wraggster
March 11th, 2012, 21:04
http://hackadaycom.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/print.jpg?w=450&h=217
[skullkey] over at the House4Hack hackerspace in Pretoria, South Africa wanted a way to get kids excited about technology and desktop fabrication labs. Wanting to give kids a visceral feel for the march of technology, he created Makerdroid (http://www.house4hack.co.za/makerdroid), an android app that allows for the creation 3D objects on an Android tablet and preparing them to be printed on a Reprap or Makerbot.
What’s really interesting about this build is not only the fact that [skullkey] and his lovely beta testers are generating .STL files on an Android device, the object files are also being converted to GCode on the Android, without the need for a conventional computer. Makerdroid uses the very popular Skeinforge (http://fabmetheus.crsndoo.com/) to generate the instructions for the printer (although a lot of people are switching over to Slic3r (http://slic3r.org/)).
Makerdroid doesn’t need a PC to print objects out on a 3D printer, but we think the process of shuffling GCode files from a tablet to the printer with an SD card is a little archaic. It might be possible to print directly from an Android tablet over Bluetooth with the Android Bluetooth Reprap app (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:13506) that is currently in development. Still, we love the idea of printing objects we just created on a touch screen, as shown in the Makerdroid demo video after the break.
http://hackaday.com/2012/03/10/3d-printing-from-an-android-device/
[skullkey] over at the House4Hack hackerspace in Pretoria, South Africa wanted a way to get kids excited about technology and desktop fabrication labs. Wanting to give kids a visceral feel for the march of technology, he created Makerdroid (http://www.house4hack.co.za/makerdroid), an android app that allows for the creation 3D objects on an Android tablet and preparing them to be printed on a Reprap or Makerbot.
What’s really interesting about this build is not only the fact that [skullkey] and his lovely beta testers are generating .STL files on an Android device, the object files are also being converted to GCode on the Android, without the need for a conventional computer. Makerdroid uses the very popular Skeinforge (http://fabmetheus.crsndoo.com/) to generate the instructions for the printer (although a lot of people are switching over to Slic3r (http://slic3r.org/)).
Makerdroid doesn’t need a PC to print objects out on a 3D printer, but we think the process of shuffling GCode files from a tablet to the printer with an SD card is a little archaic. It might be possible to print directly from an Android tablet over Bluetooth with the Android Bluetooth Reprap app (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:13506) that is currently in development. Still, we love the idea of printing objects we just created on a touch screen, as shown in the Makerdroid demo video after the break.
http://hackaday.com/2012/03/10/3d-printing-from-an-android-device/