A new attempt to build a 3d printer using the delta mechanical design from Blue Eagle Labs with the electronic from UltiMachine. Like the previous version, a hot plate was used to solder the surface mount components.

Sadly, the old electronic components from MakerBot were no where to be found and MakerBot has since stopped selling its electronic component to the general public. . .

A new adventure begins.

It's a bit ironic to post this just one week after mocking the Chinese government for their Orwellian annual June 4th crackdown. Yet, our allegiance is to the democratic ideals as enshrined in the US Constitution, regardless of its government.

United States Constitution, Fourth Amendment

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

A secret court with a blanket secret order targeting the entire population is an unconstitutional act.

2013 - 1989 = 1984, orwellian mathematics.

During the demo machining for the loal SGVLUG/SGVHAK, San Gabriel Valley Linux User group, the possibility of increasing the depth of the SD Card slot to accommodate half length micro-SD card adapter was mentioned.

After a quick modification in LibreCAD, a few extra lines of G-code was inserted and TuxCASE for Raspberry Pi project is now complete.

Installation notes for connecting Arduino to Raspberry Pi via rosserial.

Two available tutorials were used for reference. The first tutorial goes over installation of Fuete ROS on a Debian, and the second tutorial is specifically for RPi installation.

The above tutorial were followed to just before building Layer 2 (Higher-level robotics libraries and tools) due to rosdep install -a errors. Subsequently, rosserial package containing rosserial_arduino was manually built and installed

There were a few deviations from the above tutorials and they are as follow:

• Used sudo pip install -U rosdep==0.10.08 to avoid later rosdep installation errors
• sudo aptitude install libeigen3-dev, libcppunit-dev, python-sip-dev, python-serial for additional dependencies required for rosserial installation.
• Created a workspace to manually download and build rosserial and related packages.
  • rosws init ~/fuerte_workspace
  • source ~/fuerte_workspace/setup.bash
• download and build the the following ROS packages,
  • bullet, kdl, tf, rosserial
• The steps used to download and build each package.
  • roslocate info package_name > package_name.rosinstall
  • rosinstall ~/fuerte_workspace package_name.rosinstall
  • source ~/fuerte_worksapce/setup.bash
  • rosmake package_name
• For tf package, use the fuerte_devel version by editing tf.rosinstall

To bypass SSL certificate error during rosinstall, edit the package_name.rosinstall and change uri from https to http.

Arduino was running a publisher program uploaded from a PC with ROS and Arduino IDE installed following another ROS tutorial. Command line usage of ROS/Arduino upload is possible.

The last step of the product development process is creating the promotional photos for retail sales. Photos are taken with a dslr camera in its native raw format and post processed in URaw before exporting to GIMP for the final re-sizing and adding graphics elements.

After the first set of photos were taken, there was a compatibility issue between UFRaw and Canon T2i so second set of photos were taken with a Canon 5DMk2.

The 2" x 4" product label was also designed with Inkscape. The embedded QR code was first generated with command line qrencode then imported into Inkscape. Originally, the QR code image was generated in PNG format then automatically traced with Inkscape's Trace Bitmap command. However, qrencode can also generated QR code in EPS format without the need for trace conversion.

Compared to CNC machining, laser cutting has a shorter development time because the cut/engrave patterns are design in a free form drawing program(Inkscape) and interfaces with the laser engraver via the print function.

An ULS M300 35Watt CO2 laser engraver was used to cut and engrave the US made clear Acrylite FF extruded sheets.

Inkscape was used to design the acrylic components for laser cutting and engraving. Earlier Raspberry Pi boards do not have mounting holes. Therefore, an acrylic floor is used in place of machined standoffs.

The top cover profile was based on the 2D dxf drawn earlier with LibreCAD. GPIO and venting openings were added in Inkscape. For the acrylic standoff, the profile was also based on the 2D dxf drawing. The back of the Raspberry Pi pcb was scanned, then rotated and resized in GIMP before importing into Inkscape. The cutout for the bottom components were added in Inkscape using the scanned pcb image as reference.

A few design iterations were needed to get the dimensions right, especially for the floor board. The acrylic thickness is .118" and is tall enough to ensure none of the bottom solder leads contacts the aluminum case.

Usually a few machining iterations are required to proof the G-code program and to fine tune the machining parameters. TuxCASE for Raspberry Pi uses simple front and back operations to minimize setup cost. The machining operations use two Kurt D675 vises. There are cheaper alternatives, but the D675 manual vise is the least expensive of the domestically made machine vises. The left vise is for machining the top of the case and the right vise is for machining the bottom of the case. This setup allows for one complete case to be machined with each program cycle.

Sometimes, the tool path offsets are incorrectly calculated, or the tool length offset is too short for part, or the work piece was not clamped securely. Usually the part is scraped, but in some unfortunate events, the cutting tool is scraped.

Bellow are some of the unpleasant mishaps.