Messages

That's neat, am I right in thinking the Samsung boss will work instead of the RV boss and then the remainder of the nozzle just needs a 3mm hole (I guess only 1mm deep) to receive the 'donor nozzle' ?

A.

>>> The only issue with optical breadboard is that you won't be able to pick up holes already designed into the pcb for through hole parts.

Ah yes, I didn't explain v. well - was planning to cut 1mm acrylic with 5x5 and 10x10 cm squares to place the boards in, then hold that to the breadboard with button head machine screws in a couple of places to match up with the breadboard. We try to use, v. few through hole parts Would then need to only cut/put a new piece of acrylic on if we had (for us) odd-shaped boards or changed the board size. Yeah, would cut the acrylic with a laser.

Ah, I see, you're using the through holes and rest those on the standard RVxS pointy supports?

A.

Nice, for the record with this:

NEW USB 2.0 Wired Game Controller Gamepad Joypad for Laptop PC Computer Black UK

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-USB-2-0-Wired-Game-Controller-Gamepad-Joypad-for-Laptop-PC-Computer-Black-UK/272870223237?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

from eBay seller 'tulip63', it picked up the drivers from the standard Win98 install and worked plug-and-play out of the blocks. Very good

A couple more:

+ order one of these AZ15/16-B1 things to deal with the safety lock:

http://uk.farnell.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10001&langId=44&urlRequestType=Base&partNumber=1890391&storeId=10151

... bonus points if you get a 'remove before flight' tag also.

+ you can test the cameras after exiting windows back to DOS with the PXCVU utility (available from the Imagineering site).

+ in case you've forgotten in the last couple of decades how to set-up win98 , instructions are here:

http://anagram.net/nuts/Versatronics/Win98%20Setup/

+ to install a new SATA hard drive in an old IDE machine you can use one of these StarTech Bi-Directional SATA IDE Adapter Converters:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00310MFPY/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I thought I replied, but it obviously didn't make it though the ether...

Mulling over 'optical breadboard' here with a grid of dowel pin / threaded holes. Poss using 1mm acrylic with cutouts to hold our regular 5cm and 10cm boards.

Do the boards actually need to be held down or just positioned in X/Y accurately?

A.

Even better if a Chinese manufacturer can make cheaply to the original design ATM these are involving a bit of manual machining work, which isn't great for cost. And yeah, I think cut-off stainless dispensing needle / adapting the pointy bit of other nozzles or 3d printers may be interesting alternatives. I have the bits for adapting a 3D printer nozzle on the workbench, although as it stands it needs a longer 'receiving cup' but which I have printed up already. If anyone has an idea for a source of dispensing needle stock cut to length about ~8mm, please pipe up. BTW it would be easy to print up receptacles for the Samsung nozzles (or any other suitable 'pointy bits' of the right size) if the overall dimensions of the cut-off bit work out. BTW there's a tool height dimension in the rvdata.dat file - although as the existing nozzles are all 15mm, it's anyone's guess whether it works

FYI the current state of affairs, and I got the drilling to work late yesterday, at least for 0.6mm drills. New vs. original - the originals are the less mottled ones.
Not too bad but I hope these can be improved:




Let me know if anyone wants to try these out as I'm sure you all have more RVxS experience than me.

Alan

>>> What resolution printer do you think is required for nozzles?

For my money, I think professional quality rather than than consumer ones. Also I think, the SLA/DLP processes rather than the SLS laser-sintered powder processes. But interesting question - the hard-to-print features are the end of the tool 1 and 6 nozzles and the lips of the o-ring nozzles - the rest is fairly low spec. The manufacturers are a bit sneaky with their resolution / accuracy specs so I'm finding testing is the only reliable way. It is possible that SLS plus clever manual finishing (drilling, and final turning) will work too. It is possible that DLP may need no finishing. SLA btw is used for jewelry masters and dental.

