DIYcrap audio mixer #3. FV-1 Reverb

This is part 3 of "building an audio mixer with effects". For part 1 go here, and for part 2, go here.

The mixer is working fine, and already has got two PT2399 circuits for delay. But now it is time to add some reverb. For reverb I decided to use an FV-1 based design. Experimental Noize has some nice small boards built around this chip, preprogrammed for different purposes. I decided to go for the SKRM-C8-R02 Mono-In/Stereo Out reverb and delay module.


I wanted to use a rotary switch to select between the different programs. The SKRM data sheet proposes to use a 74HC148 8 to 3 Line Priority Encoder for this purpose. Hence, there is a need for a small PCB to mount the SKRM and the 74HC148 (in addition to some additional components). Although I have used KiCad and OSH Park for PCB production previously, I wanted to test Fritzing for this small project.

I drew a quick diagram in Fritzing, swithced to PCB-view and the auto-router took care of the rest (at least most of it).

After a about ten days the card arrived in my mailbox.

The board came out quite nicely. Although I am very satisfied with the result, I do not think I will use Fritzing for my next project. OSH Park and other alternatives are way cheaper, and I think the Fritzing software is a bit limited compared to Eagle or KiCad (and even if the Fritzing-software is very simple to use, Eagle and KiCad are not that difficult to learn). The files are available at the Fritzing-site in case you are interested.

It took about 10 minutes to add the few components :-). It is only a 74HC148, a capacitor and a pull up resistor network.

Then I slammed the SKRM on top of it, soldered the connectors, and started jamming with some heavy reverb. But wait, I forgot one thing, namely to securely mount the PCB inside the mixer. A simple solution is to screw standoffs to the front panel, but the screws would interfere with the front panel design. I could also glue the standoffs to the front panel, but I just hate to glue things together when there is a slight chance that I might want to dismantle it later.

Hence, I created a plate to screw the PCB standoffs to, that is fastened with the rotary switch. It is designed in OpenSCAD and 3D-printed.

The above picture show how it looks like inside the mixer. Notice that the plate (in pink) is fastened together with the rotary switch.

The above picture show how the mixer looks like inside. The SKRM is driven by a LM7805 which is connected to the +12V rail (the blue heatsink can be seen on the bottom part of the picture). The circuit draws about 170mA, even if the data sheet states it should be less than 75mA. The reason? I do not know.

DIYcrap mixer. Now with reverb.

Building an enclosure for Mutable Instruments Shruthi-1

About a year ago I ordered a Shruthi-1 PCB and a Four Pole Mission PCB from Mutable instruments. After sourcing the components, it was a quick and enjoyable build. The synth has, however, been sitting in my drawer for a long time waiting for an enclosure.

First, I thought of buying the metal enclosure from Mutable Instruments. Besides the fact that the metal enclosure costs ¢55 (not a bad price, but still), I had, due to financial reasons, used different buttons than those recommended my Mutable Instruments. Since I had no intention to change those, I had to make my own enclosure.


Before bragging about my design I have to inform you that there is an excellent downloadable enclosure out on Thingiverse:284637. I tried it, but I just could not get it to print nice on my small RepRap Huxley.

I used OpenSCAD since it is Open Source and pretty nerdy. The box is pretty simple (and boxy), but takes only a couple of hours to print and consists of only three parts.

I created small cylinders for the LEDs. In this way they are highly visible on the front panel although the PCB is about 10mm below the panel. The cylinders also ensures that there is no light leakage from one LED opening to the next.

The final case looks ok. However, the Shruthi is not the easiest synth to use, at least when none of the buttons are labeled in any way. Therefore, I waned to create a panel with labels on.

Using the command "projection(cut=false)", the 3D drawing of the front panel can be converted to 2D. Then it is possible to export a DXF-file which can be imported in Inkscape. I learned this technique from this blog.

Once imported in Inkscape, I can create some text and stuff on the front panel. I used the same approach as I did on my mixer, and printed the front panel on some piece of colored thick paper.

Before laminating the paper, I cut out the opening for the display with an exacto knife and punched 3mm holes for the LEDs with a drill bit.

I had to extend the buttons with some Sugru to make the hight appropriate for the front panel. Looks a bit strange, but it works surprisingly good.

This is the final unit. You can download the design files on thingiverse if you like, and hack the heck out of it. The OpenSCAD-file is parametrized and it should be fairly easy to alter the design for whatever buttons you might have.


