Here’s on of the finished products, the Hammer Slammer for Red Bull Creation contest.

The post What I’ve been up to… appeared first on superfro.

So I finally made some time late at night to work on my ord bot.  First thing I did was try to true up some of the brackets, make sure everything is straight and tight.

Next I went ahead and soldered the stepper headers onto the azteeg x3, I decided this look was cleaner than going with the screw terminal approach.

Finally it was time to wire up the power supply.  I just chopped up an old IEC cable and screwed the terminals down.

A quick power on test of the azteeg.

A little bit of wire twisting, some electrical tape and I loaded up Marlin firmware sketch, tweaked the values a little to match the azteeg x3.  From here I ran into an issue where the board went into failsafe block mode because I don’t have any of the thermocouples hooked up it thought it was frying its self, so I disabled those in the firmware.  Try #2, I was getting steps, but not good steps.  I adjusted the stepper current using a meter and a small screwdriver on the pots, but still odd movement.  I finally realized that I hadn’t put any jumpers on the microstepping selector and was doing full steps.  After setting that it was moving like butter!
Here is a video of me just playing with the motor back and forth.

The post Ord bot update — First axis movement appeared first on superfro.

First off you can change the font, size, and properties of a layout by going to View->Pattern Marking->Font. From there you can change to a True Type font, font size, and choose between bold and normal.  It will apply to all ref’s in the current design.

The second one is to move the refdes.  By hitting F10 while working, or going to View->Pattern Marking->Move Tool, You can then select your refdes and move it somewhere you can view it better. You can also rotate it while selected by hitting the ‘r’ key.  These are handy when you have a lot of parts tightly squeezed together and want to be able to see the markings.

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The QU-BD web site has 2 links to build instructions, static text and images and video.  I personally don’t like video instructions because I constantly have to rewind it.  So I started the build with the static instructions, but I felt they obviously missed some steps and weren’t very verbose about what was going on.

So I switched to the video tutorials.  First thing I didn’t like was the fact it was split up into a bunch of videos, and there was no audio, there was text on the video.  So great I still have to read it except now the boxes come and go, more rewinding… blah blah frustration.  Ok now the video instructions provided a more complete build than the static ones and filled in some gaps so I was making some progress.  Where as the static ones had you build one piece, then tells you to just put that piece aside,  and start working on the extruder portion then just put it all together and you’re like what ?  I missed something.

Mounting the thermisistor tot he extruder head, on the static instructions you just mount it, on the video instructions you have to put the heat shrink on first, which makes sense.

Also the static instructions have you mounting the extruder to the mounting plate without wrapping the insulation around it first.  To be fair, I did read in the very very beginning that they didn’t do that for clearer pictures, but I had forgotten so it would have been good for them to remind me of that fact. Needless to say I felt I was constantly putting it together and taking it back apart, putting it together, taking it back apart.

Then they split off in instructions and mention using the MK7 mount vs the universal mount and make little if no comments of using the dual extruder setup, one mentions inverting the parts but it doesn’t really say how they are inverted.

Probably my biggest gripe of the build instructions where the lack of proper orientation photos / comments.  Most of the parts have slightly offset holes, and if you don’t put them in the proper way, they will not line up when you go to mount the extruder to the stepper.

My second biggest gripe is just the general way of how this thing is constructed.  First of all it needs 5 different size allen keys, and a very very thin wrench.  Luckily I found a chinese stamped wrench that fit.  You have to adjust these nuts to lock the extruder to the mounting plate and its so thin you can’t get any tools in there to do so.

My last complaint is the sheer lack of the dual extruder setup.  I would have liked to mount them where both extruders were mirrored and close to each other in the middle, but I’ve taken this thing apart and put it back together so many times that I’m sick of it.  It’s still not 100% right either, one extruder is slightly lower than the other one.  I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a pain in the butt to use 2 different color filaments if they aren’t aligned properly.  But for the life of me I can’t seem to get them to align right.  For now I’m just going to leave it because at this rate I have little doubts that the extruder will even work properly at all.  If it does when I get that far, well maybe I’ll fix it.

