Its alive!

Hello folks!

As I mentioned previously, I had an element to fix on the circuit board. Well, I replaced it, checked the thing 2 more times, plugged the board to the power, and... IT WORKS! :D
I measured all possible voltages in the slots, etc, all is at the desired levels!
Now, its "just" to make the rest of the printer, put it ll together and- we start printing!

Other news, also yesterday I attended a very nice seminar/demonstration of 3D printing at the local science center. For the first time I could see live the process of printing. The guys had a Makerbot Replicator www.makerbot.com, and made in Poland CB-printer cb-printer.com (solid metal construction based on Prusa Mendels).

And the last thing- I ordered a TTL to USB converter from US. Total cost with transport was around 15euro. I add that to the post with the summry.

See you next time!

Humble me

Greetings wondering souls,

first things first,
I have to admit I was wrong, and the power source is working fine. After going to the shop, the guys easily demonstrated how little I know about PC elements ;)

Knowing that, today after work I tried to plug in the board.

First, I plugged the proper jumper, then connected switched off power supply, turned the power on and... (!) There are several indicators described in the instruction that the board is OK.
First one is "there is no smoke".
Well, we did not pass that one :D
The L1 part that is 100uH coil burned.
Funny enough the second indicator was fulfilled ("the yellow diode is on"). At least for the moment before I turned the power off ;)

Lesson learned:
Before putting your home made circuit under voltage, check each and every connection. I found one not soldered pin and one solder bridge what should not be there (sic!). Hope that were the only things wrong.

Tomorrow I will purchase a replacement coil (or two for safety measure), put it in place of the broken one and cross my fingers that no other elements were effected.
And then I will check the connections for the fifth time.
And only then will I plug the power on ;)

Hold your thumbs!

Have to speed things up...

Hello again!

Like the last time, a lot of time passed since previous post... What can I do? How can I explain? And most important- should I care? ;)

Unfortunately there are distractions that appear from the blue, strike you like a lightning and then eat up the remaining small pieces of evenings that you have left for yourself- thank you X-Com and Civilisation :P Worst- there are more to come! Fear the almighty StarCraft Expansion! 

Fortunately my poor laptop can not handle top-notch graphics, and I drop most other "hot" titles (will play Diablo III when I get a machine that does not work with a game only on low-low-low settings...).

To calm you down, I care at least to the point that I told several people that the printer will be working by the end of this year- that includes you. I considered it a reasonable time restriction and want to stick with it. And most importantly- I am a man of my word- its also a safety feature against "The Distractors".

Enough of mumbling- to the pictures and joyful progress!

I finished the electronic board to the point where I have to check the voltages before inserting semiconductors and chipset. First "general soldering overview", then "the top of the board", and "my silly soldering skills" ;) Enjoy!

Since I am a total soldering noob, I found the following quite funny and a bit disturbing. From the last soldering session I observed that something happened to the tip of the iron. In the beginning it was like a tip of a normal screwdriver. After all this soldering I have done- take a look:

I guess that the solder itself, and the cover of a PCB board have some acids etc, that are supposed to "melt" the metals in order to make better bonds. I guess they also work on the iron ;) And other thing- look how much solder I used! :D It was full when I started! I never used a full solder pack. Awesome! (yes, I enjoy strange kind of things) 

Unfortunately I could not check if my work is good or bad. The power supply I bought at the local "electronics repair point" does not work. Or I am being stupid. But since its humans nature to presume that our brain is superior to others, I will have to go to the shop and make a racket (for those offended- I am joking with "the brain" stuff- jeez, relax a bit, read some comics, watch cartoons- it helps to understand this kind of humour :P ).

Finishing, I have to boast a bit and say that my lovely wife got me a great present for "boys day"- a brand new Proxxon power tool for precise drilling, cutting, grinding, polishing- all this cool and useful stuff :D Love you Honey!

Thats it for this post. Since I managed to gather lots of tools, I guess the next one will have to do something with the printer itself. Be patient and wait!

Signing off for now...