Camper Part 32: Calorifier Cabinet

If you've been following this build then you may recall that I bought a Surecal calorifier from Surejust, together with a matching expansion tank and accumulator.

For more information, choose the 'Bathroom' label on the menu.

The intended location of these parts and the pump, etc is under the floor, outside the chassis, behind the side skirt. The ambulance body has outriggers which are bolted to the chassis and hold the floor. I had previously made some brackets for the calorifier and drilled holes in the outriggers for the expansion tank and accumulator (they're the same thing but run at different pressures for different purposes).

As the calorifier has an expanded foam jacket which is easily damaged (and is quite expensive), I wanted to protect it. There is also the cold in winter to be concerned about.

To this end I have created a cabinet to protect these precious items from the elements and road debris. The structure of the cabinet is an angle iron frame which is bolted (and bonded with seam sealant - like Sikaflex but not) to the outriggers, chassis rail and side skirt. The sides and rear were then covered with some aluminium checker plate scraps left over from another project.

When making the frame, the trickest part was getting all the bits to align. I made the one half, bolted that in place and then made cardboard templates and made up the other half. I then also just tacked the pieces together and kept test fitting before the final weld. This was one of the big reasons for it taking so long as I started this part in December last year and gave up during the cold winter.

When doing the aluminium side panels, what you can't see is that they come all way to the side skirts. Here I again used the cardboard template technique to make a pattern which I then cut out in aluminium and fitted. The cladding is glued in place with seam sealant and pop-riveted to the frame. The joint with the side skirts is simply glued.

The door/lid/cover is constructed in a similar manner, but from square tubing. For hinges, I had one half of a pair of 'rising' house door hinges, and made the other half out of angle iron and some old 8mm bolts. By doing it this way, the cover is removable for working/inspection, or can just be hinged down for quick access. TIP: I made the one hinge pin longer than the other so that it is easy to align if you are doing this by yourself. The door is held closed by 2 M6 bolts (I drilled and tapped M6 threads into the frame), I figured this should be pretty safe as I don't want it coming open while driving.

I intend to still line the whole cabinet with Kingspan (or similar). The pipes themselves will get foam covering. I am also considering some form of electric heating elements as has been discussed in the forum. I'm not rushing this part of things as I don't currently intend to venture to really cold climes in the depths of winter, but I would like to find a suitable product at my kind of price (i.e. cheap or free), now where did I put those heated seat elements I removed from the Galaxy seats when making the Frankenseats......

The series of pictures below show the frame in various stages of the construction (I had to make it in two parts and bolt it together to get it under the skirt). These are then followed by pictures of the water system parts and plumbing in place, and finally a couple of pictures of the closed cabinet.

Bare frame before fitting:


Calorifier, expansion tank and accumulator in place:


Aluminium cladding:


The final product:

Camper Part 31: Frankenseats 2

In part 1 of Frankenseats I reported on the successful completion of the the Volvo-Ford-Mercedes swivel bases.

Well, today I managed to assemble the seats back onto the bases and fitted them to the vehicle, having made wiring looms yesterday.

The pictures below show the seats in various orientations. As mentioned before, this version has the electrics working, but the swivel isn't quite sorted as the handle for the safety lock release needs to be made. Don't worry, the safety lock does engage, it's the disengaging that takes some effort (but I can do it, so swivel does work).

I haven't driven with these seats yet, but I fully expect them to be much more comfortable as I had one of the Volvo 960's for a while. The other bonus is that I didn't have to modify the handbrake mechanism as so many people seem to have to with the commercial swivels.

Tech Zone Techniques - Part 4

Step 10: Wiring the steppers

Not much to go wrong here really, as I had wired the stepper sup to my CNC stepper boards before, I kind of knew what I was doing. I also made up a power lead which I have wired up to my variable bench supply for now. (This will be replaced with a PC based ATX supply for the final version).

Step 11: Testing Times

Next up was testing the electronics. I tracked down the Testing RepRap Electronics page on the wiki and started following that through.

I ran into some trouble with the motherboard not returning any temperature results and not looping, so I asked on the forum. In summary, note the following when using the hardware:

• If you don't get the temperature readings looping, then your USB cable may not be autoresetting the hardware
• Plug in the the USB
• Hit the rest button
• Start up the host software

So, I managed to get the desired results for the motherboard and the extruder controller (sans stepper driving), so I decided to move onto to testing the stepper boards and opto's.

For the steppers I followed these steps (for each axis - results further down) (BTW: follow these steps at your own risk, the wiki steps are more detailed and isolate issues, I already knew my steppers work):

1. Wired the stepper to the controller
2. Ensured the stepper was in the middle of the axis (as I wouldn't know which way it would travel)
3. Wired the power to the stepper board
4. Wired the stepper board to the motherboard
5. Connected the USB
6. Reset the motherboard
7. Opened the RepRap Host
8. Changed to the XYZ tab, and set nudge to 10mm and feedrate to 300mm/min
9. Switched on the power
10. Clicked the right arrow (>)
11. Clicked the left arrow (<)
12. Moved on to testing the Opto's

Y-Axis results

• I did the Y-Axis first as it made sense in my wiring config
• > caused a small movement (and was repeatable)
• <>
• Off to the forum to figure out what's wrong (read about this before somewhere)
• Ah... Seems I got the Opto connected the wrong way around. The picture wasn't very clear (that's my story and I'm sticking with it).
• While fiddling with this I noticed that the opto LED (which on the TechZone boards is normally on) was not switching off when blocked.
• I swapped out the other opto's and found that 2 of my three boards had the same problem.
• I've been trying to stay out of the TechZone flaming that's been happening on the forum (I won't post any links, searching for TechZone will find many), but I do think the quality of the soldering leaves something to be desired. I spent a lot of my spare cash with them (it's the single biggest purchase in my project) and wasn't too impressed. I reckon could do it neater and I only tend to solder copper pipes for plumbing and automotive wiring.
• Anyway, off to figure out how to fix my opto's (given I know next to nothing about electronics, this will be interesting).