Here goes some additional pictures.

The front panel is secured with the nuts on the five potmeters.

The back plate is secured with the plastic nuts on the audio jacks.

Wordclock based on Arduino Yun

Introduction

This year, as every year, I did not have the faintest idea what to give my brother to his birthday, I decided, quite boldly, to build a birthday present with my bare hands. I figured out that everybody needs a clock, and that building a WordClock would be a funny challenge for myself.

The purpose of a WordClock is to present the time of the day using letters instead of numbers. I believe that the idea stems from the ClockTwo from Biegert & Funk (http://www.qlocktwo.com).
There are also other versions available for purchase (for example dougswordclocks.com.) as well as a myriad of DIY-designs. For example, this one, this one and this one, all on Instructables.

My DIY WordClock

Although the DIY-designs are fine, they are certainly not as sexy as the original ClockTwo, (and neither is mine). My design differs from the other alternatives (at least the ones I have found) in the following ways:

1. It presents the time in Norwegian
2. It has the possibility to show minute-precision time using the letters.
3. The time sets itself automatically using NTP (including daylight savings time).
4. It has a web-interface, so the user can use his smart-phone to adjust some clock settings.
5. It has a light sensor so the intensity of the LEDs can be automatically adjusted to the light in the room. (I know, other clocks has this as well)

To accommodate automatic adjustable time, I based the clock on the Arduino Yun, which besides being a standard Arduino with an Atmel AVR, runs Linux on a separate processor and can connect to WiFi and the Internet. The parts needed for this build is:

• Arduino Yun ($75 at Adafruit)
• 100 RGB LED-strips ($29.95 for 32 (1m) at Adafruit)
• A light-sensitive resistor (negligible cost)
• A resistor to match the above as a voltage divider.
• A micro USB connector
• A 2A 5V powersupply
• A acrylic front plate
• A frame, or something to hold the electronics and the acrylic front 

As the astute reader will notice, this is not the cheapest of the builds (although cheaper than the ClockTwo). However, thanks to the RGB-led strips it is relatively easy to build, compared to soldering and mounting 100 LEDs, and it also provides the unique ability to address every LED individually, and control their color.

The build

The first I did was to connect the light strip to the Arduino to check that all LEDs worked. All the strip needs is 5V, GND and two pins on the arduino.

The LED-strip connected to the Arduino

After verifying that the strip worked with some code provided from adafruit, I divided the strip in ten sections of ten LEDs, glued them to a 35cm x 35cm plate and soldered them together in a back-and-forth pattern.

The 100 LEDs glued to a plate, showing off with a rainbow pattern.

Since all the letters must be able to light individually, we do not want the light from one letter influence the neighbor letters. Hence some sort of frame must be built around each LED. I created a simple 2x4 design in OpenSCAD and let my 3D-printer do the job. Unfortunately, I only had black PLA, and since white is preferred to increase reflection from the LED, I spray-painted the frames. The result is shown below.

3D-printed frames fixed to the backplate with sugru.

The complete grid layout consists of ten 2x4 frames and five 2x2 frames. Obviously, I could have printed a 10x10 frame to cover the entire clock but that would have required a 3D-printer with approximately 35x35cm build areal.

The light sensor

To be able to fit the light sensor, a custom 2x2 frame was printed. On the top you can see the IKEA-frame which holds everything.

The 100 LEDs now have one little compartment each

With all the small 3D-printed frames glued to the back-plate with Sugru, it was time to figure out  a way to create the front-plate. This was by far the most difficult part of the project.

Front plate made in acrylic

The front plate is a 40x40cm acrylic photo print from http://www.idekor.no/. I made the lettering layout using a monospace font in inkscape, converted it to pdf, and then png, uploaded it to the online photo-service and hoped for the best. Frankly, even if the letters and the spacing between them was excellent, the result was a disaster, since the black was not entirely black. It was more grayish, and partly transparent.

Modifying the acrylic plate with some transparent plastic printouts

Since the sole purpose of the acrylic print was to isolate letters from background, I had to modify the acrylic by adding two layers of transparent plastic printed with the same pattern. Obviously I could have printed a new acrylic plate (maybe using a different online service), but sine I had already spent a small fortune on this one, and I was running out of time (this was a birthday present remember) I had to deal with what I had. To diffuse the light i used a layer of greaseproof paper.

