Converting a Home Built CNC to RepRap

G'day Guy's an Gal's,
When I was entering the Design Spark competition yesterday I came across the RepRap, I do have to say this is the best thing since sliced where a person can make in real life useful items. I will take my hat off to Mr. Bowers for inventing this great project.

One of the first things I looked at was the electronics and I wasn't to surprised to see it was based on the Arduino format. Personally I have dealt with Microchip Pic's all my life so I am going to make this new project where I do use pic micro's for this project.

The following link is a thread on another forum for a thread where I showed some pic's of my cnc build.

[www.tractorforum.com]

Now from what I read last night while doing research on this great open source project it wouldn't be a hard project to convert an existing cnc to do 3D printing. But I have seen one does have to purchase media to make things. what my idea is, is to take this to a new level and use existing known plastic's and recycle them. This will require a new design for the extruder head where a hopper is used and one can take the extruder head off, put say a dremmel one then mill down old failed plastic projects or other known plastic's then with the fine grain swarf reuse it. This would require a robust cnc to mill the plastic's so one could recycle and not be dependent on buying media just to make 3D products.

I have been living off the grid now for close to 10 years and I do have my own machine shop with a Bridgeport Mill, a toolroom lathe and an old flat belt 4' lathe. I did go and see what the smallest drill I had here for drilling the extruder hole and I have several 0.015" and 0.020" HSS drills. I do have a small jewelers lathe here which I'll have to set up again to make the nozzles as very high speeds and accuracy is most important with those drills.

Ok what my idea is for the new extruder head, make up a hopper system where the fine milled plastic can be fed in and by using more than what is needed a gravity system can be used along with a gradual heating system so no 4th axis is needed.

Well less than 24 hours since I first learned about this open source system and I do have say I'm hooked and everything I do will be open source to everybody can share in my idea's.

Regards Bryan

G'day Guy's,
Just logging my thought's here,...
Instead of having to use a 4th axis a dual directional hall effect sensor could be used to sense when the Z axis has finished the downward travel then the 'pic' that is doing the sensing could go into work to apply pressure on the hopper to feed the media down. I do have some K-type thermocouple wire here so a cap dump circuit needs to be made to join the dis-similar wires then the K type thermocouple can be be used to monitor the temp. I will make up a heater circuit where different plastic's can be monitored for the melting point then the 'pic' can be programmed to operate the melting temp for the extruder, by putting a bootloader onto the pic it will be too easy to transfer the new heating parameters.


Guy's I only came across all this yesterday and I did read you guy's can setup a wiki, so can it that can be possible rather than clutter up the forum with my idea's I can log them on there along with my progress. The concept of recycling media so one isn't dependent on suppliers is my biggest goal so I do hope you guy will accept me into the group and I will log my whole process and any item I made drawings will be supplied with full guidance on making the such items.

I have spent close on 3 years making this cnc and I do need to make a new Z axis but now I have learnt about about 3D printing what I learn will be for everyone. Mind you with converting my CNC I do think it will be close to the biggest 3D printer around. But I have talked with a mate over in Texas on IRC and now he is interested. So with me getting interested I do hope I can get the RepRap to greater height's and make everything Open Source so others can benefit of what I have learnt.

Guy's from what I've seen no-one is doing this in SA(Australia) so I might aswell be the first and take this project to new heights.

Regards Bryan Cunnington

see user:senertek on youtube...this is first big cnc 3d printer ..

Hi Brian

I documented each step as I Routerstrapped my CNC machine.

[www.ukcnc.net]

It shows how you can make an adapter for the Sanguino board to run already existing stepper drivers, but then I took it one step more and re-laid the PCB up and modified the firmware to suit normal stepper drivers.

[www.ukcnc.net]

It may help.


Cheers

Sean.

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[www.cncdudez.co.uk]
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Hey, that may be very useful. I just finished a Proxxon MF70 CNC conversion with bog standard Sanguinololu as the electronics and it's good to know there's a simple way to upgrade if the default stepper drivers are not up to it.