I'm also testing PTFE rather than brass inserts and also using 3D printer hot-end nozzles as the sharp bit. Sorry this is taking a while, but I think I'm getting there. This is the recent design I sent out (this is a render not a shot of the resulting printed part):

http://anagram.net/nuts/Versatronics/Nozzles/Tool%201%20with%200.5mm%20additions.PNG

... the idea is to turn off the extra 0.5mm addition to end up with a v. accurate nozzle end. If this design direction works out OK then it would also make custom nozzles v. easy to do.

A.

Yeah the 1S rack is fairly easy to adjust without taking it off the machine. I did a quick look for replacement parts and without taking it off to measure the teeth, it looked like the rack and pinion were fairly standard parts with a little bit milled out of the top of the rack.

A.

>>> I just bought a bag of new/old nozzles from Grove. I cant see any markings on them so I do not know which are which. Is there an easy way to tell?

http://anagram.net/nuts/Versatronics/Nozzles/Nozzle%20summary.png

Tools are:

1 2 3 4 5
6

- when looking from the front of the machine.

Alan

p.s. I made some more convincing brass and PTFE inserts today, waiting on a few bits before trying the drilling operation again and ordered a few more nozzle blanks.

>>> then drill under size from the front and then ream to size

you can actually get 0.4mm reamers e.g.

https://www.accu.co.uk/en/machine-reamers/444469-221450-0400

but I think that's well beyond my machining ability / capabilities of the equipment I have to hand.

A bunch of new nozzle tests have come in plus a nozzle cup (I'm missing one) / a replacement 'light cover plate' for the Z-axis / a test of a new size nozzle for a 5050 led / a nozzle base to take an off-the-shelf 3D printer 0.4mm brass nozzle / some more material tests. I can already see the dimples have not worked out so well so far - too little resolution, but one of the material tests looks like a big improvement. I'll do some more drilling / lathe work / testing later in the week.

I noticed a reference to 'RVT01.5' and 'RVTMELF' nozzles in the Versa price lists. Anyone seen any drawings or have one?

A.

Hi Mike,

>>> I stopped the lens down to minimum, and also reduced the shutter time ( My cam has a rotary switch on the back to set this - the cam I took off an RV1 didn't - may need a neutral density filter if not, or dim the leds down a bit).

On my RV1S it's a Watec WAT-308A with a COSMICAR/Pentax 16mm f1.4 TV lens which doesn't have a shutter setting. The camera, lens and machined mount parts all look nice quality. If you made a note, which camera do you have there in your 4S?

>>> I glued a short length of PVC conduit to the diffuser ring to reduce glare from the edge of the LED ring

Is this mounted above the diffuser pointing towards the part?

Alan

Ah I think I have a way to do this accurately without sorting the tailstock out - which is a side project I would rather not engage in atm. Will order in a few more bits...

@spiyda - when you're making the brass nozzle inserts - do you normally start off with bar or tube?

Alan

Thanks for the hints - lack of machinist skill / subtlety / accuracy on my part I think Just checked again and the tailstock centreing is actually better than I thought - maybe 0.5mm low, but that needs to be fixed before I can accurately get a 0.4/0.6mm hole in the end of a 1mm nozzle I was using a tiny 0.3-1mm chuck mounted in the normal tailstock chuck.

I'll give it another whirl - in fact if that's all it does, that'll be fine.

Alan

>>> I've hit a road block with generating a proxy DLL. Win98 does not want to load rvplace.exe and it complains that it can't find the exported functions even though dumpbin shows them correctly. The proxy DLL loads just fine with rvplace.exe on Win XP and up. Tried to compile the DLL with VC6 and MSVS2005 on Win98, XP and 7, but I end up getting the same error message.

I know this is an old thread, but I see the apps were originally compiled with Borland 5.02. There's one class in stepDsp.dll (exports below) - so it was probably at least part caused by Borland C++ name mangling vs. Msft mangling.

A.