The back of the clock with the nice IKEA painting

In the above picture you can see the back of the clock with 5V power at the bottom (white USB-cable taken from a Kindle), four wires to the LED-strip (top left) and two wires to the light sensor. The wires are connected to a custom Arduino-shield, which also powers the Yun. I used the original IKEA-picture since it was sturdy and perfectly fits the frame.

Old clock and new clock

I wondered for a while on how to fasten the acrylic front plate to the wooden frame. First I planned to drill holes in the acrylic plate and screw it using 75mm M3 bolts. Then, for some reason I read about fractured acrylic and did not dare to drill holes in my precious plate. Hence I decided to glue it in place. Using glue also had the benefit of allowing micro adjustment of the position of the acrylic plate over the 10x10 frame.

Well, the decision to use glue turned out to be fatal. Somehow I forgot that the acrylic plate was semi-transparent even in the black areas, and some of the glue can be shown from the front side of the clock. Typical DIYcrap mistake. Other than that, it was excellent.

How it works

Since this was a birthday present, I wanted an individual touch of the clock. Hence, while the clock boots, it shows the name of the owner of the clock. The letters in the name is used to indicate the progress in booting as well as outputting some status information. Even if the clock will probably boot very seldom (if ever) it is great for debugging purposes, so lets follow the process.

First the clock says that Arduino is working by showing a green "A". You may say it is sort of superfluous, since the LED-strip will not work without the AVR, but thats missing the point (and the fun).

After about a minute, Linux is running, (L is green). We can also see that we got Wireless connection (signal strength 5/7, since L,F,O,R,D is green), and we got an IP-address from a DHCP server (D is green).

Now, we have a connection to the internet (I is green). A connection to the Internet is simply verified by pinging google.com. If this address somehow dies (if google goes bankrupt), the letter "I" turns blue, but the clock will still operate.

Now, the letter "N" shows that we have received the time from a minimum number of four NTP-servers and we therefore believe that the time is set correctly in Linux.

At last, the letter "E" indicates the ambient light in the room as perceived by the light sensor at boot time. Red indicates low light, green indicates medium, while blue (as in the picture) means that there is a lot of (sun)light in the room, and the LEDs are set to maximum intensity for the time being.  (The intensity-adjustment is of course performed continuously as the clock operates, regardless of the amount of light during boot time). 

Using a simple web-interface, the user can select some additional features using his smartphone. A rainbow pattern for example, is always supercool. Since the Yun uses Bonjour and UPnP and all that stuff, the web-page can easily be found on the local WiFi using the arduino.local address.

A standard WordClock can only show the time in five-minute intervals. An additional feature that can be enabled using the web-interface is the ability to show minutes. This is performed by letting the letters K,L,O,K presented a different color. In the above picture, the three letters K,L and O means that we should add three minutes to the time showed. Thus the time is not five minutes to (fem på) "something", but rather two minutes to "something".

The verdict

I am quite satisfied with the build. Obviously, I did not choose the cheapest method, but the combination of the RGB LED strip and the Arduino Yun turned out to be a very fun and rewarding combination. I am certainly going to use the Yun in other projects as well. Had it only been a bit more affordable.

Another downside with the Yun is the limited codespace on the 32U4 microprocessor. With the bridge library, the LED-strip library and all the other stuff I almost hit the ceiling in code space. I even had to omit some super cool features that simply did not fit the 32Kb space on the controller.

Update! Download code

You can now download the code here

OpenPanTilt, a DIY 3D-printed Pan and Tilt head for DSLR timelapse photography

I hereby present OpenPanTilt, a 3D-printed Pan/Tilt head for timelapse photography with DSLR. This is a project I have been working on for some months. It is still not finished (i guess it will not ever be completely finished), but at least it is working. The above video shows a a video produced by OpenPanTilt. Scroll down to the end of this blog post to see a video demonstrating how the OpenPanTilt looks like. 

Introduction

Timelapse videos gets alot more interesing once some camera movement is introduced. There are mainly two methods to perform movement. The first is by using a camera dolly, an the second is by using a Pan/tilt head. Each method have their advantages and disadvantages. A dolly can typically create more interesting shots if there is an object in the foreground, while a Pan/tilt head can be useful regardless of the scene and it can also be more portable. I have created my own Pan/tilt head for timelapse purpose: OpenPanTilt. The source code and the design files are all available for download, and can be freely modified and hacked, hence the "Open".

