RPP details

This is the home for my multi-material/multi-colour tool chain for reprap.

The initial aim of the tool chain is to allow existing reprap printers to print using multiple material and/or colours and when the hardware is available to support repraps that have multiple extruders.

The initial tool chain will include:

• Tool to convert multiple STL files (each representing a different material or colour) into a single AMF file.
• Modified reprap host which can load a multi-material/multi-colour AMF file.
• Modfied reprap host which can display/slice an AMF file.
• Modified reprap host which is able to generate gcode that includes the required tool change commands.
• Modified firmware (sprinter?) that support the required tool change commands. In order to support existing hardware this will be done by:

1. pausing the print
2. backing out the extruder material
3. loading new material into the extruder
4. pausing until operator confirms new material loaded
5. dumping material to a dump point to clear previous material from nozzel. ** resuming the print.

The STL converter will be the first tool delivered. This is a java port of Alex W's STL encoder/decoder.

Update Log

Learn more about repraps multi-material tool chain

The original reason for the port is to add this library to the reprap host in order to read stl files, as the standard java3d stl importer has some bugs.

The code is now being morphed to support a multi-material tool chain for reprap 3d printers. In order for reprap printers to support printing multiple materials on a single print run we need the ability to support multi-material object files such as AMF. Currently there are no CAD tools that support AMF. As such the first object of this convertor is to allow multiple STL files to be combined into a single AMF file. As each STL file is merged into the AMF file a geometric transformation and a material id will be added. In this way and an AMF file can be created without the need for direct CAD support.

As well as porting the code to java I've made a couple of improvements:

1. Code no longer reads the entire STL file into memory but rather use random access to access the file as needed. This should allow much larger STL files to be read.
2. I've restructured the code so it can be used as a library as well as a standalone application. The main changes involved removing all of the code that writes to stdout. The code now throws exceptions instead.
3. support for AMF importing has been added.

TODO: Write an AMF encoder so we can output AMF files. Allow multiple STL files to be combined into a single AMF file with a transformation and material id being added as part of the merge.