LIBRARY     STEPDSP.DLL

EXPORTS
    @Stepdsp@$bctr$qipcp6Speeds    @14  ; Stepdsp::Stepdsp(int,char*,Speeds*)
    @Stepdsp@$bdtr$qv              @16  ; Stepdsp::~Stepdsp()
    @Stepdsp@CalcMoveTime$quii     @2   ; Stepdsp::CalcMoveTime(unsigned int,int)
    @Stepdsp@CalcProcTime$qui      @12  ; Stepdsp::CalcProcTime(unsigned int)
    @Stepdsp@CalcRampTime$qui      @11  ; Stepdsp::CalcRampTime(unsigned int)
    @Stepdsp@CalcSpeedTime$quii    @13  ; Stepdsp::CalcSpeedTime(unsigned int,int)
    @Stepdsp@CalculateRamp$qui     @3   ; Stepdsp::CalculateRamp(unsigned int)
    @Stepdsp@GearAxis$qii          @10  ; Stepdsp::GearAxis(int,int)
    @Stepdsp@GetByte$qi            @45  ; Stepdsp::GetByte(int)
    @Stepdsp@GetErrorStatus$qi     @26  ; Stepdsp::GetErrorStatus(int)
    @Stepdsp@GetMoveStatus$qi      @47  ; Stepdsp::GetMoveStatus(int)
    @Stepdsp@GetPos$qi             @21  ; Stepdsp::GetPos(int)
    @Stepdsp@GetResetStatus$qv     @35  ; Stepdsp::GetResetStatus()
    @Stepdsp@GetStatus$qi          @25  ; Stepdsp::GetStatus(int)
    @Stepdsp@Init$qv               @18  ; Stepdsp::Init()
    @Stepdsp@InitAxis$qi           @19  ; Stepdsp::InitAxis(int)
    @Stepdsp@InitXY$qlluiii        @28  ; Stepdsp::InitXY(long,long,unsigned int,int,int)
    @Stepdsp@LoadCode$qv           @17  ; Stepdsp::LoadCode()
    @Stepdsp@LoadRamp$qv           @15  ; Stepdsp::LoadRamp()
    @Stepdsp@ModifySpeed$qii       @8   ; Stepdsp::ModifySpeed(int,int)
    @Stepdsp@MotorOff$qi           @23  ; Stepdsp::MotorOff(int)
    @Stepdsp@MoveAxis$qiluii       @31  ; Stepdsp::MoveAxis(int,long,unsigned int,int)
    @Stepdsp@MoveAxis1$qiluii      @5   ; Stepdsp::MoveAxis1(int,long,unsigned int,int)
    @Stepdsp@MoveAxisRel$qiluii    @32  ; Stepdsp::MoveAxisRel(int,long,unsigned int,int)
    @Stepdsp@MoveAxisRel1$qiluii   @6   ; Stepdsp::MoveAxisRel1(int,long,unsigned int,int)
    @Stepdsp@MoveXY$qlluii         @29  ; Stepdsp::MoveXY(long,long,unsigned int,int)
    @Stepdsp@MoveXY1$qlluii        @1   ; Stepdsp::MoveXY1(long,long,unsigned int,int)
    @Stepdsp@OutPort$qiuc          @50  ; Stepdsp::OutPort(int,unsigned char)
    @Stepdsp@Read$qi               @42  ; Stepdsp::Read(int)
    @Stepdsp@ReadAck1$qi           @43  ; Stepdsp::ReadAck1(int)
    @Stepdsp@ReadAck2$qi           @44  ; Stepdsp::ReadAck2(int)
    @Stepdsp@ReadPort$qi           @51  ; Stepdsp::ReadPort(int)
    @Stepdsp@ResetCard$qv          @27  ; Stepdsp::ResetCard()
    @Stepdsp@RingBack$qiuc         @33  ; Stepdsp::RingBack(int,unsigned char)
    @Stepdsp@RingBackOut$qiiuc     @34  ; Stepdsp::RingBackOut(int,int,unsigned char)
    @Stepdsp@SendByte$qiuc         @39  ; Stepdsp::SendByte(int,unsigned char)
    @Stepdsp@SendMaster$qiuiiuiuii @4   ; Stepdsp::SendMaster(int,unsigned int,int,unsigned int,unsigned int,int)
    @Stepdsp@SendSlave$qiii        @7   ; Stepdsp::SendSlave(int,int,int)
    @Stepdsp@SetBreakPoint$qii     @9   ; Stepdsp::SetBreakPoint(int,int)
    @Stepdsp@SetDirection$qii      @22  ; Stepdsp::SetDirection(int,int)
    @Stepdsp@SetPos$qil            @20  ; Stepdsp::SetPos(int,long)
    @Stepdsp@SetResetStatus$qv     @36  ; Stepdsp::SetResetStatus()
    @Stepdsp@SetStatus$qii         @24  ; Stepdsp::SetStatus(int,int)
    @Stepdsp@StartXY$qv            @30  ; Stepdsp::StartXY()
    @Stepdsp@WaitBP$qi             @49  ; Stepdsp::WaitBP(int)
    @Stepdsp@WaitNotBusy$qi        @38  ; Stepdsp::WaitNotBusy(int)
    @Stepdsp@WaitNotSame$qiuc      @46  ; Stepdsp::WaitNotSame(int,unsigned char)
    @Stepdsp@WaitSame$qiuc         @48  ; Stepdsp::WaitSame(int,unsigned char)
    @Stepdsp@Write$qiuc            @37  ; Stepdsp::Write(int,unsigned char)
    @Stepdsp@WriteAck1$qi          @40  ; Stepdsp::WriteAck1(int)
    @Stepdsp@WriteAck2$qi          @41  ; Stepdsp::WriteAck2(int)

