Wednesday, January 8, 2014

3D Printed eggbot clone to make Christmas ornaments.

Happy Holidays! This is a result of my modifications made for existing eggbot clone to decorate Christmas ornaments (8cm+).
At the beginning I was inspired by the Sparebot project.

I build my first 3d printer some time ago so I started looking for 3d printed version of any eggbot clone project. I found one here. Unfortunately this hardware was designed to work with small objects so I needed to modify it and adapt to work with 8cm+ Christmas ornaments.

Control board was made according to the Sparebot documentation using Arduino UNO and 2 Stepstick step motor drivers. I found big error on Sparebot schematics. To enable micro stepping mode you need to connect MS1, MS2, MS3 to +5V signal not to the ground! After this change control board is working great.

I am using Inkscape to design patterns. This is really great open source vector graphics editor. I am using inkscape-unicorn plug-in to export final designs to the gcode format. If you have troubles with python when using this plug-in install original eggbot software first. It comes with useful effects like hatch fill, etc.

Designing Christmas ornaments was really fun! And below are some results of my work. I made really nice Christmas gifts.