Prusa Mendel RepRap build, day 3

Tightened the complete frame, added the bottom threaded rod (so part 5 of the manual is finished) and started on the Y-axis (part 6 of the manual):

I just found out the eMotionTech manual is slightly different (at least for the Prusa Mendel Precision kit I ordered) from the online Prusa Mendel Visual instructions.  Unfortunately it's in french, I'll see if I can track down the English version.

Prusa Mendel RepRap build, day 2

Yesterday I had 40 minutes of free time and I got the part 4 of the construction manual completed.

Prusa Mendel RepRap build, day 1

During the last months I have been considering buying a 3D printer.  It has been a careful consideration and I even have been helping on an ultimaker build during a build weekend, just to get the hang of it.   The build weekend certainly did not quench my thirst for a 3D printer.

Although the ultimaker is a remarkable nice machine, I doesn't fit my budget.  So after some browsing I ended up on the 3ders.org website that contains a 3D printer price comparison list that gets updated from time to time.  So I went for the cheapest and closest option (to keep shipping costs as low as possible): RepRap France - eMotion Tech.  I went for their Prusa Mendel precision kit.  So after paying and waiting a box finally arrived at my doorstep.

I went quickly through the box, to see if most parts were there.  I know some plates are still on their way, but nothing stops me from already starting the build

There seems to be 5 footed frame vertex and only 1 frame vertex instead of 4 footed and 2 regulars, but that only impacts the looks, not functionality.  Hopefully that will be the only surprise I'll encounter in this build,  *fingers crossed*.

So this is the result of 1 hour of spare time :-)

Short report on Ultimaker build weekend at Buda labs

This weekend I participated in an Ultimaker build weekend @Buda::lab

Together with the guys from timelab (fablab from Ghent) Buda::lab (fablab from Kortrijk) a few teams started building Ultimaker 3D printers.  I volunteered in helping build a 3D printer (my budget isn't big a enough at this time to afford one :-) ).

I was teamed up with jo3ri to build his 3D printer and helped out wherever I could.  Sometimes a second pair of hands can be very helpful.



Some images

some vids

Raspberry Pi NAS

This documents my setup of my Raspberry Pi as a cheap NAS

Initially I followed http://elinux.org/R-Pi_NAS but ran into some problems.  Especially the section on 'Adding USB storage' and more specifically 'Remount USB storage on startup' don't seem to be working for me. (might be my fault)

I finally got things working by following some tips on this page which actually made my system work.

I'm currently experimenting with a cubieboard as alternative to this raspberry pi NAS setup. Read about it here.

The following is a rude mash-up of the above mentioned sources, so all credit to them.

So basically, once logged in to your raspberry pi that is connected to the internet, you can do the following:

General setup
sudo apt-get update
to put your system up-to-date
sudo apt-get install samba samba-common-bin
installs samba binaries
sudo apt-get install autofs
allows you to automatically remount your usb drive when your raspberry pi restarts
sudo mkdir /home/shares
sudo mkdir /home/shares/public
sudo mkdir /home/shares/public/disk1
sets up the directory structure where your USB hard drive will get mounted

fstab setup
sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.old
copy fstab file, just to be sure
sudo vi /etc/fstab
edit the fstab file by adding the following to the end
/dev/sda1  /home/shares/public/disk1  ext3 defaults  0  0

(I defined my USB drive as ext3 as I reformatted it to ext3 before starting to use it)

sudo mount -a
mounts all drives that are not mounted yet
ls -al /homes/shares/public/disk1
ideal time to see if you messed up your fstab file

automount setup
sudo vi /etc/auto.master
add the following
/media/ /etc/auto.ext-usb --timeout=10,defaults,user,exec,uid=1000
after
+auto.master

Samba setup
sudo cp /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf.old
copy file, just to be sure
sudo vi /etc/samba/smb.conf
edit the file, add the following to the end of the file:
### USB share definition###########################
[usb]

comment = USB

sharepath = /home/shares/public/disk1

writeable = yes

valid users = @users

force group = users

create mask = 0660

directory mask = 0771

browseable = yes

###################################################

sudo service samba restart

restarts samba and activates the changes you added

sudo smbpasswd -a pi
adds the pi user to the samba users

So I hope I got this complete and correct. Please also consult the 2 sources I mention at the beginning as these form the bases of my mash-up.

Second Raspberry pi

So what happened with the first Raspberry pi?  Well I sold it to a colleague of mine.

Unfortunately by selling all required elements of my first working Raspberry pi setup, I had no HDMI cable left to configure the second.

So while waiting for the HDMI cable, I also ordered one of the plexi enclosures for the raspberry pi designed by adafuit on ebay.

Voila, here's my setup:

What's next?  I'll try to setup a NAS with this raspberry pi, a self powered USB hub and some external USB hard drives. (If I find a few minutes of spare time :-) )

My first Raspberry Pi alive and kicking

Just wrote the Debian image on my first Raspberry Pi, hooked it up to power and video out to my TV and....

first boot of my Raspberry pi

First I followed the 'SD card setup with linux' in the MagPi issue 2, but that did not seem to work.  On my version of Ubuntu I did the following:

• inserted the SD card in to the SD card reader of my laptop (automatically appeared as /dev/sdb1)
• did not unmount it
• executed the following command 'sudo dd if=./debian6-19-04-2012.img of=/dev/sdb bs=1M'