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Unread 12/31/2015, 03:45 PM   #26
chimmike
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so. freaking. cool.


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Unread 01/01/2016, 08:53 PM   #27
jsnrho82
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Very cool! Looking forward to seeing more about the surge setup. Will that be the main source of water return?


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Unread 01/02/2016, 10:08 PM   #28
jrhupp
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Quote:
so. freaking. cool.
Thanks.

Quote:
Very cool! Looking forward to seeing more about the surge setup. Will that be the main source of water return?
Thanks.

Yes, I'm hoping the surge will be the main source of return water and flow in the display. It is yet to be seen if it will pan out that way or not. But that is the plan.


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Unread 01/05/2016, 11:17 AM   #29
vertigo01
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Awesome thread, def following.
What brand 3D printer is that? What is the max usable space on the X, Y, Z axis?


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Unread 01/05/2016, 11:37 AM   #30
jrhupp
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The core is a kit from MakerFarm. Max useable space is 8x8x8 inches.


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Unread 01/05/2016, 11:56 AM   #31
vertigo01
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Originally Posted by jrhupp View Post
The core is a kit from MakerFarm. Max useable space is 8x8x8 inches.
Well crud, as an identifiable idiot, making one of those from scratch is beyond my intelligence.
If I may ask, what did it cost you to complete the 3D build. If you prefer to PM me as opposed to stating in the forum,that is fine as well.


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Unread 01/05/2016, 01:41 PM   #32
dabob79
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Very cool, definitely following!


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Unread 01/05/2016, 02:06 PM   #33
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Respect.


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Unread 01/06/2016, 09:37 PM   #34
jrhupp
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If I may ask, what did it cost you to complete the 3D build. If you prefer to PM me as opposed to stating in the forum,that is fine as well.
I think the kit was around $500 or so. The enclosure and reworked bed were all done with stuff I had on hand. So no cost there. I added auto-bed leveling to it; that was mostly printed parts, but did require a $5 servo from amazon. There are a few other printed parts that I added or reworked, but that is was just the cost of filament.


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Unread 01/07/2016, 12:18 AM   #35
rjjr1963
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jrhupp View Post
I think the kit was around $500 or so. The enclosure and reworked bed were all done with stuff I had on hand. So no cost there. I added auto-bed leveling to it; that was mostly printed parts, but did require a $5 servo from amazon. There are a few other printed parts that I added or reworked, but that is was just the cost of filament.
What program are you using for the models?


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Unread 01/07/2016, 07:08 AM   #36
jrhupp
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I use sketchup for modeling.


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Unread 01/07/2016, 01:16 PM   #37
C3hutson
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Pardon my French, but there's some crazy cool **** going on in here.


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Unread 01/07/2016, 07:41 PM   #38
jrhupp
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Originally Posted by C3hutson View Post
Pardon my French, but there's some crazy cool **** going on in here.
Pardoned! Thanks much.


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Unread 01/07/2016, 08:00 PM   #39
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I don't have much to update at the moment as I have been traveling this week. But I did manage to get part of the sump system siliconed up before I left.

This guy will be the first chamber that the primary overflows go into and will sit next to the sump (a 40 gallon breeder). It will hold two filter socks and be about half full of rubble. It still needs to be drilled/plumbed and I need to fab up the filter sock tray and cover. I'm thinking those will be done in Corian (as I have a small stock pile).


Here it is laid out before I siliconed it up. This was recycled from an old 135 gallon terrarium I had collecting dust in the garage. Its 1/4" glass.


Wish I had grabbed a pic of the front of the terrarium coming off; it was most exciting. But my garage is not heated and I was more concerned with the cold and the giant sheet of glass I was dealing with at the time.


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Unread 01/08/2016, 11:03 AM   #40
vertigo01
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jrhupp View Post
I think the kit was around $500 or so. The enclosure and reworked bed were all done with stuff I had on hand. So no cost there. I added auto-bed leveling to it; that was mostly printed parts, but did require a $5 servo from amazon. There are a few other printed parts that I added or reworked, but that is was just the cost of filament.
Thanks.
I'll have to live vicariously through your knowledge.
Looking forward to watching this progress.


