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RepRap

Public Group active 18 hours, 11 minutes ago

Interested in experimentation and building machinery that can self replicate ?

Tags: reprap mendel darwin 3d printing shacknet

RepRap Electronics (4 posts)

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  • Avatar Image Andy Kirby said 1 year, 7 months ago:

    Experimentation and construction of machine control systems form the electronic perspective.

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  • Avatar Image Andy Kirby said 1 year, 7 months ago:

    The electronic bits control the hardware or mechanism. Much like your printer has electronics that take the page from your PC and drive the mechanism to print your page. Within the project there are many differing ideas as to what the best set up is.

    Options are AVR based, PIC based, controler-less host based (eg EMC2) There are also some folk looking at ARM based solutions and a little discussion on going of embedding Linux (WIth Intel Atom boards turning out for sub £50 this is now an option).

    Wars rage with the coalition of the Stepper Motor versus the alliance of the Servo Motor.

    The fact of the matter there is no one “Best” solution, each is a personal preference. The project supports a wide diversity and new options are emerging daily as each is championed.

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  • Avatar Image Andy Kirby said 1 year, 5 months ago:

    Purchasing strategy’s to consider.

    Whilst buying in of individual components is going to be less of a need for Kit builders there may be items or consumables that are often used.

    Before buying in items it is worth while posting up queries to see if there are other group members who have a similar need or can anticipate having a similar need.

    Buying in a larger lump should reduce the per item cost (If whoever you are buying from does’nt change your supplier for one who will, they clearly don;t need the business)

    So for example buying 100 of some thing in stead of say 10 should give you a significant discount. More so if you are buying 1000 of something instead of 100.

    The shipping costs don’t vary that much either so again when you divide out the shipping cost amongst the grouped buyers your cost each is noticeably reduced.

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  • Avatar Image Andy Kirby said 1 year, 5 months ago:

    Some examples of very common Electronic Components.

    1nF, Ceramic Disk Capacitor
    1K 0.25w, Resistors
    10k 0.25w, Resistors
    0.1″ Pin Strips

    Manufactured Printed Circuit Boards are a particularly relevant example. There are many designs available as open source. Not all are designed with kitchen table making in mind. Where you are sending a design off to be made by a Board House you will pay something of the set up costs. Having say 10 made at the same time divides the setup costs amongst the 10 takers so reducing the per item cost for each maker.

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