Monday 21 June 2010

TechZone Electronics First Play

My electronics package from TechZone finally arrived! I think it has been held up at UK customs for almost two weeks. For those of you not familiar with the TechZone Electronics Remix, they are an alternative to the Makerbot set, you can find out more here. There was some debate about the ethicacy of the electronics at first but I think that has all been resolved now. In my defence I was all set for buying the Makerbot set but they were out of stock.

Anyway, I thought I would post some pictures of the unboxing for anybody considering a purchase. My first impression is of how small they are, i knew they were smaller footprint than the Makerbot set but boy these are tiny!









Impatient to start testing the stuff out I decided to start with seeing if I could upload the firmware (the bootloader is already pre installed). This is done by connecting the motherboard to the USB TTL boad via the 6 pin ribbon cable. I can't say I managed it straight away, I had some problems getting decent connectins at the connectors. So switched to the jumper method described on the wiki page. After using jumpers it worked a treat just as per the reprap.org build instructions. The only thing I noted is that you have change the COM port in RepRap software preferences. I don't think this is mentioned in the build instructions, but is important for running the motherboard test.





4 comments:

  1. I think the COM port needing to be changed is just a matter of life. When I connect my techzone motherboard to the linux system I am using the serial port which gets allocated can change depending on how long the system has been unplugged from the computer. I have got used to having to change ports in application configurations and I suspect many others have as well so this is why it may not have got into the build instructions

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  2. how did you end up powering it? did you cut the end of the power brick that they ship with the kit? i am just starting to assemble mine. do you know if it will run a makerbot?

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. My company has a mendel with a techzone kit attached and I'm having no end of trouble actually putting it back into service. Can you provide / recommend Mainboard/Extruder Firmware and Host application that all work nicely out of the box?

    Any advice getting this working will be greatly appreciated. I've had little success getting the X/Y/Z axis to move but it's VERY unreliable.

    Thanks!!!!!!

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