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Unread 01/12/2016, 03:30 PM   #41
kenneth wolfe
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I like..If you was to buy a 3d printer for home/hobby use what would you suggest ?


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Unread 01/12/2016, 08:26 PM   #42
jrhupp
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Originally Posted by kenneth wolfe View Post
I like..If you was to buy a 3d printer for home/hobby use what would you suggest ?
If this question was directed to me, I am afraid my answer might be a bit disappointing; I don't know enough about what is available in the market to make any sort of educated choice. I chose the kit I did (almost two years ago) based on price and reputation of the manufacture. I was budget limited which prevented me from evaluating anything that came preassembled and just don't have a ton of experience with the plug and play machines that are out there.

I can summarize what experience I do have with other machines:

- A friend owns a MakerBot. I don't know the specific generation, but it would be the previous version of whatever was the newest generation circa 18 months ago (I know real helpful). He got the newest generation when he first purchased but said it was endless problems and swapped it for the previous generation. What I have seen of it suggest high reliability and very high print quality. It seems they offer quite well developed software solutions that make it easier to get going with things.

- We run a Stratasys printer at work. It performs amazingly! If I were stupid rich or a large engineering company, it is what I would buy. But keep in mind this is not a hobby printer.

- I visited with some folks running a Luzbot printer. They loved it and what I saw from it suggested high print quality. It looked very clean and quite well made.

If you want an out of the box solution and have no experience with FMD printing, don't get the printer I did. Aside from it being a kit. There was a steep learning curve to really understand how it worked and then take that knowledge to tweak the system to get the performance/print quality where I need it to be. I get excellent performance out of it now, but it took a lot to get there.

And just so I don't give the wrong impression; I like my MakerFarm and they have provided excellent customer support when I have contacted them.


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Unread 01/12/2016, 09:04 PM   #43
kenneth wolfe
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Thank you.. I have see a few diy kits and was leaning towards that.


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Unread 01/14/2016, 08:40 PM   #44
kenneth wolfe
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Could I talk you into printing hybrid impeller wheel for Jebao pump?


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Unread 01/15/2016, 06:06 PM   #45
jrhupp
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Originally Posted by kenneth wolfe View Post
Could I talk you into printing hybrid impeller wheel for Jebao pump?
I'm not necessarily opposed to doing this, though at first pass I don't think 3D printing is a good technology for this type of part. As I understand it, this is a part that would include a large number of small bits and be under a lot of stress during use. I'm curious to see what the part may look like though. If there were a way to adapt it to printing and have something that would be reliable, that would be right in one of my areas of interest.

Do you have a model for it? At this point, its not something I know enough about to draw up and I don't have specs to be able to fit something to a specific pump.


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Unread 01/18/2016, 05:59 PM   #46
jrhupp
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So progress has been slow, but I managed to fight past my cold and the miserably cold weather here (my garage is unheated) and get a few things done this weekend.

I'm still chipping away at the plumbing. The return lines are mostly done. I still have a couple of custom PVC parts I want to turn on the lathe but it is just too cold for that now. The drains are plumbed from the overflows to the sump. I still need to decide how these terminate into the sump. And I still need to drill and plumb my filter sock/rubble box to the sump. But its getting there.

I finally got my DIN rail and started to layout my equipment panel. I still need to print up a few more sections of the cable track and I don't have all of my modules built yet that will go in here. For sure, I still need to complete the serial switch (multiplexer), the main controller and the 12VDC PSU. Here is a shot of the panel as it is now:


With the door shut:


Here is the backside of the panel. Since it is exposed inside the cabinet I didn't want bolts and what not sticking out. So I used T-nuts for mounting the DIN rails; nice and clean.