Many many many hours later, I finally got to continue the process of building.  So I had to figure out how I’m going to mount this to the ord bot.  I found some scrap aluminum I had laying around and chopped out a bar about the width of the height of the stepper bodies.   Drilled some holes.

I also drilled out the ord bot’s mount to match.  I honestly should have measured and made the holes symmetric but I was still upset at the extruder build that I just went with it.  So it honestly only fits 1 way, the way I drilled it.  Lol.

The concept is simple, lay most of the weight on the ord bot’s platform, and sandwich the steppers between with another block of aluminum.

It turned out pretty rigid, which is good.  I found some screws and some wing nuts to fit.  I used wing nuts for now because I’m pretty sure I’ll need to adjust it a little bit (and probably take it off again to fix the extruder 100 times…  Note to self:  Make quick release connectors for the extruder;)

Moving on I was able to secure the front foot better by tapping out the holes first.  The makerslide holes aren’t threaded yet the frame build instructions just had a picture of them in there not saying much about tapping.  I tried to see if the aluminum was soft enough to self tap but that didn’t go so well.

The next part to fix was one of the z-axis rods wasn’t very tight in the coupler, even though the coupler was maxed out on tightness.  One side was fine, the other side… not so fine.  So I tried putting electrical tape around it then putting it in.  The electrical tape was just too thick without bending out the coupler.  So I tried kapton tape.  The kapton was thin enough to slide in with some wiggling and once tightend it didn’t slip any more.

That’s about it for now, when I get some more time I’ll continue on with the build.

The post Ord Bot build update and qu-bd extruder build issues appeared first on superfro.

I’ve gotten a few requests for more info about my kit.  So here is some more info until I finish writing the documentation:

• USB MIDI Interface using usb cable.  Driver-less install in windows, will check Linux/MacOSX.
• USB MIDI seems to work with IOS devices using the media connection kit.  Also you can use a USB->MIDI adapter and use the Hardware MIDI socket.
• Hardware MIDI IN Interface using MIDI DIN socket.  No MIDI OUT for device chaining.
• USB Streaming interface, I have an app that streams .ym files at the moment, but its a simple register dump so essentially one could implement tracker support.
• Can run run from a USB power supply, like a phone charger.  Can run off of a wall wart (soldering to some normally not populated holes on pcb is required).  Can run off of batteries, should run between 4.5 and 5.5 volts so 3 aa’s or aaa’s alkaline (1.5v) packs = 4.5 volt, or 4 aa or aaa’s (1.2 volt rechargable cells) = 4.8v
• Still working on the firmware updater, but hopefully I can get this working and push updates to the firmware.
• MIDI — Volume and Pitchbend are supported.  Velocity can be enabled and is simulated as volume, but otherwised ignored.  Pitchbend is calculated on the fly so it should bend from + or – 1 full note.
• MIDI notes down to 18hz (I’d have to double check) are supported.
• YM Specifics such as envelope effects and noise control are implemented as CC commands.
• With the latest revision, 1 channel is on the left, 1 is on the right, and 1 is center.  There is a jumper to enable mono output as well.
• Right now multiple USB devices can be used as separate channels, but I’m trying to think of a better solution for adding more channels.
• When will it be available ?  Soon hopefully, I’m still working on some minor details, and sourcing parts and documentation.

Let me know if there is anything else I can comment on.

The post More info on the AY/YM Midi Synth Kit appeared first on superfro.

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The post A quick video of the YM Synth appeared first on superfro.

I’m looking to make this a kit for other people to experience, so I was going over the assembly instructions last night.  I need to work on documentation, some code fixes, and to order a buncha parts first so its not quite ready but… soon enough. I’ll see if I can throw a video up soon.

The post The (re)Birth of a synth! appeared first on superfro.

Now dealing with serial ports in Windows/Linux still needs some abstraction, I thought the MinGW lib’s would actually help more on this, but they seem to work fine for Linux but the process is slightly different in Windows, thus I still had to make wrapper functions for open/close/write/read and a few #if directives.  Not too bad, I just thought this is something simple enough that would have been built in already.  Oh also had to macro define sleep for a delay.  I should try to figure out how to compile for both environments with 1 compiler, maybe use crosstool.  For now I’m ok just having the same code and building on both environments.

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