新车间 [XinCheJian]

The good news is that I managed with Ricky to upload the firmware install the drivers in my laptop under windows 7 64 and make the whole thing move in every axes and the extruder to work and heat up. The bad news are that the Z axes get stuck for some strange reason I couldn’t figure out (probably is not well adjusted or the screw bars don’t turn at the same speed). The worst part of the story is that I broke one of the printed parts trying to tighten the bearings. Also I couldn’t manage to load any material into the extruder. The extruder works and gets heated but I didn’t assemble this part so I’m not sure how it works. It looks like there is not enough room for the plastic to go through the heated head so the wheels keep on turning but the plastic strand never goes through. To which Michael replied:  

Thanks for getting the motors and extruder running everyone. No worries about broken parts, we’ll fix them. As for the z axis, I noticed the right screw isn’t exactly vertical and the bearing canted to the side so it’s likely the gantry will stick either in the upper or lower positions.  Some adjustments and it should work okay. And forgot to mention how to load the plastic. Maybe the springs I installed on the extruder were too heavy…that’s why I bought some lighter springs…left those in the clear plastic trays. Have to push back the idler block (thing the 4 springs are attached to) then can feed the plastic filament in. I’ll be back Friday night but if anyone wants we can do a skype call Wed night and work out some of the details.

Social entrepreneurs and Hackers” (register if interested) on Wednesday at XinCheJian. He shares the following Q&A about MakeSense and what they want to accomplish with XinCheJian’s hackers.

What is MakeSense? http://we.makesense.org We connect Social entrepreneurs with supercool individuals online through social networks and a webapp that will go live soon (http://www.makesense.org) and offline through specifically designed workshops that we call hold-ups. What are social entrepreneurs? Wikipedia says : “A social entrepreneur recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create and manage a venture to achieve social change (a social venture). While a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur focuses on creating social capital.” More info at http://www.ashoka.org/social_entrepreneur How can hackers help with? That’s what MakeSense wants to determine by preparing a 1-day event facilitating the interactions between hackers and social entrepreneurs. The objective is to kickstart a sustainable loop of interactions bringing practical entrepreneurial realizations. What questions are we trying to answer at the brainstorm? After presenting you quickly the format of the event that we thought of at MakeSense, we hope to have your feedback (you hackers!) and refine the content of the event, for you hackers! Who will be interested by this? According to our statistics, anyone who likes XinCheJian..;-) What will be the follow up to this? Following this little presentation and the output of your brainstorming: we, at MakeSense commit ourselves to organize a 1-day event for you within 50 days. What benefits do people get doing this? Hacking business, New interactions for new Impact: Hackers + Social Entrepreneurs, Do it with joy

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Hope to keep it at this temperature.

Time：December 4th at 1PM

Fees：RMB160 (including materials)

If you’ve never heard of the most useless machine before, it proves the the uselessness of this machine again. To keep it as useless as possible, by all means DO NOT google the term or follow the link below.

http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/YkuiawKN3JA/

If you want to make it even more useless, nothing beats wasting your own time to learn to make one for yourself (or make several of them). So come and join us @ XinCheJian to make some useless machines! All parts and tools needed are provided with customizations welcome.

Sign up for the event here: http://xinchejian.com/event/?ee=79

今天的机器人比赛也许是今年最后一次的常规比赛，因为即将到来的节日等，新赛季的召开将在明年1月才会开始吧。 本次比赛，DFRobot派出了Ricky带着他的HCR机器人以及Rockets的坦克机器人，Paul的丛林王及子游的鳄鱼机器人参加了比赛。 子游的鳄鱼机器人（利用lego机器人搭建）勇猛无比，延续了手动组利用facetime进行视频传输的操作模式，但遗憾的是，操控性上有点问题，这次未能取得好成绩。 Paul的丛林王(由玩具车改造）依然延续着快速敏捷的特点，在稳定性上也有所提升，但是运气稍差，我相信，如果不是运气问题，Paul也许会获得成功。 Rockets的坦克机器人（PR5地盘+ardunio）已经好久没有出战，这次的比赛显然状态并不是很好，程序有点问题，稍后我将放出比赛的程序及我的策略给大家批评指正。很高兴，比赛中我的机器人在“大家”的帮助下，终于完成了两圈的比赛。 HCR机器人是本次比赛当之无愧的冠军，不管是从体型还是速度，还是策略都是这次比赛中最厉害的。从遥控操作的体验来看，亮度较高的情况下，视频基本上无法看清，和facetime比较效果较差，但不妨碍顺利操作。总之顺利获得了本次比赛的第一名。Ricky在几年未参赛的情况下，亲自操作HCR，玩的很high。恭喜Ricky获得本次的冠军。]]>

Hackerspaces in China.]]>

Even with a mad scramble to find all the missing parts from the Botmill kit, Mike reports some encouraging news:

I finished the wiring, opto flags, feet, extruder, and wired up the power. Basically all that’s left is to square the axis, locktite the frame bolts, then plug it into the computer. Actually, just plug it in the computer and see if you can get the motors going and try extruding some plastic. We can calibrate and fine tune it after all the bugs have been worked out.

http://xinchejian.com/event/?ee=73 Roboracing – Sunday 1pm – 4pm – free If you’re going to race send an email to [email protected], if you’re planning on watching please let us know by signing up here: http://xinchejian.com/event/?ee=71 race starts at 2pm loose with setup/testing from 1pm Can the champion hold onto his *wictory* cup? Come and join us, we’ve still got Kits available for those who want to learn to solder or produce something worthwhile in an hour. fun to do and fun to play with, get the brain machine to truly relax.]]>