Got a diode backwards and another board finished

So Wade was having a look over the two boards I finished last night and spotted that one was backwards. He showed me how to desolder with solder wick and sorted it out for me. This is the third time he's spotted me doing something wrong and steered me clear before I blew anything up.

In other related reprapping new I got the DC motor board finished. This was a much denser board but didn't have any of those bloody diodes. Wade's reprap seems to be doing well at the moment, there's some clutching issues with the extruder motor but he's tweaking the config to play around with it.

Here's a few photos of what I've done:

The bottom right diode is the offending member post repair.

One DC motor kit pre soldering.

One DC motor kit post soldering. I've yet to stick in the chips and solder on the interface wires, called it a night a bit early.

Two more stepper motors

Got the two Stepper Motor Control Boards completed last night. Soldering is starting to speed up a small bit so hopefully I can blast through the remaining boards. I didn't actually plug in and test the two boards yet as I don't have my own PSU and I didn't want to fiddle with Wade's while a good build was in progress.


In other good news Wade seems to have his new extruder going well and sorted out the skips on the x-axis. So he's currently printing out a set of extruder parts for me. Oh I also set up the shuttle in the workshop. Man the shuttle is light. I wish I'd bought a shuttle years ago when I used to go to lan parties. Would have saved so much lugging.

As usual some photos of the current work.

Last set of Diodes to do.


Making some progress.

All done!


Here's the shuttle in its new home. Neo looks impressed.

Finished first stepper motor

Got a chance last night to have a go at some more soldering for the reprap. With Wade's help, overlooking my dodgy soldering I managed to get my first Stepper Motor control board completed. I was able to speed up the soldering a bit my making sure to keep the solder tip well tinned. Still I'm fairly crap at it and surprised I didn't melt anything. Its pretty cool to be able to plug my first reprap board into the power supply of a fully functioning reprap that's alive and kicking, printing out an extruder head.

Wade's also going to put me in contact with the two other guys he traded a set of parts for beer. Hopefully we can get collaborate on our builds. If there's any other Toronto based reprappers might be worth setting up a user group.

Anyway here are a few more photos:


This is my workspace, ah doesn't the mac book just look cosy nestled in there.


Stepper Motor Control Board v1.2 number 1 where I left off.



Power supply and voltage controller added.



All finished, heat sink, ethernet jacks, and more.



Plugged into the psu on Wade's reprap its comes alive. Thunderbirds are GO!



Just wanted to post this up, this is a part off Wade's machine. Its a little messed up as the y-axis appears to have slipped a tooth but the reprap lettering and symbol came out really well.

My Precious

Thought I'd post up a picture of the ring that Wade printed out for me the first night he was showing me around his reprap.



The next night he printed off one 10% smaller to fit my girlfriend's hand. It was an uncanny fit. She's worn it out in public since, I'm a lucky man.