For other progress points, I got the temperature sensors for my controller put together. These are built from 10kOhm@25C 0.1% tolerance thermistors potted into stainless steel tubing. There are two for redundancy, and I do some error checking in the controller to QC the measurements prior to deciding whether to engage the heaters. The pic bellow shows the two sensors built up, the tubing I used (from ACE), the thermistor (make/part number are in the Sktech I posted a few posts back) and the epoxy used for potting.



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Unread 01/20/2016, 01:03 PM   #47
kenneth wolfe
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to cool for school. I have a spare impeller I can pull dimensions off, from there we can sketch up some drawings.


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Unread 01/20/2016, 06:28 PM   #48
jrhupp
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Originally Posted by kenneth wolfe View Post
to cool for school. I have a spare impeller I can pull dimensions off, from there we can sketch up some drawings.
Alright. PM me when you have an initial design and will provide contact info to send it to.


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Unread 01/20/2016, 06:44 PM   #49
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No update on the build for today, but I thought I would post up some details on how I'm fabricating my PCBs.

Like many parts of my build, I'm relying on my 3D printer to do the PCBs. I designed a simple spring loaded scribe for it that mounts using a single screw on the x-carriage (if you want to make one the stl can be downloaded from here). So it is easy to convert back and forth when I need to do a board. I thought about using a small mill in place of the scribe but couldn't come up with a scheme that was simple to implement and clean during board production.

To generate the gcode I'm using FlatCAM. It can take the gbr files that I get from Eagle and build a tool path that can be exported as gcode. It may run as is, but the originator of this idea (found on Hack-a-day) mentioned that on his machine he had to add a space before each Y in the gcode. So I have been doing that from the start and have not had any issues running the code from FlatCAM.

I have tried various things for a scribe-able etch resist. The original post said they were using permanent marker as the resist. But that did not provide very good results for me; lots of pitting even with several coats. My guess is that they were using ferric chloride as the etchant and because it is more viscus it has a harder time getting through small perforations in the maker. I use cupric chloride as an etchant and it is water thin. So it was a no go on strait maker. In the end I settled on a layer of Sharpie with two thin layers of india ink brushed over it. This gave a good resist against the etchant and allowed for pretty fine details to come through when scribing.

Here is a video of the scribe in action. This was a board coated with asphaltum as a resist, which turned out to be not well suited to this application. But it provides a pretty good idea of how this works.


For finishing the boards, I use a stove top tinning method where I heat the board in a dedicated frying pan and use a tinning flux to coat the copper. I have seen a few folks using home made versions of tinning flux, liquid solder (as far as I can tell this is not readily available in the US), or solder paste. For me, the homemade version takes too much effort and solder paste is too expensive/perishable. But I found a lead free solder paste that is dirt cheap and widely available; Oatey No. 95. Its intended for tinning large copper pipes prior to soldering. It seems to work great on my boards and the flux compoenet can be cleaned up with hot water and dish soap.

Here is a video of the tinning process:


And last but not least, here is a mock up of a board at the various production stages. From left to right: cleaned copper, sharpie coat, two coats of india ink, fresh off the printer after being scribed, after etching in cupric chloride, after the resist is removed and post tinning.



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Unread 01/21/2016, 08:54 PM   #50
jrhupp
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I cleaned up a couple SketchUp models and wanted to make them available.

The first is the cable track that I am using for wire management in the equipment panel. A few post back I showed it on the printer bed and an assembled shot. In the equipment panel shots a few sections can be seen on either side of the panel. The model can be downloaded from here:Printable cable track

The second is a DIN mount plate for the Jebao controller. This attaches to the controller using four of the screws that hold the controller housing together. It seems 1/2" 4-40 machine screws work well for this, though they are larger in diameter than the stock screws.

In my equipment panel you can see it with the controller on it in the upper left corner. Right now I am using the controller as is. But I suspect this will get hacked to work with my main control system before too long.

For those that want the model, it can be downloaded here:Jebao DIN mount


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