OpenPanTilt is inspired by the design of Steven Brace and consists of similar worm drives and stepper motors as his design. However, OpenPanTilt is also inspired by RepRap 3D-printers, meaning that most of the parts can be 3D-printed, whereas the rest of the parts (except the gears) can be easily sourced from a nearby hardware store.

Parts

The unit consists of nine 3D-printed parts (the part numbers in the list correspond to those in the above figure):

1. Camera mount with mounting holes for quick-release plate
2. Left part of the cradle
3. Right part of the cradle. The left and right parts are identical.
4. Tilt mount which holds the left part of the cradle and a NEMA17 stepper motor.
5. Right tilt mount
6. An upper pan mount which connects the two tilt mounts with M8 Rods and space for a lazy susan bearing.
7. Top cover for the pan stepper motor box, which also has a space for the second half of the lazy susan bearing.
8. The pan stepper motor box, containing the second NEMA17 motor.
9. The bottom cover of the pan stepper motor box. A quick release mount can be printed as a part of the cover as an option. 

My 3D-printer (as seen above printing part 5) has a relatively small build volume (140x140x100mm), so the size of the parts are somewhat smaller than they should be. For example, by printing the tilt mounts (part 4 and 5 in the figure) a bit taller, it would be possible to tilt the camera some additional degrees before it crashes with the upper pan mount (part 6). However, the freedom of tilt movement depends heavily on the type of camera that is attached to OpenPanTilt. A small compact camera can be tilted 360 degrees with no problems at all whereas a DSLR with a huge lens will be more restricted in terms of movement. 

Hardware

The hardware pieces are as follows:

• 2x A-1Y-5MYK08RA Worm (from sdp-si)
• 2x A-1P-6MYK08R030 Worm Gear (from sdp-si)
• 2x NEMA17 stepper motor (The Pan engine should be max 40mm to fit inside part 8)
• 1x 25x42x11mm Axial Ball Thrust Bearing (a.k.a Lazy Susan bearing) (between part 6 and 7)
• 4x 8x16x5mm Axial Ball Thrust Bearing (on each side of part 4 and 5)
• 6x 5x12x4mm Bearing (2 each inside parts 4, 5 and 8) 
• 60cm 8mm threaded rod, to connect parts 4,5,6 (length depends on the size of the camera)
• 60cm 6mm threaded rod, to connect parts 1,2,3 (length depends on the size of the camera)
• 20cm 5mm threaded rod, to connects parts 4,2 and 3,5
• 12 M8 nuts
• 12 M6 nuts
• 12 M8 locking washer
• 12 M6 locking washer
• 5 M5x75mm hex bolts, to assemble the parts 7,8 and 9, and one for connecting the pan motor to 6.
• 4 M5 nuts
• 4 M5 washers
• 8 M3x15mm screws (for motor mounts)
• 1 Camera Tripod Quick Release Plate 1.5x2 Inches, such as this one
• Some M5 washers to align the worm gears
• M2 bolt to secure the tilt axis to the M5 rod connected to the tilt stepper motor.

Assembly

The assembly is straightforward. Just as when assembling a RepRap printer, the parts, and particularly the holes, might need some adjustments after printing. This video describes the process. When that is done, there are many ways to assemble the unit. Below I describe my method:

1. Start with cutting the M6 rods into two pieces. These two pieces connects the pars 1, 2 and 3 Make sure that the rods has sufficient length to ensure that your camera fits between 2 and 3, even with cables (such as power and remote control) attached. Then, assemble the cradle with M6 nuts and washers.
2. The second step is to cut the M8 rods in adequate lengths and assemble the parts 4,6 and 5 with M8 nuts and washers. 
3. The third step is to mount the pan stepper motor and the gears into 8 and mount the lid (7) to the pan unit (6) with the axial thrust bearing in between. 
4. The fourth, and final step, is to mount the tilt stepper motor with its gears into 4, and use two M5 rods and some bearings to connect the cradle (i.e., parts 1,2,3) to the left and right tilt unit (4 and 5). Part 2 must be fastened to the M5 rod connected to the tilt gearing by drilling a hole in the rod and fitting a M2 bolt through the hole in part 2.
5. Voila, the OpenPanTilt is finished!

The verdict

The units works excellent. I have also created the electronics to control the unit, consisting of a Atmel ATMega328, a couple of stepper motor controllers, power supply, and some opto couplers. A future blog post will describe the electronics and provide some timelapse videos created with the unit.

