Hello from Florida

Hello everyone. Just ordered the SD3 last week. I am a controls engineer with a hobby of creating/improving things. My previous work has been open-source microcontroller projects. I plan to use the 3D printer to further some of that.

I plan to log my experiences with the SD3 from unboxing to software to hacking. There is some good information out there, but not alot of structure and it gets confusing as to which things should be done at what time, so maybe a log of my experiences could give some insight for others.

I currently have made a program that takes 7 hobby servo motors and controls them more in lines with industrial robot programming software (jogs each axis, teachs and organizes coordinate points, replays sequences of points, etc). I am making the plastic pieces in Sketchup to make a 6 DOF arm and then continue the project by adding kinematics.

I also have some ideas about making another printer from scratch utilizing some design aspects I have learned in automation. Maybe even give a crack at the first PIC USB based 3D printer board. That depends on how much time I have to reverse engineer the open-source firmware of the arduino, that is.

I hope to add some useful feedback of my experience to the community though.