-
on May 17
Barton Dring
backed a project
MaKey MaKey: An Invention Kit for Everyone by Jay Silver
Ever played Mario on Play-Doh or Piano on Bananas? Alligator clip the Internet to your world and start inventing the future.
-
959% funded $239,990 pledged
- 5,213 backers
-
-
-
on November 20, 2011
Barton Dring
Posted project update #19Almost Done With Rewards
Post CommentI am sorry about the long time between updates. Most of the day to day discussions lately have been happening over at my buildlog.net forum.
I am about 80% done with the rewards. I still have quite a few international ones to finish. They take a long time because each country has different restrictions on length and that often requires tweaking of the cut lists. That and the time delays make each one take a few days to work out. I ran short on some materials and packing materials for about a week, so that slowed me down, but now I have a ton (literally) of stock and can fill all the orders for a long time now. Many of the lowest level rewards are in process too. Hang in there I am on the home stretch.
I have been working on the store and it is about ready to go. It required some custom programming of the Zen Cart software to allow me to create custom cut lists and calculate the weights, etc. I think it is good to go, but I will wait to turn it on until the rewards are out. I will post and update when it is ready to go live.
There are a lot of exciting projects starting to use Makerslide. I created a partial list of the ones people would let me share on a web page here.
Here are a few images. Go to this page for a few more details.
The 2.x open source laser now uses MakerSlide
ShapeOko
MendelMax 3D Printer now using MakerSlide
Simple $100 Motorized Camera Slider
-
on October 31, 2011
Barton Dring
commented on a projectbdring (at) buildlog.net
-
on October 7, 2011
Barton Dring
commented on a project updateOf course there are plans available for the laser. There are also instructions, assembly drawings, schematics, a BOM with sources, a Wiki, forum...and more. There are about 50 of them all over the world. http://www.buildlog.net/blog/2011/02/buildlog-net-2-x-laser/ http://www.buildlog.net There are also kits, but there is hold until the MakerSlide rewards have shipped.
-
on October 3, 2011
Barton Dring
Posted project update #18Starting to ship rewards
I finally got the last items, the carriage plates. I have started shipping rewards. I shipped a few today to get the feel for shipping the large boxes. I have a bunch more to ship tomorrow. I should get into full production soon.
I have realized that there might be a large amount of scrap if I don't coordinate the cutting with all orders. I am testing some cut optimization software. This lets you plugin all the cuts and tells you how to best to arrange the cuts on each piece. If anyone can recommend good free or cheap optimization software, please post a message here.
I made a quick cutting setup out of MakerSlide and a standard carriage. Here is a video of the cutting area.
Post Comment -
on September 24, 2011
Barton Dring
Posted project update #17Video of work area
Post CommentPeople were asking for photos of the extrusion fabricator. Unfortunately I did not take any photos, but here is a quick video of my simple work area (garage) for the MakerSlide material.
-
on September 24, 2011
Barton Dring
commented on a project updateI did not take any pictures of the extrusion process. I will post some pictures of all the material soon though.
-
on September 24, 2011
Barton Dring
Posted project update #16Makerslide is in the house!
I wanted a little more control over the first delivery so I went to pick it up myself. I don't have a fork lift or raised dock, so I knew the unload would be slow and manual. My friend Edward Ford (of ShapeOko fame) went with me. I rented a really big 22 foot moving truck and drove to the extruder.
We got an amazing tour of the facility. It was huge, loud and quite industrial looking. The extruders are the size of small locomotives.
The aluminum starts as billets about 8 inch in diameter and about 3 feet long. They are preheated in an oven to close to 1000 degrees. They are loaded into the extrusion press and pushed through the dies. The business end of a die like mine consists of two parts. The aluminum first flows over the mandril. This has some flow forming channels and then a protruding portion that sticks into the other part of the die. This protruding portion forms the voids in the extrusion. My part has a several voids. The second part of the die forms the exterior shape of the extrusion.
The extrusion comes out of the die onto a long cooling rack. Much of the cooling rack is made of graphite to deal with the heat. The graphite rubs off and gets everywhere so the place is quite dirty with this dust. The parts flow out about 130 feet and are cut off. There is a complicated set of cams that "walk" the long extrusion to another table to make room for the next piece. There is a lot of loss involved in the process so they need to estimate how much to run to get the finished amount. They try to hit the goal +/-10%. In my case they were on the low end which puts me short 195 feet. I hope that does not affect the rewards.
The extrusions are cut down to a working length then heat treated in an oven. They are then cut to the finished length and sent to the anodizer. The anodizer attaches electrodes to the ends of each piece and dips them in a tank with a voltage applied to the parts. There is usually a "rack mark" towards the ends of the pieces that causes a small blemish in the finish. It does not affect the performance of the part. There are also a bunch of parts that were precut to 200mm and anodized black for the laser engraving.
Went we got home Edward and I hand stacked them onto some industrial racking I had installed in the garage. It took well over an hour.
Sorry if I did not respond to any email yesterday, but the whole odyssey took about 14 hours.
-
-
-
Jerry Isdale on September 24, 2011
Sounds like an great visit. Did you happen to take a camera? I for one would love to see pics of the factory.
-
Barton Dring on September 24, 2011
I did not take any pictures of the extrusion process. I will post some pictures of all the material soon though.
-
Post Comment -
-
on September 22, 2011
Barton Dring
commented on a project updateIf all you want is a sliding carriage, all you would need besides the rail is .... (1) standard carriage (4) V wheels, (8) bearings, (4) Shims (2) Eccentric Spacers (2) Nylon Spacers
-
on September 22, 2011
Barton Dring
commented on a projectYes...and the actual price may come down a bit from that at the time of shipment.
Barton Dring
Chicago Metropolitan Area, IL
I am a life long builder, hacker, maker and coder. In the past half dozen years my passion has been building CNC and other digital fabrication equipment. Everything I have ever done in this area is open source. I run a web site called buildlog.net.... view more
Barton,
Are there plans available for your laser cutter? And if so, how might I go about getting a set? See I find two things utterly irresitsible. Tools... and toys. And a laser cutter is prabably one of the coolest tool/toys around. Been wanting one for years. Looks like this might be the way to get one. (Though I admit to be completely clueless when it comes to bits, bytes, and electrons. Gears and levers I understand. That other stuff is voodoo. Building it should be no problem. But I'll probably need some help getting it up & running.) Anyway, How much more MakerSlide do you figure I'll need to make one? (Over and above the $128 level.) Thanks.
Of course there are plans available for the laser. There are also instructions, assembly drawings, schematics, a BOM with sources, a Wiki, forum...and more. There are about 50 of them all over the world.
http://www.buildlog.net/blog/2011/02/buildlog-net-2-x-laser/
http://www.buildlog.net
There are also kits, but there is hold until the MakerSlide rewards have shipped.
Yay! Just got mine. Thank you for everything!