Freshly Shelled Pecans

This is sort of a tradition in the South, Freshly Shelled Pecans for Christmas..

Here are the shelling tools, Nut cracker, Nut Pliers, and a Nut scribe...

It's wood you can eat.  Nuts are Awesome.  I need to use some Pecan wood to smoke meats...

3D Printer 2

Today was mainly wire routing electrical assembly. When running wires over an mechanical assembly you have to take care to avoid transitions that might cause the wire to be damaged by vibration.  Velleman provided very detailed instructions to avoid such potential wire damage and subsequent intermittent operation.  We have finished the Extruder Head wiring at this point, and are working forward to the Z Axis wiring.

Velleman's instructions are very explicit, and easy to follow, however there are a couple math errors.  The Photodocumentation is very helpful.  My friend is already starting to add features, LEDs, an Alarm Siren, and Custom 3D printed covers.  I can tell custom software is coming too...

New Toy, gotta play...

This is the Extruder Head Assembly, wired.  It's a Marvelous Mechanism, with Servo Control.  You can also see the Heated Assembly platform.  There are levelers underneath to square up the table.  The fan is to cool the extruded material.  The actual extruder is not installed yet.  Below the Heated Assembly Platform is the X/Y Grid Mechanization, and the Z Axis Mechanization this the vertical piece at the left.

Still very excited, yet gotta take a break from this to do other stuffz...  Big Puppy Sigh...

 I dream of Harley...

3D Printer

After attending a Maker Faire at Tanner Electronics we were all very excited about robots, and 3D printers.  The allure of robotics is very intoxicating, especially after attending an Expo where all these things are successfully demonstrated.  Velleman is an Electronics Kit maker that has been producing DIY electronic kits for decades, and this year they are offering a 3D printer kit for a surprisingly low price of only $799.  Well, one friend has succumb to the allure of DIY 3D printing.  He is a Mechanical Engineer, and has been dreaming of a device like this for a long time, and now that this low cost, kit form, 3D printer was available it was just irresistible to him, me too...

He had received the kit the night before I arrived, and spent most of the night assembling his freshly delivered Christmas present.  When I arrived the next morning he had that crazed mad scientist look in his eyes, and was guzzling coffee.  So, we spent most of yesterday building his new robotic toy.  By the end of the day we had all of the mechanical assembly done, and are about to start doing the electrical wiring.  We were slightly disappointed when we found there were missing parts.  But we found the Velleman Tech Support was very responsive about the missing parts and they are on the way now.

The missing part was the X Axis limit switch, not a big deal, but we have to wait for it, and are eager to start building parts.  Overall I think this is a high quality robotic machine, and I am very excited to see it in action.  Today we are going to wire all the stepper motors, and limit switches to the controller.  Then we need to program the controller, and test all the electromechanical functionality.  We are definitely having a Christmas Morning experience.

Stay tuned, Mo Later...