Do Cartwheels, Feed People

Rotational Hydroponics. It's an idea that's been around mostly unknown for the last decade, and has the potential to revolutionise* the way we grow food.
*Pun intended.

MS-Paint Art by me. :P

Essentially, by rotating plants plants around a source of light, you can manipulate the way they grow by the combination of heliotropism and geotropism.

Spot The Difference

...and win some free lulz!

A Picture...

Says a Thousand Words.

Bootstrapping Support

Thanks again to more advice from the regulars of the RepRap IRC channel, I've managed to greatly improve my print accuracy by improving the firmware I'm using, and finally allow myself to leave the printer alone to do its job by getting a filament spool mounted where it can spin freely, instead of me having to keep turning the thing over.

Better Settings

This was the last print I've done so far, using up the last of my couple metres of testing filament, and just in time too; the settings are just about right now.


The parts I needed to change, for others' reference, was to have the 'Feed Rate' and 'Flow Rate' equal in the 'Speed' tab of SkeinForge 40.

On Small-Scale Plastic Recycling

While struggling through my last exams ever this week, I've been coming down with a fever, so I hope this blag makes sense, as I can't concentrate on much else right now.

Continuing along my previous train of thought (A Mission Statement), I've been considering how one might best go about recycling such sometimes 'non-recyclable' recyclable plastic bits as small bottle caps, yoghurt pots, or some of the chunkier waste material produced by failed prints.

D'oh

The temperature was not the only problem I had (though it may have played a small part). It seems that in my haste to get my printer working, I overlooked a key thing that I needed to calibrate, which I hope anyone after me will remember.

While the firmware on Gubbels' Gen6 electronics will turn the various stepper motors for axis control as far as they should do out of the box, the motor settings for the extruder drive need to be calibrated so that the plastic feeds out at the right speed. It seems that while the Mendel Parts kit was using Adrian's geared extruder, the firmware's step value for the extruder was way off.

This is what resulted in a test before a few people on the RepRap IRC helped me identify the problem:

I'm glad that's biodegradable.

It's Alive!

Although a bit shoddy so far...

A somewhat crazy end to the week, first I get the neighbours upstairs leaking water through the bathroom light fitting and blowing it out, then British Gas take too much on my direct debit and put me through the bottom of my arranged overdraft, not making other things easy.
Nevertheless, good friends are on hand to help out. With that drill borrowed from an ex-bowyer, I made quick work of the heating resistor mounting on my reprap's printbed, and luckily had a handy friend with a soldering iron nearby.

Heated bed developed by C Gubbels. Only way available to connect that power seemed to be by splicing and soldering wires, hence the zip tie for strain relief.