Friday, 8 February 2013

Darwin Upgrades Part 2

OK, seeing as most of my cash is being eaten up by the new EV project and I can’t stretch to get a stepper motor for the Darwin so that it could print plastic once again, and seeing as I already have the Prusa printing plastic, I thought I would use this as an opportunity to try my hand at designing a part from scratch (1st time ever).
I used Open SCAD to design a part that fits the Quick fit X carriage that will secure a mini chuck drill to the Darwin so that I can mill PCB’s.
Picture of part
My first Open SCAD designed from scratch part comes of the printer!
I am seriously impressed with this, not the part that's just a very basic part to fit the quick fit x carriage and dock a basic chuck mini drill (dremel style) to my Darwin printer.
But I am seriously impressed by just how quickly you can go from a need to an idea to a CAD design to a physical part in your hand, a matter of a few hours (this will get shorter as I get better at CAD).
The part I designed and printed mates a basic mini drill to the Darwin, I have been investigating the tool chain for taking a PCB layout say in Eagle and using PCB-GCode plugin to produce a G-Code file for sending to the printer (using yet more 3rd party software) this should allow the direct milling of PCB’s on the now unused Darwin.
I hope to be milling a Gen7 electronics set and a Hot Bed (both on thingiverse) I even found a gen7 set that uses discrete alternatives to pololu stepper drivers. http://cnc.maket-city.ru/index.php/cnc/gen7tm

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