My local Vancouver Hack Space is moving to a new location this month. I’m helping with the egress crew – that is to say, getting all the stuff out of the old place. It’s about 10h/week out of my time that would otherwise be spent on improving the store. A plan is already firmly in place and ever so slightly ahead of schedule. All I can do is ask people to show up and help move stuff. If you’ve got a truck, van, or car, it would be very welcome.
Get a Working Laser Cutter
The VHS laser cutter is offline until they finish moving it. I tried a few other laser cutters around town and was disappointed with the accessibility, speed, and quality of the work. I’m looking for a machine with these specs:
- need: cuts at least 12″x24″
- need: doesn’t use a dongle
- need: comes with chiller & venting
- need: >60W power
- want: shows up as a printer on my network
- want: warranty
The budget is $5k including shipping and install. Got any leads?
The request came several weeks ago to change the calibration point to make very very large drawings easier. My demo machine isn’t running as well as I’d like and it’s made testing very challenging. A part of me is tempted to release it and wait for the error messages to come in.
Two fantastic users have submitted pull requests to add more stuff to the project. One fixes a rare race condition. The other stores pen up/down settings in the arduino EEPROM, which means a firmware upgrade. Both change a bunch of project settings and need to be merged into the current version.
I don’t know a way to make this code more open so other people can apply the patches themselves. Ideas?
Kit upgrades
I’m waiting on parts to arrive from Hong Kong that should greatly improve the range of motion in the delta robots and the stewart platform. It’s take a year of negotiating with 3rd party “finders” because the factory won’t deal direct. If they work as promised then I’ll be over the moon with joy. In any case for the moment I am actively telling people to wait so that they get the upgrade coming soon (I hope). Is this the right way to do business? No. Is it the right thing to do for my customers? Yes. Does it make it harder to do business? Yes, in the short term. I believe treating people right is how to make loyal fans, and my business runs on word of mouth.
…and all the rest
RFPs, artist’s projects, existing long-term customers… it’s at a tipping point: I need more help but I can’t afford it and if I had it already then I could probably afford it. I guess I need to get into subcontracting? Your thoughts are appreciated.
v0.9.4 is now available from the official page and is, of course, checked into Github. There are two changes.
First, when dithering the image it now uses the average tone of the image as the cutoff value instead of just 50% grey. On the whole I find this means more of the important details are preserved.
Second, Settings > Preferences now includes an “Image Resolution” slider that goes from 50 to 500. The default value is 100. If you increase the value you’ll get more dots in your pictures that are closer together. Here’s a sample at different resolutions.
at 50
at 100 (as normal)
at 150
at 250
That last one is estimated to take almost three hours to draw!
On a side note, I love my personal wiki. I wrote down all the steps to update Makelangelo software the last time I did it and followed the steps today. I had forgotten at least three important things and found two ways to improve the method. Process control FTW!
This tutorial shows how to assemble a DIY Makelangelo 2 Box. With this and the other video about the pen holder you should be able to get all the mechanical components together. You’ll need a hot glue gun, a screwdriver, and some patience. I’m really glad that people seem to like the fast-forwards and the extra comment ticker. I used Youtube Annotations until I realized most people have them turned off.
Makelangelo 2 features a pen-lifting system that, regrettably, has to ship unassembled.
Here is all the information you need to follow along and put yours together.
Gilad has been working on Keerbot, his own version of the Makelangelo. Amazing how many people are doing the same work, isolated from each other. Another fan, Tom, forwarded to Gilad an older version of the software. I had a delightful talk with Gilad today and now, rather than rewrite all the software, he’s adding a new Arduino firmware sketch that runs exactly the same but supports Polulu stepper drivers instead of the Adafruit Motor Shield.
Keerbot is an ambitious project. Gilad is using timing belts and is going to put the steppers on the pen holder, something I tried way way (way way way) back in version 0.
The part that’s totally new to me is Graffiti Markup Language (GML). Gilad is going to combine GML with his Keerbot to make… something awesome. It’s so out there I don’t grok it yet but I’m eager to see what he makes and I hope we can work together.
Check this, a video of his latest drawing (before using Makelangelo code).
Gung Hey Fa Choi. I found a picture of a neat looking dragon. When I loaded it into the Makelangelo software it produced a wild zigzag pattern and that’s what we drew. Special thanks to Alec and Marc-Andre for their help in making this video. Makelangelo 2 parts are on their way from China right now and should be here in time for the launch, fingers crossed.
Here is v1 of the box for the Makelangelo 2. You’ll be able to get the Makelangelo 2 in two delicious flavours: fully assembled and DIY. Until the March 8 release date they are up to 14% off.
I sketched out the box and all the parts in my huge sketchbook, then used Google search to find NEMA 17 dimensions and Arduino holes to make sure I knew the dimensions. The Birch I used is 2.8mm thick so I plugged in all those numbers to Rahulbotic’s Box Maker. That produced a PDF which I converted to dxf in inkscape, brought into my CAD program, and then added the holes for the wiring and mounting. Here’s the result.
I’m very pleased with how it turned out. It’s nearly perfect! The only places I guessed at I guessed wrong – there are three tabs with slots that are supposed to hold the power plug in place. I guessed how far apart they should be and I guessed how big the slot should be. The thing I forgot was to put holes on the front cover to make a hinge – I assumed it would be glued shut and, on later reflection, that seems really silly. The next version will have these corrections and then – fingers crossed – it will be perfect.
It worked perfectly when it was mounted. I’m editing video now of Makelangelo 2 drawing a dragon for Chinese New Year (should I say spring festival?). I guess next week I should draw a snake since it’s going to be the year of the snake. Gung Hey Fa Choi, everyone!
Speaking of important dates, I’ll be giving a talk at the Railway club Monday, February 11 at 7:00 on 3D printing and it’s effect (affect?) on liberties. Come on by and watch me convulse for 20 minutes as I commune with the spirits.
Steve Jobs and Apple said, “Think Different.” So I’m trying a few things. What do you think of this? Better? Easier? Too big? Missing something? Comment below!
The driving controls in the bottom right used to be hidden in a menu. I found that I was opening and closing that menu all the time and that was kind of silly. Does this work better for you? Any other ideas to make things clearer? I want your comments and feedback.
If everything goes according to plan the release date should be March 8, international women’s day, my birthday. That’s right: on my birthday women are celebrating around the world. That joke never gets old. Never.