>>> Yes the calibration grid plate keys to the two dowels...

I wonder whether the dowels stick through the grid plate and the grid is directly keyed on them. Maybe the 8mm reamed holes just take bushes to actual locate 6mm dowels and then longer 6mm dowels stick through the 7mm holes in the cal plate to key the film/print on? I wonder how important it is that the grid is located accurately with respect to the bed? Do you think that the matrix results of the cal are the errors between the arm 'thinks' the theoretical spots are calculated from geometry vs. the actual position where the camera is homed in on the spots?

>>> If I remember correctly, it starts a few dots in from the left side..  not far from the position the head waits at after finding the switches..

I just re-read the thread, and your notes suggest around here?

http://www.anagram.net/nuts/Versatronics/RVxS-grid%202.PNG

'spose the machine target accuracy is better than 1 thou (I did a quick check with a dial indicator and each step from the GUI is very close to 1 thou), that suggests a printing accuracy of 10x this would be about the minimum you would need, i.e. ~10K dpi? I know I'm being vague with accuracy, resolution etc here

I was thinking maybe laser-cut black mylar on a white background would do it. Or say this:

http://www.jd-photodata.co.uk/photo-tooling/low-resolution-film/28-x-32-photo-tool.html

28"x32" - they even do 6mm mounting holes! I guess the max size we actually need is 21"x26". Then laser the outline out of the photoplot (doesn't need to be accurate) to fit round the arm etc. Do we need the whole grid imaging as I'm surprised that anything other than the bed needs calibrating - it seems that the positions of the tools, feeders lanes etc are directly calibrated anyway? Also, the arm can't actually reach 1/2 of the grid.

spiyda - how does it walk round the grid - Y front to back (as it seems in your videos) on the spots it can reach then X left to right?

Any ideas why there seems to be two matrices stored in rvdata.dat - head and fid maybe? Lastly, any ideas on how we would we know if the cal is good? I seem to be good with the questions rather than the answers today

A.

p.s. here's a visualisation of the default cal data from blnkdat2.sys: http://www.anagram.net/nuts/Versatronics/RV1S-003%20Paul%20F.Mills.png