Contraptor

So vitaly tried this a very long time ago. It was basically a drill that slid the parts through. His old site is a bit "unkept" but it used to be on there. www.garagefab.cc I think it was called the drill machine. I dunno. Either way the results were not that great. I would love to see something like this made. What would be really cool is if it could be done without drilled angle. Meaning off the shelve stuff like perforated steel squares or something. So you could use the default materials to make a contraptor maker.

Cool idea however. I really do like it. Vitaly and I primarily use Google Sketchup for drawing our contraptions so if you decide to take a stab at it let me know. I will think about a few designs in my free time. But I think this would be a really cool thing to see working. The equiv of the maker bot printing its own parts.

Riley

One of the things about Contraptor (in my opinion) is being able to make it without many tools. That's what permits an easy bootstrap.

I think the key is to find good ways of drilling and cutting. I tried drilling by hand with a hand drill. That sure wasn't easy. I guess if I had a vise it would have been easier. I added a small drill press and that makes it much better. But I'm still struggling with the accuracy of drilling (despite using the templates in the system). I think it's because I still haven't found a good way of clamping guides on the drill press.

For cutting, I got a cheap miter box. It sure makes it easy to cut parts accurately as compared to my jig saw and my hack saw (the hack saw was disastrous for me).

I think there should be a few ways shown of making each part based on different tools to permit lower friction to getting started. I'd publish how I'm making my parts but I'm not getting much in the way of accuracy yet.

I still think its worth making a CNC part maker but that would be more to incubate a community in a city. But drilling and cutting Contraptor might need something more sturdy than Contraptor. At least to do it with any speed. Also, it's hard to work with longer pieces so the machine would either have to be very large (or at least have a roller system to support the angle) or the pieces would have to be precut.

I think the best way to use the Contraptor system is to extend it and use it as a guideline.

There are a lot of great ideas for construction within it.

I managed to get a nice XY contraption going. Without the contraptor site, it would have taken me much longer.

Hi Markus,

If you reply to this thread: http://www.contraptor.org/forum/t-192150/suggestion:metric-version-please#post-639779, you might get in touch with Christoph who started some work on metric conversion.

Regarding using Contraptor to drill the angle - I tried that (http://www.garagefab.cc/contraptor/what-can-be-built/perforaptor) and it was a fairly slow process, although it could probably be made faster with stiffer structure (e.g. steel tubes) and more powerful motors. I think center punching using templates and then drilling on a drill press may actually be faster.

Vitaly