, who has helped me a ton via IRC, designed these Z axis constraints that I printed up and added to the machine. Lesson learned: use MakerGear modifications and their design to eliminate Z wobble from the start.

That's a taste of what it took to get to printing well enough to make Prusa Mendel parts for "Desmonda" on the "Hains". I'll tell you about my software calibration journey another time. The test cubes! So many test cubes!!!

Prusa Mendel RepRap: Calibration Part One

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 21:01:00 +0000

After you finish getting the machine built, what's next? The good news is that you've finished the machine! Take a break. Congratulate yourself. Have a cocktail, or a rootbeer float. My wife and I had a toast to my success with an expensive single malt. Try to resist the urge to fire the machine up and try to print straight away, because the bad news is that now you're just half way to your ultimate goal of a working printer. It needs calibration for you to have any real success at printing.

Calibration, in my experience, takes as long as building the machine. In part that's because you're also learning some new skills and software, and in part it's because there isn't a comprehensive guide to Prusa calibration that I've found and so I had to fumble through it a great deal and get a lot of help from the IRC channel. So let me take a stab at it here. The directions below assume you have succeeded at getting the RAMPS board firmware loaded (sprinter), the print host (pronterface) installed and operational.

Step One: Physical Calibration

Level the Print Bed - You may have done this once as part of setting the Z axis end-stop, but you'll need to do it again.

Make sure you have covered the print bed with blue tape so you have an actual working height to level to. With needle nose pliers and hex key wrench, move the nozzle to its home position and adjust the tension screw in that corner to the nozzle height. Notice that even 1/8th of a turn of the screw makes a significant difference in the height of the bed relative to the nozzle.
It's very important to get this just right. If you're using a .5 or .35 nozzle, you will adjust the height of the bed so that two pieces of printer paper slide under the nozzle without a gap. For the .25 nozzle I used a single piece of newsprint paper (.07 thick) to gauge the height.
That done, move the nozzle across one axis, 10mm at a time, and adjust the screw across from the screw near home in that direction as you go to get the height just right. When all four corners are adjusted to the correct height, go around the horn again and also move the nozzle to the center of the print bed. Pay attention to the height of the nozzle in the midpoints.
If your bed is bowed a little, like mine, you want the corners to be the same height (regardless of whether or not they're the gauge height and get the nozzle the right height in the center. The center is where the height is most important.

Tighten down the idler on the extruder. For my extruder I needed to swap the springs out for longer ones and tighten them down to near full compression for the extruder to work properly. So, maybe you almost can't get the idler too tight, as long as there is still a little spring compression left for the idler to work with as the width of the filament varies. Test the extruder and feel the filament as it goes through the extruder. Your fingers are very sensitive and you'll feel it if the filament slips in the extruder. If it slips, you either need a better hobbed bolt or to tighten the idler down more.
Tighten the belts. You will be plagued with backlash unless you get the belts tight enough, but not too tight. There is such a thing as too tight, and you'll know it when you see the motors and motor mounts warp significantly out of shape. I added a special Y tensioner feature to the Y belt so I could get it just right. Be sure your pulley gears are well seated on the flat of the motor shafts, and they are tight, but not so tight as to crack the pulley plastic.
Turn down the stepper driver pots -- there are little tiny screws next to the heat sinks on the stepper drivers.

Take a jeweler's screwdriver and carefully, with a light touch, turn the screws counter-clockwise until they stop. They are fragile and it's easy to break them if you try to turn too far.
Turn the pots back up by one 1/4 turn.
Try to move the motors. Gradually, in 1/16th turn increments, turn the pots up until the motors move across the full range of movement without skipping. When you find that point, turn it up another 1/16th turn.
Include the extruder in this procedure.
With the hot end off, clip any filament sticking out past the bottom of the extruder.

Measure the length of filament extruded when you set pronterface to extrude 50mm of thread (at a speed of 150). Is it close to right? Save this for firmware calibration in the next step.
Clip off the extruded filament.
Hold up the clipped-off filament next to the filament feeding into the extruder and mark the feeding filament at the top of the sample piece. If you are using black filament I've found that red dry-erase marker works well.
Put the hot end back on and heat it up to a reasonable temp. I started at 185 deg.
Hit the button in pronterface to extrude the same amount of filament.
Did the mark made on the filament get close to the extruder or go in? If not, and your filament is not slipping (see slipping calibration above) then you can try to turn up the pot on the extruder's stepper driver a little bit. Try again and see if that makes a difference.
It's not crucial that the off/on extrusion measurements match exactly. You'll later adjust the e steps (the calibration in the firmware) to the practical results you get for extrusion. But this comparison process is useful to help negotiate the fine line you need to walk with the pot setting.

What you want to avoid is running the stepper drivers and/or motors at a high temperature. If you can stand to hold your finger on the heat sink for a couple of seconds without burning your finger, you are okay. If the motors are more than just a little warm to the touch, you have turned the pots up too high. If they wind up being warm at all you should still figure out a way to have a computer fan blowing on the electronics. It will extend the life and safety of the electronics.

In Calibration Step Two, I'll outline how to precisely calibrate the firmware.

Paizo New Products Seminar at Gen Con 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 22:04:00 +0000

Desi and I went to the Future of Paizo seminar at Gen Con. I finally got the video I took, which covers almost the whole thing, edited and uploaded to YouTube. Here they are in neat chronological order for you. The stuff that's of most interest to me is about the upcoming Pathfinder adventure paths up through the previously unannounced Shattered Star aventure path, which takes place back in Varisa.

UPDATE: [part 4 quality and fixed titles]