The Helix Project Development

"Industrializing Your Home For Less"

My Rapid Prototyper (The Helix) is going to be availible for the target cost of 100 USD. It will be made of wood, metal bars, motors, programming, a heating element and other random cheap parts. I have not done any development worth mentioning yet, but I will keep you posted!

January 25, 2008

The construction will soon begin! I will soon take apart a printer I hope to base it off of.

January 26, 2008

The printer is not going to work for that, I found out. Instead I am looking into the Z stage and the cube base. I will hopefully have pictures tommorow. The first thing to do is get paint sticks and chopsticks. I will cut two in pieces to form four legs. Then I will take the other paint sticks and put them together to form a square platform. On that I will put a cube made of hot-glued chopsticks. I will then make another platform, and put it on the cube base, string it up, and test the Z-stage. The other square will be on the bottom, and I will use more legs. I cannot wait to start building!

February 5, 2008

So far I have spent: $0, and 2 1/2 hours on the Helix.

By the end of the week, I will have the entire base and z-stage functioning. If you want to help, you can check the forum for "Item Request" topics. Now if only I has some wood glue…

February 11, 2008

I have all three stages assembled!!! It does not work yet, and will not do more than lines, but it moves. I will have more pictures soon!

This picture actually also has the Z-Stage, it is the platform with string attached.
Base.jpg

February 12, 2008

I have finished several modifications tonight. For one thing, the Y moved much too fast. I fixed this by making it run on a stick instead of a flat gear. This also gave me more parts for the last component. The Extruder. See Extruders for more details. Before that, remember how the device had no room to extrude? I fixed that by adding another level to the cube. After this, I motorized the Z-Stage, with still more work to be done. I will get pictures by this weekend, so keep checking!

March 11, 2008

Still waiting for finding the right parts for the extruder, I had a Eureka moment. The Helix 1.0 is once again under serius remodeling. You can see the start of this in the picture below.

HelixXGen2start

March 17, 2008

With everything else under control, I now need to focus on four major parts of the Helix 1.0:

The Extruder

my supplies for this are as stands:

Potato Plastic

I know a way to make plastic out of starch (hence potatoes). The molten plastic can be poured into a mold from either carved wood, wax (expensive; I would need to make a wax block first), or clay (lots of work; my art teacher has a kiln, but I do not have connections in the school to get me that far.

Chopsticks/HomeDepot Sticks

These are not really most valuble for this.

Paper Model skills

For making prototypes. For some really cool paper robots look here.

Other Supplies

* What I can find around the house
* For the motor, The Reprap Store
* Finally, HomeDepot, for the Drive Shaft

The Electronics

Helix 1.0 will use the same electronics as the RepRap Project.

The Software

The computer software is also the Reprap Software. I hope to have the version 0.0.0.2 beta release within the next year. (very general, only a guess; more like it will be done within a year.)

The Firmware

Last to be created is the Firmware. I will stick with the Reprap Firmware for now, because my programming skills are rooted in Java.

March 24, 2008

Power Comms Board ordered from online site!!!

This is the end of all the modifications. The new system is simple. The motor directly turns a belt that the next component rides on. I also figured out how to get a regular motor to work in linear motions. Helix Prototype Designer 0.0.0.1 is finally in its finishing stages. As of today I only really need to build the electronics. Everything else is rapping up nicely.

march24helix.jpg

HELIX TO BE FINISHED IN THE NEXT TWO MONTHS

March 26, 2008

The Helix Prototyping team is very pleased to announce that the Helix 1.0 will be fully functional within the next two months. During our spring break here at Mission Control, we will start to wrap things up. When it is finished, it will be "on tour" for a week, then it is back to business here.

April 25, 2008

With the extruder under development and all the electronics being soldered today, we here at tech-diy are extremely exited. Too busy to document anymore, we will be seeing you again at the time of Helix 1.0's completion. Jusqu'à ce que la spirale soit faite ! (until the helix is done!)

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