I've organized a bit in my mudroom with hooks I printed.

Coat hook file: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:49

Filament Spool

The first upgrade to the 3D printer is a filament spool feeder. The plastic arrives on a spool (like a sewing bobin) that tangles easily and is annoying to work with. The new filament spool feeder replaces the manufacturers spool and works much better.

The hub and spokes of the spool: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:8317
The modified spring clip dirivative: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:10254

I found that this design did not snap together as easily for me as the post I followed. Instead of troubleshooting or re-printing, I just zip tied some thin dowels to the spokes as reinforcement. With minor sanding it operates very well. It is ziptied to a milk crate in my studio. I have not had any tangling incidents since, and the printer demands much less babysitting. I am now free to leave it alone for an hour or so at a time while it does its thing.

3D Printed Knife Rack

I was recently convinced by a salesman in Sam's Club that I needed a "Forever Sharp" knife set. Initially I felt duped because I didn't really want them, but they were cheap and I'm impressed so far. My only complaint is that they didn't come with a holder.

Took some measurements, designed a holder in Google Sketchup 8. I printed out a significantly denser version than I meant to, and it took forever. Afterwards I modified the 3D model to reflect a quicker print.

Temperature Monitor

This is my temperature monitor. It displays 4 temperatures (inside / outside / mudroom / garage) on a small LCD screen. The time, date, and temperatures are logged to a text file on a removable flash drive for viewing graphically.




It has an LCD screen, an atmega168 processor, a power regulator, 4 temperature sensors via IC2, an RTclock and a flash drive logging board.


The graphing is rudimentary and needs improvement, but it proves the concept.

Reprap Frame pretty much done

The frame for my printer is almost complete. The only things left are to mount the 3 stop position sensors, the 3 motors and belts, and install the Z axis pulleys. Most of the electronics are routed and mounted.






I had to grid out some plywood and cut brackets to keep things square. A few of the laser cut pieces in the kit were drilled sloppy and everything tended to rack and twist when being tightened.

Extruder controller, accidentally fried

I'm not quite sure what happened. I had it hooked up to the motherboard after installing the firmware. I used the default configuration.h file. I plugged in the 12v and USB and opened the software. I jogged the extruder motor and it moved, so I moved the other axis motors to make sure they worked together. I unplugged everything and a few minutes later plugged it back in to see it again. I plugged both USB and power at nearly the same time and within 2 seconds the extruder controller popped and released a puff of smoke from one of the motor chips.


I ordered a replacement and an another stepper controller, i read that driving the motor off the stepper controller works and quieter and I plan to try it. When I hook it up, I have to be more careful, especially since so far, I haven't found the cause of why this happened.

Reprap XYZ motor test done

I completed the firmware installation on the motherboard. I hooked up the motors and was able to control them with the Reprap software. I could jog each axis by 10mm movements. The trim pots initially had either too much, or too little current going to each motor. After adjustment to each one, all of the motors run at about the level.