Hello from Maine

[ronginger]

I just ordered an H1.1, finally. I have been thinking about doing it for months, finally I clicked the BUY button.

I am Ron Ginger, a retired computer guy DEC, Compaq, then 2 weeks at HP and out on an early retirement after the merger with Compaq.

I like to think of myself as a Model Engineer, but for the last couple years Ive been building CNC machines and not many models. I got into Mach3, and do a lot with it. I am the guy that does the support of the wizards, and for the past few months have been busy writing the new wizards for Mach4. So clearly my H1.1 will be running with Mach, although I will order a Rambo board when they are back in stock just because I like to play with interesting devices.

Besides my H1.1 I have another RP project. Brian Barker, the guy behind Mach, was able to buy a Stratasys FDM3000 printer as surplus from a university. Its control was broken and to expensive to repair. Ive been tearing it apart and installing drivers and a smoothstepper and late today we got the XYZ motion running under Mach3 control. That thing is FAST- we got over 1500 in/min moves.

Next I have to get its extruder running, but we are waiting for some small server drivers to run the micro motors in the head.

I am planning to attend the event in Elkhart in March, if the weather is decent so I can get out of Maine. I look forward to meeting some of you there.

I have a personal web site with some of my projects at pleasantcovemodels.com

[mhackney]

Welcome aboard from a neighbor in Massachusetts! I'm also into cnc and have 2 moping machines and a lathe I converted that run Mach 3. Also have a n H-1 running on Mach and an H-1.1 on RAMPS. My Rostock Max has been shipped and will be here in a couple of days.

I'm excited to see something about Mach 4! I'm a software start up guy. Pass my info on to Brian if he needs any beta testers!

Cheers,
Michael

[ronginger]

Where are you in MA? I hope to show my H1.1 at the New England Model Engineering Show on Saturday, Feb 16 at the Charles River Museum of Industry in Waltham.

If anyone on this forum is there please be sure to say hello.

[mhackney]

I'm in Groton which is not too far from Waltham. By then I should have my Max built and I have an H-1 and H-1.1 already going. PM me for my email, I'd be interested in attending.

Cheers,
Michael

[drew]

Hi Ron. I have an original H1 and am using Mach3 to drive it. Although I like the CNC type interface to the printer the thing I think that is lacking is accurate tempreture controll of the hotend. I'm currently using Velleman controllers for both the hotend and the heated bed and I feel that my hotend tempreture varies quite a bit. I also don't like the lack of a visual indication of actual hot end temp. I've gone as far as adding a type K thermocouple and digital reader to the hotend but for some reason it reads about 60F lower than my multimeter. Sometimes it will also drift upward by 10s of degrees during a long print.

Being from a CNC background I find the pronterface and repetier host type interfaces pretty lacking but I will have to say that the Marlin/Repetier controll firmware really have done a nice job of closely coupling the various bits of 3D printer hardware; hotend, heated bed, cooling fan, extruder, together.

There's a user named Andy Wander who was working on an Arduino setup that would control temp and report values to be displayed back to Mach3 but I haven't heard much from him in quite a while. You can check out the old SeeMeCNC Yahoo group for some of his postings. I think his user name on this forum is awander.

Anyway, I'm building a Kossel now and will use an Azteeg X3 to control it so I should know a bit more about using Pronterface and Repetier-Host in a while.

Welcome to the group.

Drew

[mhackney]

Hey Drew, I was actually working on this as well with Andy. At the end of the day, the additional hardware interface it was going to require to control and display hot end, hotbed and fans would cost almost as much as dedicated Arduino based electronics. Coupled with the software development effort, I abandoned it. I keep my H-1 on Mach with manual heat control and RAMPS on my H-1.1. The new Rostock Max arrives tomorrow and will be RAMBo.

I agree that Repetier Host is great. You can change feedrate during a run, etc.

regards,
Michael