Danger Laser

15 01 2009

I just received a Coherent 808nm Laser Diode 3.5V 60-90Amp 50-60W:

laser

Freaking awesome. High power cutting laser. I’ve always wanted one of these.  This is powerful enough to cut just about anything except metal. 

I’m going to turn this into a cutting head for the reprap.

laser_back1

You can see the electrical power connects, and the water cooling connectors.

 

This laser is dangerous:

THERE ARE NO “OOPS THAT WAS BRIGHT” SECOND CHANCES WITH THIS LASER! A single careless glance into the beam or it’s reflection WILL PERMANENTLY BLIND YOU FOREVER! To the eye the scattered output looks as bright as a red laser pointer, but that same “weak looking” beam will light a piece of cardboard on fire in about 1/4 of a second!

Protective eyewear is mandatory. I’ll provide a full safety rundown prior to firing it for the first time. 




Hercules Extruder Redesign

15 01 2009

I did a from scratch redesign of the hercules extruder  now using the nema17, mounted above the x carriage for best balance. Looks like this:

hercules_nema17herc_nema17_cutouts





Hercules Extruder in action

10 01 2009

Hercules Extruder in action:





Hercules Extruder for real

9 01 2009

Very happy to have this hercules extruder  sitting on my desk.  Shout out to Max Steiner for time on his machine. 

img_3035

 

Nothing fit correctly! I had to file down just about every surface, but it’s very close. I need to add wiggle room for all of the holes.
img_3038

Here it is installed. 

img_3041

It’s quite heavy, and puts significant torque on the x-carriage. 

img_3047





First motion

9 01 2009

Short video of z-axis in motion:





Electrical system

5 01 2009

Here is the reprap electrical system.  You can see the prototype reprap motherboard Zach gave me (thanks Zach!):

 

 

electrical1

\electrical2





Nema23

5 01 2009

How do I wire up this stepper motor? is it even compatible? The reprap stepper motor instructions mention “nema23″ as a general type of stepper motor. Not sure if any of the motors covered match this particular model from automation direct: STP-MTR-23055  MOTOR, STEPPER, 166 OZ-IN, NEMA 23,  BIPOLAR. Show here:

 

nema23





Opto Endstop

3 01 2009

Here are some photos of the ponoko reprap’s opto endstops. I used teflon tape to secure the opto flags.

X axis:

img_29591

Y axis:

img_2962

Z axis:img_2990

img_2981





Third pass at the Hercules Extruder

2 01 2009

So the latest design hasn’t even been made at ponoko… and I already see it is flawed. I decided to restart from the beginning… now that I have a digital caliper, and understand sketchup better. Here is the latest:

hercules03

I’m not rounding the corners till the end, because it’s easier to edit with square corners. Also, I’m keeping the the panels themselves 2D, easier to work with.








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