Low and behold, It was the replacement parts from my Makibox! Well, this was a sign. it was delivered to the office years ago - so I had no idea what it was. On a recent trip back to Perth, my mother handed me a package which a person I worked with have given her. I decided to move to Melbourne permanently, so I flew back to Perth to collect my belongings - included what was left of the Makibox - and jammed it into my car for long drive over the Nullarbor.Īnd there is sat almost three years - dejected, in a cardboard box in my workshop. To make matters worse, the company that made the Makibox disappeared around the same time, so I resolved myself to writing off the printer. While trying to work this out, I had to quickly move interstate for work. In the process of trying to get the parts replaced, the delivery got lost - they claimed it had been delivered, but I hadn't received yet. The extruder needed replacing, as did one of the plastic lead screws (that was my fault - I over tightened it). I suspect because of the stalled extruder motor. On my second print something went wrong and I blew up the control board. Personally, I managed to print a single cube on my first print. It took forever to deliver, and there were a lot of problems with it. Perhaps two passes, one at 0.1 mm and them 0.2 mm if necessary.īut overall very happy with my first attempt.You might remember the Makibox A6 - it was a sub-$400 3D printer that, like a lot of cheap printers at the time, was crowd-funded. Therefore the copper tracks where reduced to 0.1 mm rather than 0.2 mmĬontrolling the board height or cut depth to 0.1 mm needs more thought. The main problem was that the isolation cut with was closer to 0.3 mm rather than 0.2 mm. My eyesight is not that great now, soldering for me is more like pushing the iron and solder in the general direction of the part and hoping for the best! My iron is 35 years old and has not shrunk to keep up with modern electronics. No need for high speed (I used 300 mm/min): The CAM package will offset the cut to the outside of the polyline. I used a 60 degree V bit (0.2 mm cut depth for isolations) and a 0.72 mm end mill for the holes and the cutout. Run the macro (BMP2DC2) to import the BMP into DeltaCad. Mirror the image (as this is a top view) and convert to 24 bit BMP: The only borrowed code was the BMP Preview file manager code that came from the Cyress Enable website:Ĭonvert to PCB (you will need this for component placement later): If you wondering it took three solids weeks to write this macro from scratch! don't have anything on the border).Ĭypress Enable is pretty slow, a lot of time was spent making the code efficient (all algorithms are linear or nLogn). Note: All outlines are closed, to do this a one pixel border has been imposed/cleared (i.e. If black outline may appears then number of segments is too high (>3072) for a shape. The macro uses shapes (Blue for clockwise (or an outside edge) and Red for anti-clockwise (or an inside edge)). 6.2 Press Okay7 Depending on the PCB complexity after a few minutes the macro will update the screen with the result. 5.2 Press Okay6 Depending on the BMP file size, after a few seconds another menu will appear: 6.1 Select your options (note: the pixel spacing is in mm per pixel and is used to scale the output to DeltaCad). (the macro file manager will allow you to navigate anywhere to find your BMP)4 Run the macro (mine is call BMP2DC.BAS).5 The BMP File Viewer will appear: 5.1 Select a BMP file (a preview will appear). Okay, how to use: 1 Convert your PCB image into a 24 bit uncompressed BMP.2 Try an get it as Black and White as possible using an image processing software.3 Put the macro in a directory (where you can find it). Really, writing the macro was just for fun! Why not use an online 'Image to Vector' program? it does not remove all the copper) so its called an "Isolation". As it only traces the outline of the PCB tracks (i.e. Basically its macro that converts a printed circuit board (PCB) image into outlines that can be used by a CNC machine to make a copy of the board.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |