Haas open house was an awesome event, complete with plant tour, food, machine demo, and reminds us that manufacturing in USA is still alive and viable. In the 5 years since the last visit, an extra building was constructed, more robots were added, and more, a lot more, Haas machines making Haas parts for more Haas machines.

Beyond the busy sound and motion of a modern factory humming away building and replicating, the most memorable image from the last visit was the machine operator wiping down his machines in between operations. That type of human dedication and pride is not something quantifiable, yet serve as testament to the culture of the company. Impressive, indeed.

Thank you Haas, for opening your door to us and for inspiring us.

More images of the Haas open house can be found at the image gallery.

Upgraded to the Rails3 framework, added the paperclip gem for gallery images, and moved the server out of Bluehost and into a Xen vps running Debian. Minor change to the tcp-imp.com logo.

Progress is still slow but the manufacturing space is gradually taking shape. The machines are finally up and running and the environment is looking habitable.

A youtube channel has been added and the protest banner will come back up at a later date.

Software:
Alibre (Design)
VisualMill (CAM)

Equipment:
Haas VF-2SS (Machining)

Clean dry air, the supposed cure for all mechanical ailment. Sticking Tools? Try clean dry air. Rusting solenoid valves? Try clean dry air. Not having enough time to do what needs to be done? . . . . probably have to look else where, but at least there's clean dry air.

Another old friend comes to life with a newly added air dryer.

Not prettiest copper soldering, but it will do the job of distributing clean dry compressed air to all the cnc machines

Haas HFO van showed up. . .

After a few hours, SR-100 powers up. . .

A few hours more and TL-2 powers up. . .

Another small step toward manufacturing. It took almost a year or delays and detours but nevertheless, the machines are finally up and running.

Documentation on the Reprap firmware is a bit confusing with multiple unreferenced version. Following the installation instruction, the Sanguino Master Firmware was uploaded into Reprap Motherboard V1.2 via a Atmel STK500v2 through serial port. ReplicatorG was then installed and interfaces with the RepRap Motherboard through a Sparkfun USB-TTL board via a usb port.

It should be a fairly simple process, but there are a few versions of the firmware upload instruction each using a different version of the firmware. Before compiling and uploading each firmware, the bootloader must be burned through the Arduino IDE. . . . so it took a couple hours of trial and error to figure it out. I think the file reprap-mendel-20100702.zip contains the latest motherboard firmware and also the latest reprap interface, ie ReplicatorG. . . I think.

The X, Y and Z axis stepper motor tests okay with the Reprap interface.

At long last the reprap electronics components are completed. The last stepper motor driver 2.3 has been reflow soldered along with the assembly of the 4 remaining OptoEndstops.

Using the stepper motor test program it seems that all the servo motors and optoendstops are running.

The cost of the mechanical parts are as follows. The actual cost is probably a little less. The parts where ordered from McMaster back in January so I don't remember how many "extra" parts I ordered that may have inflated the overall order. Anyway, the pulleys and the rods are a bit pricy.