Tech Adventure 2009

[c0re_dump]

Spent all day today at Tech Adventure, with three Compukit UK101 machines. In fact, in addition to my three machines, there was a fourth, highly modified, Compukit brought in by David Stevenson. That one also operated for most of the day, with such features as a 32-line text display and 32k of dynamic RAM. In fact, the machines all performed

Comments

[quercus]

Typical! I miss it to go Oop North, and it's the one time when a RepRap finally shows up somewhere!

What did you reckon to it? If a chap wanted to make a respectable-looking consumer(ish)-grade enclosure for a controller with an LCD and a few controls in it, is a RepRap a good place to start?

I like the idea of laptop trackpads being re-used. Is this practical with limited time & effort resources / controller smarts? Is it practical enough that I should skip-dive the crate of broken laptops at work?

[c0re_dump]

The RapRap was very impressive! Probably not as accurate as a commercial 3D printer, but just by looking at the parts it had made, you'd never know. It would take careful measurement to detect, say, a non-linearity somewhere. As for the parts, I think much of it would depend on the skill and ingenuity of the designer. Clearly, there are some shapes that are just not going to work on a 3D printer, and some shapes that will work superbly. We had a bad example at a previous employer where a weak spot has arisen in a 3D printed design. It was also in such a place that when a person saw an article and said "How strong are these 3D printed things?" and simultaneously put a little stress on it, it broke -- quite comically in many cases. With a little design experience, one could avoid that entirely. With a little hand finishing, one could eliminate the slightly rough surface that the RepRap produces, too

[quercus]

What I was wondering about in particular was porosity of the RepRap moulding, and whether I could sand it flat afterwards, or if that would cut into voids?

[c0re_dump]

I think that's really down to how the part is designed. The coat hooks that I saw being made were a fine mesh, in 3D, with tiny voids. That probably at least halved the volume/mass of plastic used to make them. But with a design that had a more dense "skin" of plastic and a structure with bigger voids deeper inside, then yes, you could file/sand the surface with not much greater consumption of material.

Y'know, future archaeologists will use 3D printed artifacts as dating evidence. "Arr, look at that internal structure where the coat-hook has broken; first generation 3D printer made that! Must be early 21st Century."