Diary of a Technocratic Anarchist

Adriaan has been working hard learning the TFT programming protocols and has his first touch screen menu working on the Sampo controller bo...

After I got the x and y axes operating independently, Bogdan suggested that I measure the steps between the limits switches to see how much...

I was finally able to get time to integrate the full anti-bounce board with the x and y axis limit switches. The two axes are p...

In developing the Darwin-derivative, Rapman-derivative Sampo 3D printer project as a kaizen exercise I utilized the same sort of microswitc...

I managed to get some hours together to do some more work on my son's Prusa Mendel, the z-axis stepper mounts this time. I printed...

I had a major crash of the Rapman 3.0 printer and for several hours I thought I was really knackered. One of the leads to a phase of the e...

After talking with my son recently, I concluded that he needs to start printing a lot faster than I'm going to have Sampo debugged and ...

The MIPS core that PIC32 uses is a very high performance CPU that was used in high end Windows workstations in the early to mid-1990s. It ...

After a delightful chat with Bogdan this morning about the PIC32's MIPS core processor, I was able to get the y-axis test firmware work...

There is not much to say about this.  Once I got two of the links printed and assembled so that I knew everything fit together, I bought ...

I've never been happy with the way that Rapman handles axis and extruder cabling, so I decided to print my own flex cable carrier syst...

Darwin and it's direct derivatives uses two belt loops driven by a shaft connected to a NEMA 23 stepper. In Sampo, th...

I had gone to considerable trouble to make sure that I sited the bolt holes in the MDF {medium density fibreboard} print table properly. T...

I got the last of the y-axis brackets printed and light mounted. It looks like the print table with be 420x420 mm.  I've des...

Having had good experience with the Rapman's PIC32-based controller, I decided to stick with that MCU for my new printer.  As I mentio...

I was finally able to finish making the connection between the z-axis lead screw and the cable turnbuckle for the z-axis positioning system....

With the completion of the gear pair last night, the connection between the NEMA 23 and the Z-axis lead screw is complete. That milest...

Few experiences are more satisfying than a creating a useful device of great intrinsic beauty

It took me 10 hours and fifty minutes to print the first print table bracket and I got a few measurements wrong, but it appears that the c...

Back at the beginning of 2006, before there was even a Darwin, eD Sells at the University of Bath was designing Darwin's predecessor, A...