Hello everyone, I just wanted to share our new PhlatPrinter MKII build with the rest of the world.

Our PhlatPrinter MKII is located on the NASA Langley Research Center here in Hampton, VA.

NASA Rocks! Visit Langley's homepage to see what we've been up to and to LEARN more about us!

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/home/index.html

I/we have had been anticipating the arrival of our Phlatty MKII and then one day as if by magic there it was, 3 glorious packages of bonez and the rest of the components. Woo Hoo! Where to start . . what to do first?! Brag to co-workers of course! They are jealous even if they don't realize what it is We shall edumacate them soon.

Unpacking: Man, there sure are a LOT of parts, looks imposing at first glance for sure. We sorted everything out according to the different build components and loaded the dvd's files onto a P/C. (that hurt a bit since we are ALL Mac people and we don't deal with the dark side too much.)

Stepper motor and control board setup/testing: We hooked everything up per the instructions but have run into a few problems. 1. The led's on the control board lit up red instead of green like in video. Mark has told me to not worry about that since the manufacturer just changed the led color. We kinda had the same thought and were not to freaked out and went ahead with hooking up the stepper motors and power supply wires. We wired everything according to the schematic, loaded the Mach3 software and applied the settings as stated. We adjusted the voltage pot on each axis to read approximately 2.5 and proceeded to the testing of the motors.

Uh-oh: No motors are moving, Drat! The motors get warm along with the control board and the motors apparently are getting power since we cannot turn the shafts. There is a slight audible hum too. What to do??

We research the PhlatForum of course: We found a few threads that seemed to indicate it may be a pc/windows problem which is certainly not what we wanted hear. This left us no choice but to call computer support (Mac people rarely do that . So we had someone try to do a little pc voodoo with the bios and other settings in the hope we'd see some action on the motors. No such luck - still no movement on the motors. So the somewhat bewildered cpu support guy left and here it still sits. We've been in contact with Mark and we hope to have this solved sometime tomorrow. Stay Tuned!

Hmmm. Lots of other parts left might as well continue as far as possible today.

Grip tape to roller application: This was a breeze although we did veer from Mark's video instructions. The only thing we changed up on was how we trimmed the tape where in overlaps. Instead of overlapping and then trimming we just measured each end gap and transferred that to marks on the backside of the tape. Cut with exacto knife and apply. Done! Do the same for the rest of the rollers. Make sure to clean them first!! If I had some cleaning alcohol pads I might have used those since they work so great for pepping depron.

Shafts collars and washers: Easy enough to do according to video. Make sure to have hex wrenches!

Roller end caps and pulleys: This was easy to although it required some super glue. (side note; we also have a ZCorp 3Dprinter and it uses a superglue based infiltrant that is used to harden parts - super glue basically and foam safe too! We use it by the gallon) So we tried the Zcorp glue. Man this stuff dries slow . . to slow. Bad Idea apparently so we sanded the parts to get a clean surface and used some regular superglue I had sitting around from something I'm work on at lunch. This worked great and the pulleys and end caps are now securely fastened.

Wooden parts, z gantry: Had a little trouble here since we could not find part #9. Turns out what we thought was part #6 was really part #9 but the little line denoting orientation was not quite right. We can live with that though since I certainly don't want to mark a bazillion pieces with the correct number on them. Yuck! Good perseverance to whomever does this though! The rest of the z-gantry build went just like the instructional video and it's sitting in our prototyper room just waiting for me to come in tomorrow morning. I've got to say once you start putting the PhlatPrinter together it's very hard to pull yourself away. I even stayed late today <big GASP from my employees, jokingly of course>!

So there everything sits waiting for tomorrow. I get in early and I hope to get a good chunk of progress in. Stay Tuned!

Stan

 

Thanks for the enthusiastic welcome everyone. We'll definitely share what we create. This is going to be cool too. I've already got a couple ideas floating around for our first project. One of them involves making a r/c foamie of a proposed Mars airplane called ARES. Here's a link to Langley's Joel Levine Ted-x talk showcasing the ARES vehicle.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/joel_levine.html

Once we get the PhlatPrinter up and running I'm going to approach Joel with our idea for making a ARES foamie that we could release to the R/C community. Hopefully he'll be supportive of the idea.

Stan

 

Man, how cool is that. Maybe you guys will share your designs with us, we'll build them, come up with an idea to improve and bang, we get to brag that we have out design flying on Mars. I'M ALL PSYCHED UP!!!

 

that sounds good Mark and that url is certainly familiar. I think one of my artists did that file of the paper ARES aircraft. I'll approach Joel about this once we get the MKII up and running. My 3D guy (Andrew) probably has the geometry for the ARES so we'll have a good starting point to work from.

 

thanks. happy to be here!

 

4-14-2010 MKII build progress:

The build has progressed right along and we now have a nearly complete z-gantry assembly. I have run into a problem though in that I cannot find the long unconnected z-belt. I have the other smaller connected belt and that is way to short so that can't be it. Does anyone have a Lowes or Home Depot part# for the missing belt? Until I can get that belt that portion of the build will be on hold. Hopefully I can start on a different build section and add the belt later. I just need to view the next section of video to make sure I can safely move forward.

Stan

 

Hi Stan. Welcome to the phlatforum. You can't get those belts at Lowes or Home Depot. If it's missing, then just let Mark & Tish know to send a replacement. I still have my parts in bags, so I can see them. I did do an inventory initially, so at least I know what is listed, is in the bag. That would be a good idea, just in case you need something else. The bags should be labeled for their axis, like "Z-Bag". What you called the connected belt is for the X axis and so in the X-Bag. The short belt, your are looking for, should be in the Z-Bag. And a long belt should be in the Y-Bag.

-Kwok

 

Man its awesome to see NASA using the MKII. Way to go Mark and Trish!!! :mrgreen:

 

The replacement belts are on the way. Thanks for the quick service Mark and Trish!!

 

okay I'm finally free to get back to the build. Since last week I've received the missing belts and the stepper motor issues have been solved. The stepper problem was being caused by the latest build of Mach 3 so per Mark's suggestion we used Mach2 and the motors worked fine right from the start.

I'm currently at the point where you install the flex shaft into it's holder in the gantry. I hope to make some more progress today.

 

Awesome job Stan, you are actually done with the hardest part!

 

Stan you guys should check out the Linux EMC2 package, it works great!

 

we'll have to try that tvcasualty. To tell you the truth I wish there was a Mac version of software to drive the phlatprinter.

Been busy with real work so I'm just getting back to the build today. Finished a good portion of the cabinet last week so maybe this is getting close to finishing. Now if I could only keep customers at bay for a few days!

 

Sorry for the delay in updating this thread but we are almost done and hope to finish the build next week. This would have went more quickly if I had just done the build at home. It's so hard to find spare time at work.