MakerBot Industries

Martijn Elserman and Widget independently came across a very, very, very nasty bug in ReplicatorG that can lead to data loss.  I’ve put up a new release of ReplicatorG that corrects the problem.  You can find releases for all platforms here:
http://replicat.org/download

Please update asap, and as usual open an issue on github or leave a comment if you encounter any problems.

ReplicatorG 0010 is now available.  It’s a fairly small update this time.  The most useful feature introduced in this release is illustrated by the icon shown above: build to file!  In earlier versions, if you needed to upload a large build to an SD card, it could take up to half an hour to move the data over the serial connection.  Now, if you have an SD card adapter for your computer, you can put a build on an SD card in seconds.  Just mount your SD card on your host computer, click the “build to file” button, and save the .s3g file in the top-level directory of your FAT-formatted SD card.  Then just pop the card back into your makerbot and click the “build from SD card” button, and away you go!

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It’s release time again– ReplicatorG 0009 and the new v1.6 firmware are now available!  As before, the new firmware is bundled with the ReplicatorG uploader.

• ReplicatorG 0009 for Windows
• ReplicatorG 0009 for Mac OS X
• ReplicatorG 0009 for Linux
• Gen3 Firmware v1.6 sources (for the firmware hackers among you)

The currently recommended version of skeinforge is the 0005 release:

• Skeinforge 0005 for all platforms

Changelogs are after the cut.  As usual, let me know about any problems you encounter.

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One of the problems we’ve had for a while with the Gen3 extruder firmware is the naive temperature control algorithm.  Since the firmware had been simply turning the heater on or off depending on whatever temperature it was seeing at the thermistor at the moment, we’d often end up with wild temperature swings, with the temperature at the nozzle overshooting by as much as 20° C.  Implementing proper PID control has always been pretty high on the list of things to do.

Yesterday, Tim at BotHacker coded up a patch which implements PID on the heater.  The result is much, much better temperature control, yielding a smoother extrusion and less finicky extruder.  The patch has been applied to the svn repository, so you’ll see the results in the v1.6 firmware*, coming later this week.

One of the great things about an open source project like this is that lots of features that might otherwise take a long time for a traditional project to implement are often contributed by users, or already implemented in other open source projects. For example, we recently rolled in upstream changes in Roland Riegel’s great SD/MMC card library that provided us with improved support for FAT32 and SDHC cards.

To help facilitate this sort of collaboration, I’ve created a Google group for discussing firmware development.  If you’re interested in contributing to development or just want to keep an ear to the ground, subscribe to the list and drop us a line!

*What happened to v1.5, you ask? It was packaged up last week, but we were close enough to v1.6 that I didn’t end up announcing it.

ReplicatorG 0008 and the generation 3 firmware v1.4 are now available!  If you’ve been using an old version, now is the time to upgrade.  The highlights of this release are:

• Named SD card builds.   You can now create a library of build files on a single SD card and build them as needed.  No more overwriting your teapots with dodecahedrons!
• ReplicatorG now ships with precompiled firmware images and an integrated firmware uploader.  You no longer need to jump through all the hoops of installing the firmware libraries, the Sanguino patches, or even Arduino at all– just click on “Upload new firmware” in the Machine menu and you can update the firmware on your motherboard or extruder controller!
• The firmware now includes a remote reset command, as well as several small bugfixes that may address some of the in-build hangs some users have been experiencing.

More details, and download links, below.

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ReplicatorG 0007 and the v1.3 firmware are now available for Mac, Windows, and Linux!  As usual, you can download the latest version from our Google Code site:

• ReplicatorG 0007 for Linux
• ReplicatorG 0007 for Mac OS X
• ReplicatorG 0007 for Windows

To make the most of 0007, you’ll want to install the new firmware, as well.  Please note that we’re now hosting the firmware at the Makerbot Google Code site, instead of the RepRap site:

• Generation 3 Electronics Firmware v1.3

Details, and a changelog, are below.

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ReplicatorG 0006 is now available for your replicating pleasure!  (UPDATE: The Mac OS X release is now available too!)  This release should make life a little easier for those of you who have been having serial port configuration issues.  Other fun enhancements include:

• Per-axis motor inversion (requires v1.2 firmware)
• More reliable build aborts
• An optional in-build temperature readout (disabled by default, but can be turned on in the preferences)

Download it here! A more detailed changelog follows after the cut.

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Hey, intrepid Makerbotters!  The v1.2 release of the generation 3 firmware is now available on SourceForge. This release features bugfixes and enhancements to the firmware on the both the motherboard and the extruder.  You can download it here.  Be sure to check the Readme.txt for installation hints!  The changelog is after the cut.

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We’re very excited to announce that our Extruder Controller v2.2 and RepRap Motherboard v1.2 kits are now also available as pre-assembled boards!  You can order them today from the MakerBot Store.  These boards are pre-programmed with the Arduino/Sanguino bootloader, so you don’t need an AVR programmer to use them– you can upload code with the Arduino software over a standard USB-TTY serial cable.

Unfortunately, we don’t offer pre-assembled stepper drivers just yet. We hope to make them available sometime in late August.

Thanks for bearing with us– I know that these have been eagerly anticipated.  Happy hacking!

(Also, please don’t actually throw out your soldering irons!  Soldering irons are handy and awesome, especially nice old Hakkos like this one.  If you really want to get rid of your soldering iron, donate it to your local hackerspace instead!)

After a long wait, ReplicatorG 0005 is finally available for your printing and simulating enjoyment.  Most of the changes have been stability fixes and tinkering under the hood, but there’s also a bunch of changes that should make your life a bit easier (especially if you were using 0004):

• ReplicatorG is now much smarter about serial ports.  When you select a machine type that uses a serial port, it will automatically scan all available serial ports to try to detect a working machine.
• You can now explicitly tell ReplicatorG which serial port to use.  There’s a “Serial Port” submenu in the  “Machine” menu that allows you to select any available port.  If you forgot to plug in your serial cable when you started ReplicatorG, you can just select “rescan serial ports” after you plug it in and the port should appear in the list.
• You can now run multiple instances of ReplicatorG on the same machine and have them connect to different serial ports.  This means you can now run several 3D printers simultaneously from the same computer!  (Pretty handy if you have to, say, print out three dozen pulleys in a hurry.)
• There’s been a little bit of consolidation of the status displays; we’re down to just two separate status bars on the main window now. 
• The “stop” and “pause/unpause” functionality is now more reliable.  However, a word of caution: a stop or pause is not guaranteed to halt the extruder as well; a fix for this will be in the next firmware update.
• There should be far fewer situations where the program blocks; for example, you should be able to exit normally after hitting the reset button on the machine.

You can download ReplicatorG 0005 from googlecode.

Be sure to leave a comment and let me know how 0005 works out for you, and let me know about any changes you’d like to see in 0006.