Brutis is dead, long live Brutis!

Instead of focusing on Brutis, I am going to dedicate my time to getting the fully metric, 606 bearinged, NEMA 14 mini Mendel working 1st.  I think Brutis would have worked, but I am not going to touch it for a few weeks.  If you want the design files they have been uploaded to Sourceforge here.Take it as your own if you want.  Any questions don't hesitate to PM me.

I have my Mini Mendel put together, and have been trying to run the Bowden extruder.  I can already tell that unless someone does some very slick codeing, or we put a second booster motor at the hot end, it's never going to print at a quality level anywhere near even what Makerbot does, which is not exactly the highest of quality out the box.

Problem is they went with a boden for a very good reason, NEMA 14 are VERY low toque, and any height added to the trolley directly reduces you maximum build height.  I tried attaching a Prinstruder onto the trolley, but both it, and a Wades where HUGE on that little trolley (looked like an elephant riding a donkey).

I needed a smaller high torque extruder that could fit on a Mini Mendel X trolley.  I came up with this:

It's the Kysan/Makerbot gearmotor using the MK5 wormgear and a 608 bearing idler like a wades extruder.  I printed off a copy last night (something wrong with being able to print an extruder in 30 minutes :) ).  Even with the filament being a little off it was able to lift itself, and the gearmotor up a length of  HDPE filament, good sign on the grip end of things.  Added the hot end today, and tonight I am hoping to have my 1st extrusion with it, but that brings me to the sad news.

The thermistor port on my Extruder board just gave up the ghost.  Swapped the thermistor, reloaded the firmware, even taped the thermistor to the back of the board, nothing.  Thanks to some guidance from Kliment looks like I could install a thermistor off the A7 port and change the firmware slightly to take the temp from that port instead.  As a work around I took my Mini Mendel extruder board and put it over on my Makerbot.  I will do my exstruder testing off my Makerbot and deal with the soldering when i finish up the mini.

I hate Windows Movie Maker, it takes SO LONG to bring videos into the library, and then over 1 1/2 hours to process 15 minutes.  If anyone knows a faster option that allows for videos to be edited, double speeded, and and the ability to add titles, let me know.

Back to good news.  My 3 year old daughter decided she needed to be like daddy and take apart random pieces of electronics. Unfortunately she chose as her first victim my microphone (it was already broken). Didn't realize it until I found the outer casing of it reattached with silly puddy. She claimed to have fixed it, which amazingly enough meant the speakers where twice as loud, but the microphone still didn't work any more.

Birthday was good, got a Drill press from Harbor Freight for $60 bucks, and a new microphone.  Fun Stuff!