Sanjay Mortimer Rep Rap Festival

What if you just cut the LR in half and use it at one of the edges. The cut line would be at a border so it would not seem too odd maybe.

I could make a smaller render but then it looks kinda wired to me.

I’ve been trying to decide exactly how I was going to pack everything and how I’d handle the pre-assembled sections. I think I’m converging on making a protector for the YZ plates that has cardboard on one side, foam around the outline of the YZ plate, and maybe a small plexiglass sheet on top (to make it easier to inspect if security so desires.)

I’m thinking I’ll put the plastic parts that are not pre-assembled in to one checked luggage, and I think the pre-assembled and hardware kit can go into an Apache 5800 carry-on case that I have.
I’ll start fiddling with that maybe tomorrow verifying how to fit stuff in there. Oh, to be as good at packing stuff as Ryan :slight_smile:

Still mulling about what to do to protect a pre-assembled core.
I’m crawling along with pre-assembly, a few last details with the show, and confirmed the one hotel day that was still in question.

So I guess that’s progress.

More questions: @FreneticScribbler - I’d like to make arrangements to donate to the Nottingham maker space an amount equivalent to a months’ membership. I’ll reach out in a DM to chat about that.

For everyone that requested an exhibitor credential- I’m still working details with the show. The badges for most of the exhibitors went to print before I even got serious about confirming my attendance so I’m still working that with the show. Details hopefully in the next day or two.

I realized today that there’s not much assembly to be done on the UK side until I get there unless someone is willing to print up some braces and maybe the Y rail mounts. Is anyone game to do that?

I also have a backup plan for the strut plates of just using the temp struts which I have a full set of. For a pen bot, that would be fine and cutting plates is one thing I’m not sure fits in the just over a day of hacking that I have to put the LR4 together.

Went to grab the case out of storage, got sidetracked by other stuff. There’s always other stuff :slight_smile:

Happy to print braces and Y rail mounts and cut the strut plates for a beam pre assembly :+1:

As before, we need a colour scheme and a name :stuck_out_tongue:

Love a good flight case!

Ryan provided a set of printed parts, black with red accents (V1 colors). I’ve never felt constrained by a theme but recognize that random colors drive some folks batty.

I have no idea what to name it. There’s probably room on the struts to put something like ā€œLowRider4 SMRRFā€ but that sounds a bit boring.

Missed opportunity. Could have printed it blue and white and called it the smurf.

I’ll use black then. Since it’s what I’ve got :stuck_out_tongue:

Yeah I’ll do that at least but a fun name would be, well, fun

If only I’d thought of that a couple week back!

Are rail fares always this variable? LOL

No. They’re normally worse!

Perhaps the ongoing renationalisation of rail operators is paying off at last! :thinking:

Back when it was all private it once worked out substantially cheaper for me to fly from East Midlands to Malta then into London, rather than take a train. Including taxis to and from the airport and three square meals. Fair chance of it being quicker, too! (If I’d have turned around in the airport rather than make a day of it)

So… Free holiday! Remarkably, and almost slightly disappointing, nobody ever questioned the expense report…

Not entirely related, other than it’s why I didn’t do much show prep today and I might try to use it for pen plots at the show…

Had a good class at the local makerspace on FreeCAD CAM
I can actually create gcode targeting LinuxCNC, and maybe even FluidNC by close association.

FluidNC should be closer to grbl than LinuxCNC. But for plotting, it’s probably generic enough.

I’ll need to study the Python post processor script but at least I new have an example that works.

It looks like FreeCAD has a whole collection of post processors including GRBL. I was looking at the python scripts out of curiosity.

Indeed, it does.
I’m running a 1.2 Dev weekly FreeCAD build and a custom .py post processor tailored specifically for the ShopBot/LinuxCNC combo described above. It’s about to become the second documented combo after F360 at the local makerspace.

Note- the weekly builds on MacOS are way less stable than the weeklies on Linux.

I’m still working to grok the setup but am slowly making progress.

There’s an interesting effort underway to do away with the traditional post processors, and replace them with ā€œmachine-basedā€ post processing.

Some of the not-yet-funtional settings are showing up in the 1.2 Dev weekly releases.

  • Al

You know, for whatever reason that looks pretty slick. I will really have to try it out. The interface looks understandable, and seeing the paths should make it easier for new users. I wish I could put my finger on it but That looks like exactly how I want CAM to look if that makes sense.

I poked through the wiki, it looks full-featured, but I need to poke around see what working with a DXF versus a solid part is like. I guess I have to allocate some time to give it a shot pretty soon.

Maybe we should fork another topic of FreeCAD is hard - #99 by jeyeager with FreeCAD CAM is hard. :smiley:

I’m not certain, but I think for CAM you’d need to create a pad from the DXF so the CAM processor has a definition for the part size. For the class I took we started with an imported STEP file.

If I get to it, I was next going to grab the SMRRF LR4 strut plate SVG from Jamie’s generator and pad that, then try to generate a toolpath. Not so much to cut it as to continue my own learning.

That’s a very good idea.

New topic. :slightly_smiling_face:

A shipment from our own @azab2c just arrived, just in time to make it into the packing for my trip to SMRRF. Two shiny android tablets, that run MakerGalaxy Explorer.

Woo hoo!