UPDATE:
OpenPanTilt is now available at thingiverse: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:655790

ReprapPro Huxley Bed Leveling

Leveling the bed of the 3D-printer is extremely important to ensure quality prints. The process can, however, be intrinsically difficult and tedious.
I have always used this guide to help me in the leveling process. As the guide is made for a Mendel, it does not quite fit my Huxley.

Here is my process for leveling the Reprappro Huxley.

The home position (X0, Y0) is at the bottom left and the bed on the Huxley is approximately 140x140mm. Hence, the positions are as follows (given by the G-codes).

P1 G1 X15   Y75   Z0
P2 G1 X140 Y75   Z0
P3 G1 X15   Y15   Z0
P4 G1 X15   Y135 Z0

The numbers are approximate positions for my Huxley. Your mileage may vary.
Notice that the Z is zero, so if your bed is totally misaligned, the extruder might crash to the bed creating a total havoc. Use Z5 or Z10 if you are unsure.

Since the materials in the bed and the extruder expand with higher temperature, the both the bed and the extruder should be heated.

1. Start by setting the bed to 60C and the extruder to 150C
2. Move hotend to position P1 (G1 X15 Y75 Z5). Use a z height of 5mm while moving the hot end across the bed, at least if you are not the brave one.
3. Home Z and adjust the Z-axis end stop until the hot end is a paper thickness above the bed.
4. Move hotend to P2 (G1 X140 Y75 Z5) and home Z
5. Adjust the screws S2 and S3 until the distance between the hot end and the bed is the thickness of a paper.
6. The bed is now initially leveled in the X direction. Now we need to check if the bed tilts in the Y direction. Move the hot end to P3 (G1 X15 Y15 Z5) and home Z.
7. Adjust the height using screw S2.
8. Move the hot end to P4 (G1 X15 Y135 Z0) and home Z.
9. Adjust the height using the screw S3.
10. Go back to step 2 and check that the P1 position is still fine.
11. To be sure, check the P2, P3 and P4 again, and check that the height at middle of the bed (G1 X77 Y75 Z0) is a thickness of a paper.
12. Make sure the screws are tightened. Be careful, as the tightening can make your bed out of level and you have to go back to step 2 again.

I2C display and rotary encoder on Melzi

Recently, I built a Reprappro Huxley 3d-printer, and I wrote a summary about the build-process in this post. One of the modifications I have done on the printer is to add a display and a rotary encoder.

My 20x4 display and rotary encoder in a Panelolu casing

The very best solution to make a display work with the printer would be of the Reprappro version of Marlin could support I2C displays directly. However, it does not, and all my attempts to add the necessary display-code to their version failed. Thanks to the guide at Think3dPrint3d I managed to make the display and the rotary encoder work by using the T3P3-version of Marlin instead of the Reprappro version.

Display

I chose a simple I2C-display from dx.com (Deal Extreme). It comes with a PCA8574-compatible I2C-port expander. Luckily, the RA_CONTROL_PANEL, which is supported by the firmware, uses the same expander. All you have to do to make the dx.com display work is to define the RA_CONTROL_PANEL in Configuration.h in Marlin as such:


#define RA_CONTROL_PANEL

#if defined(RA_CONTROL_PANEL)
 #define ULTIPANEL
 #define NEWPANEL
 #define LCD_I2C_TYPE_PCA8574
 #define LCD_I2C_ADDRESS 0x27 // I2C Address of the port expander
#endif


It is pretty straightforward to connect the Display to Melzi:

• GND connects to a free GND pin
• VCC connects to a free VCC pin
• SDA connects to SDA
• SCL connects to SCL

Rotary Encoder

The rotary encoder I use is also from Deal Extreme. In order to make it work I had to define which pins to use in Pins.h. Look for the definitions for the Melzi-board (number 63) in the file.

//The encoder and click button
     #define BTN_EN1 11 
     #define BTN_EN2 10
     #define BTN_ENC 29

In addition i had to move the connection for the heated bed Mosfet to make the encoder work.

#define HEATER_BED_PIN     30 

I think, but I am not quite sure, that the rotary encoder must use Interrupt pins 10 and 11 in order to work. I tried different configurations without moving the heated bed connection, but the above is the only configuration which made sense (and worked).

