MendelMax 1.5 Build

Just finished my Dark Knight themed MendelMax 1.5.   Great printer design.  I highly recommend it.  Aside from drilling and tapping a few holes, it was extremely easy to build.

I use an old xbox 360 power supply and RAMPS 1.4, both of which are mounted under the build platform.    I painted the Prusa MK1 heated PCB bed gloss black (make sure you use high temp paint).

 

The wiring is cleaned up with TechFlex 3/8" wire loom.   Check it out on ebay.  I paid $4 for 10' which was plenty and it makes the printer look so much more professional.  Great stuff.

A little more expensive than the standard Prusa i2, but definitely worth it in the end.

Slic3r on Raspberry Pi

Installing Slic3r on Raspberry Pi

After installing PrintRun on my RPi, I wanted to get a slicing software running.  Skeinforge is written in Python so I'm sure it would install pretty easy.  The problem is Skeinforge is so slow at slicing.  Even on my normal computer, it takes at minimum a couple minutes to export G-Code for an STL that would take a few seconds on Slic3r.  

Note:  Slic3r is fast and for the majority of slicing that I do, it works flawlessly.  Unfortunately it is still in it's infancy for certain features, such as support material.  Therefore, Skeinforge is a necessary evil you will likely eventually need.  

Installation

I followed these install instructions for the most part.  Another fellow Reprap-er anwe79 suggested a few more needed dependencies to get it up and going.  I will list the full install process to make it easier.  

First:

sudo apt-get install git build-essential libgtk2.0-dev libwxgtk2.8-dev libwx-perl libmodule-build-perl libnet-dbus-perl

then

sudo apt-get install cpanminus

This next part may not be needed but just go ahead and make sure you have them:

sudo apt-get install curl
curl -L http://cpanmin.us | perl - --sudo App::cpanminus




Next is the extra needed dependencies that aren't listed on the original tutorial:

sudo apt-get install libextutils-cbuilder-perl

sudo apt-get install gcc-4.7

sudo apt-get install g++-4.7

Now you will be ready to go forward and get Slic3r:

git clone https://github.com/alexrj/Slic3r.git
cd Slic3r

Now you need some misc. perl dependencies:

sudo apt-get install libwx-perl

This next part installs some dependencies through cpanm.

sudo cpanm Boost::Geometry::Utils Math::Clipper \
    Math::ConvexHull Math::Geometry::Voronoi Math::PlanePath Moo Wx

NOTE: This will take forever! Just press enter and let it go. Don't mess around. After you get back to the main terminal prompt, scroll back through and check for errors. If you see errors then you need to check out the build log. Insert the correct build.log directory, should be something like /root/something/build.log

sudo nano buildLogDirectory

This will open the build log in nano and you can see where the problem is. For example it may say gcc-4.7 not installed. Therefore other dependencies won't install either.
Note: At times when installing dependencies, you'll need to update. Watch the terminal, it'll tell you when to update. Feel free to reboot whenever you'd like. Just remember to cd back to Slic3r when you return to the terminal like above.
At the end of all of this, you should have a working Slic3r. You can navigate through a file manager to the Slic3r folder and find Slic3r.py and execute or you can type ./slic3r.pl in terminal.
Once again, I'm not expert, this is simply the way I got it working on my RPi. Once again follow along to the RepRap developers forum topic here. Good Luck!

Raspberry Pi Contained!

I found an old portable DVD player I had laying around. I noticed it had a video in port. So I plugged in the 'Pi and it worked. I gutted out the unneeded parts and threw the 'Pi inside. Now I'm not tethered to my HDMI cable/tv. (just the keyboard, mouse, power cables)

If you have one laying around, just tear out the drive, the buttons, and the battery hookup and with a little trimming you'll be all set.