MSRaynsford

I tweaked the mechanism to align the camera slight better and to tilt down slightly faster than the previous timelapse. There's a blip towards the end but I think it's where the ribbon cable on the pi camera pulled tight and wiggled the camera a little. I'm very happy with the prototype now, time to 3D model it and make a more solid unit that can live on my machine forever. ( stl here )

I was looking for something tall and fast to test my timelapse videos again and I found some nice looking vases. I want to say that there was no post processing in this one but clearly I did, the tilting camera is automagic though so I keep the full resolution of the camera without having to mess around with zoom and tilt in the edit. I've been experimenting with a mechanism to do the tilting for me, considering this was just a prototype I'm very happy with the results. Time for another test before I start sharing some details. ( stl here )

I've been cutting shields, printing goggles etc for a while, no major bundles but just ticking over. This week a new order of polypropylene arrived from Kitronik , I had a stack of PVC binding covers ready to go and I tweaked the 1020x720 sheet size to get 25 shields on a sheet, it felt like a great time to see what my capacity was and make a sensible batch in a single day. Over eight hours and lots of tele watching I managed to cut and assemble 250 shields which is a respectable rate. In fact my main problem was finding space to display them all for a photo. This batch are now going to go off to a hospital and hopefully be useful I'm going to carry on making smaller batches and boxing them up asap.

I remember seeing this marble machine at a maker faire when it originally came out, I marvelled at the simplicity when compared to my similar Archimedes screw marble machine . It was one of the few times I realised 3D printers were better than lasers for some things. The print ran smoothly although I probably should have scaled it down so that it took less time. The timelapse is acceptable although I still need to work on white balance, exposure and focus (so all the things really). I'm gonna struggle to get larger objects into frame so am currently thinking of better ways to start the print in the middle and have it fill the screen from there, mostly I need a longer ribbon for my camera so I can play with positions more. ( svg here )

The Z axis limit switch on the Sapphire Pro has always been a bit of a concern for me, and other people who have one too apparently. The limit switch lever has a rounded end on and it is butted up against the slide bearing on the Z rod. The trouble is that the slide has a raised lip around the edge and as the lever lifts it comes off the raised edge. I've never seen any particular problems with homing on the z axis but it's not a nice design. Several people solved the problem by putting a flat surface on top of the slide but that didn't look like an ideal solution either because it's either stuck to the slide of left floating on top of it. I was left investigating the options When I was setting up my next print the job became suddenly more urgent. I levelled the Z axis which seemed to be ok but when I started the print the nozzle drove straight into the bed and left a score across the surface, the printer registered and cancelled the print lifting the head to a...

When this 3D printer was new and dialled in (and I realise I haven't blogged about that yet), I received several requests from my war gaming friends to ask if I was able to produce miniatures. The process isn't new to me though and I know that 3D printers can really struggle to produce the same level of detail as the store bought models, the injection moulding process really does a good job to create super fine models. I dutifully downloaded and tried the heroforge sample models  anyway, cranking my printer up to 0.15mm resolution and I have to say I was still impressed with the result. There is a lot of support material generated with each print and all of this is very time consuming to remove, plus there are lots of delicate parts to be careful with while doing it. The print took about 6 hours and it probably took me 30 mins to get the tweezers in and remove all the supports. In doing so I snapped off the bottom of her torch and had to glue it back on. Otherwis...