To connect the rotary encoder to Melzi:

• A connects to TX1
• B connects to RX1
• SW connects to A2
• VCC connects to VCC
• GND connects to GND

Thats it. The panelolu2-case is great by itself, but it is not superduper for the Huxley. If you find or create a display casing that fits above the Melzi board or fits the Huxley better, please spread the word below.

Entering the era of 3D printing

I started reading intensively about 3d-printing in March this year and I was surprised about how far this field had gotten since last time I checked (it was in 2007). In fact, I was very impressed about the quality of the printed parts mere hobbyists got. Hence, it did not take me long before I ordered a kit.

I decided to build a small printer as my first printer, and considered both the new Printrbot jr and the Reprappro Huxley. The Printrbot both looks better and is probably easier to build, being built from lazercut plywood rather than treaded rods. It is also cheaper. Nevertheless, I ordered a Huxley.

Reprappro Huxley (image from Reprappro)

The Huxley arrived after about a week and I have nothing but good things to say about the kit and the service minded folks at Reprappro. Every bag of parts is clearly marked, and with the assembly instructions on the wiki it is a joy to put together. Look here for a unboxing video by mr Mike H.

In short, I had no problems at all putting the printer together. The entire process was easy and straightforward and I can highly recommend the kit from Reprappro. Well, actually, there was one problem: The Y-axis belt tensioner is a poor design and it is very difficult to adjust the tension on the belt using the set-screw. Fortunately there are better designs on thingiverse and I will switch to this design whenever I have to remove the bed. In the meantime, I invented my own quick-fix by using a M6 bolt as a belt tensioner beneath the bed.

Using a M6 bolt as a belt tensioner for the Y-axis

The only major problem that occurred before my first print was to get the software working. As I am running a rather old version of Mac OS (10.5). I had problems with the latest versions of Pronterface and Slic3r. In order to make this combo work with the printer, I had to install Ubuntu Linux on my mac. Thanks to this guide, I managed to make dual-boot work after some struggle. In total, I think I ended up spending more time on the software than on actually building the printer. Building the printer was also way more fun.

They say that the first things you will print with your new 3D-printer are modifications for the printer. For me, this was proven to be true. I started straight away to modify the printer. First, I added a fan to cool small parts while printing. It seems to be a handy add-on that most Reprappers recommend. The fan is suppported in Slic3r, which produces the G-codes to start and stop the fan automatically when needed. I created a fan mount for the X-axis in OpenSCAD. It seems to work very well and small parts now prints a bit better. Although others have created better designs than my primitive fan mount solution, such as this one,  I think I will stick to my design for a while.

A bracket for mounting a fan on the X-axis

The other modification I have done is to control the hot-end-fan via firmware. The reason for this is that my extruder fan (which is connected to +19V constantly) is very noisy, and the fan is not needed unless the hot end heater block is on. The noise from the fan can be very annoying during e.g., calibration or when performing other hacks. I added some code lines to the Marlin firmware to make the fan switch on when the hot end temperature is above 50 degrees C. I found the necessary code lines for the Marlin firmware here, and pasted them into my own firmware. On the Huxley, the mosfet-output for the heated bed is not used, so I altered the firmware to use this output to control the hot-end fan. Now, the printer is very silent when it is not printing.

The hot-end fan is connected to the unused heated-bed output and is controlled by Marlin

The third modification I have done is to add a LCD and a rotary encoder. I could have just ordered the nice Panelolu 2, but I decided to go cheapskate and ordered a 16x4 I2C LCD and a rotary encoder from dx.com. The display uses the PCA8574 I2C I/O Expander. I spent some hours hacking the firmware, but I finally got it up and running. To make it work, I had to scrap the reprappro version of Marlin in favor of the t3dp3d Marlin version. I used the excellent guilde at Think3dPrint3d to make the display work. 

My four-line display attached in a bad printed Panelou 2-case.

It is very handy to be able to control the printer without a computer attached. I printed the Panelolu case from Think3dPrint3d. The print did not come out well,  but I will use it until I have designed a casing that is more suitable for the Huxley. For now it is mounted with zip-ties on one of the z-axis motors.

This is how my Reprap Huxley looks today.

Thats it for now. I am happy to be a part of the Reprap community, and I will hopefully print a lot of useful stuff in the future. Even if the parts that are printed sometimes come out as crap, it is still very intriguing to watch the printer produce 3d-objects.