Today I went and tried out a few new settings. I changed the numbers so that the dimensions were a lot more accurate. Then I went and even though the extrusion rate was too much, I increased it further because it didn't seem like it was flowing together nicely. For another cube, I increased the printing temperature and it seemed to bond together better. I have a suspicion that it's reading the temperature wrong and so I may need to further increase the temp. Regarding the motor slipping on the X-Axis, I realized that was one of the motors I had not upgraded yet, so that may be one of the thing...

I started working on a Bill of Materials. The problem I was finding with the I3 was there were quite a few variations. I believe I have narrowed it down to the MK2S version and I need to come up with a BOM for that. I selected that one because it seems to be a good balance between ease of parts acquisition and sturdiness/features of the printer.

In regards to my current printer, I remembered something about removing a diode if you wanted to power it externally, so I did a little digging. There's a diode on the RAMPS board that if removed, requires the printer to be plugged into a computer. How...

So I went to check if I had the latest firmware and I see they now have documented the process of setting of the configuration. So I downloaded the firmware, went through step by step and finished the settings. I was able to get it to compile and upload it to the 3D printer.

One thing I realized is that with all of the extra parts I have, I don't think it would be a huge cost to build and convert it to a Reprap i3 printer. I already have an extra set of smooth rods for the i2, which are longer than I need them to be, so it would just be a matter of cutting them down. Once I get the printer wor...

Some of the stuff I have planned (and purchased already) as upgrades for my 3D printer include dual Bowden extruders. I went with the Bowden style to reduce the size and weight of the one of the fastest moving parts of the 3D printer. The momentum caused by the old extruder would literally shake the printer as it went back and forth. Another upgrade is a full aluminum heating plate for better heat distribution as well as a sheet of Kapton tape over the bed so that the item will be removable. I removed the borosilicate (pyrex) sheet of glass because when I've printed directly on it in the past,...

After looking at a few charts, I believe the CAN inputs are for M-CAN (though I did see a couple of sources say C-CAN so I'm not 100% certain), which is the Multimedia CAN channel that the car interfaces with the AVN (Audio/Video/Nav) unit. The next step would be to find where the wires go to it.

At lunch on Friday, I swapped the data lines for the USB port and tested them only to discover that swapping them reversed them. So I looked at some more diagrams and it appears that the one I pulled up off the internet the day before was wrong and that I had originally been correct in the color codin...

I had an idea for adjusting the camera angle. I could probably make a wedge of some sort if I get my 3D printer up and running. Originally I was thinking of buying a block of plastic and cutting it to shape, but after thinking about it, I can produce exactly what I want if I get the printer up and running. It's a great motivation to work on it and simple enough that there is a relatively high chance of success. Plus I already have the correct filament in black. I would probably need to make a reverse wedge to go on the inside as well. The main potential problem I see here is that it may requir...

Today at lunch, I finished routing the video cable to the front of the car. After work, I headed down to my friend's house and finished connecting the camera to the stereo and it tested successfully. I realized that both the camera and stereo were trying to display guides, so I disabled them on the camera when adjusting the settings. I feel like the camera angle should point up a little more and I spent some time trying to figure out a good angle. I may try and create some kind of wedge so that I can change the angle a little, but it is still completely useable.

The next step I tried to do was...

It's been over 4 years since my last entry. I've moved several times across the country and worked at a few different places and that has consumed a lot of my time, though I have worked on a number of projects. Here's a highlight of some of the interesting things I've worked on since then.

I have put the robotic car project on hold since then to work on some other things. First of all, I built a 3D Printer several months after my last blog entry and updated it with some new components about 2 years later. It was a RepRap Mendel Prusa Iteration 2 with a few upgrades. After the printer had some ...

I went ahead and soldered all of the parts on the board. During assembly, I discovered a design flaw that reverse the I2C Pins over the voltage converter. So, SDA 5v translated to SCL 3.3v and SCL 5v translated to SDA 3.3v. Ok, no big deal, I'll just reverse wire any external I2C devices. Then I remembered that my gyro/accelerometer/compass was wired to the I2C 3.3v side, so I cut the traces with an exacto knife and used my circuit writer pen to draw new ones. I'm still doing testing at the moment. The SD Card Reader worked awesome, but I'm running I2C Scanner and it just keeps getting stuck o...

Well I guess I lied. I got so involved making a new board, I didn't take any pictures. Sorry. Well, I went and applied a solder mask as well as a silkscreen. Unfortunately, during the drilling process, I was off center enough to ruin some of the traces. I tried fixing them, but was unsuccessful. So I went and made a third board using information I gleened from making the first 2 boards.

Even though the second board was well aligned, the third one was near perfectly aligned. I was very careful with the drilling and did a much better job and the result turned out great. When I went to tin the bo...