Following on from the Y-axis, I had mixed results with the others. I eventually figured out that I had to tweak the pot on the stepper boards to get the steppers running properly. I turned them anti-clockwise a bit at a time until they didn't work and then back a bit till they did again.

I then found that my Z-axis motor would run great when the belt was freed off, but wouldn't run the axis. I have just located a more powerful motor on my scrapheap as my Z-axis doesn't even have the extruder mounted yet. (May have the go the bowden route).

Current state of play is X & Y axes work. Z-axis being fiddled with....

Tech Zone Techniques - Part 3

Following on from Part 2, I'm still trying to get my electronics moving in the right direction.

Step 9: Loading the firmware (still....)

During the last post I was trying to load the firmware and got an error not in sync...

I searched the forum and found this post. Reading through it I saw the following line "Wrong serial port in use for USB connection", and thought "I didn't set the serial port, so how will it know?", obviously it didn't. The Arduino IDE was set to COM1, not COM5 as it needs to be on my system.

I changed that and hit the upload button. Done in seconds. Boy was that dumb... 3 days of wondering what I did wrong (ok, I didn't come back and work on it for the 3 days as I was doing other stuff, but it still bugged me).

Ok, onwards and upwards, lets program that extruder, here are the steps followed:

1. I had already copied the configuration.h.dist to configuration.h in the Extruder folder
2. Moved the USB board to the extruder controller, remembered to invert it (ground is on the opposite side.
3. Loaded the Extruder/Extruder.pde sketchbook.
4. Modified the configuration.h tab to match my setup (left it all standard as I didn't see anything relevant to change) and saved.
5. Checked the temperature.h tab as I am running a thermistor. I wasn't sure is the default table is correct or not, so I left it be for now.
6. Selected the Tools->Board->Arduino Diecimila, Duemilanove or Nano w/ ATmega 168 board and then Sketch->Verify/Compile
7. My board was still connected to the PC from 2 above
8. Selected Upload to I/O Board and it worked!!!
9. Disconnected the USB and moved it back the main board

At this point I'd had enough for the day and decided to call it quits. Part 4 will start with wiring up the steppers, connecting some power and some ground lines as mentioned above.

Camper Part 30: Frankenseats 1

And you all thought I'd forgotten about the camper.

It's been a bit of a juggling act with all my projects, but I tend to switch when I get stuck for one reason or another.

For the camper I figured I needed some swivelling seat bases. Having also once been the proud owner of a Volvo 960 with electric memory seats, I knew that these would be much nicer than that standard Sprinter seats. Especially in leather with a heater element.

Well, I managed to get some of the appropriate leather seats from Pete & Roger, and keeping an eye out on Ebay I managed to land a set of Ford Galaxy (same as the Seat Alhambra and VW Sharan) swivelling front seats at a decent price.

Then the surgery began. I stripped down the Galaxy seats to get at the swivel. Lots of measuring later I had figured out how to mate these to the Volvo seats and Sprinter bases. It's really handy that the sliding base unbolts from the Volvo seats allow easy working in the workshop (I only figured this out part way through the build though - which has been ongoing since December).

I ran into some trouble with one of the bases so had to aquire another seat from Roger. Luckily this was another driver seats which allowed me to fit both seats with the memory module and motors (the passenger seat is electric, but no memory).

Last night I eventually managed to finally assemble the frankenseat bases. The pictures below show a partially dismantled base while I was replacing the motors, followed by the two assembled bases.

The next instalment will see these fitted to the camper. Version 1 will have electrical control but no swivel as I still have to make a handle for releasing the safety catch. I do however need to use the vehicle so need to get the seats in.

Tech Zone Techniques - Part 2

Following on from Part 1, I'm continuing to try to get my electronics moving in the right direction.

Step 5: Upload Firmware (or more accurately, installing the Arduino/Sanguino software on my PC)

According to the HowTo page, the boards come with the Makerbot firmware installed. This means that a boot-loader doesn't have to be installed, but the firmware must be updated. This is a new area for me. I am a software developer by trade, but for Windows, not embedded so haven't had to do this before.

I found the Microcontroller firmware installation page on the wiki, so started by following those steps and installed:

1. the Arduino software (release 0018);
   • Download the zip;
   • Extract and move to your desired location;
   • Create shortcut (if you want) - I'm waiting till I figure out how to run it.
2. followed by Zach's Sanguino extensions.
   • Download the zip;
   • Extract and move the Sanguino folder into the Arduino/hardware folder.

Before actually programming the boards, you also need to download the latest stable release of the firmware. This is located in the reprap-mendel-yyyymmdd.zip that is installed when installing the Reprap Host software. Guess that means a quick side track. Don't go away.

Step 6: Install Reprap Host Software

Following the instructions on the 'installing the Reprap Host software' wiki page, I did the following (bear in mind that I am starting with a relatively fresh XP installation on the machine I am using for this):

1. Installed Java 6 from http://java.com/
2. Installed the RepRap Host software from sourceforge (reprap-mendel-20100702.zip)
   • Quite easy really, unpack the zip to a suitable location and run the reprap.bat to run the software.
   • As I decided not to install in Program Files, I had to edit the batch file. The instructions don't mention this, even though they word it as if installing in Program Files is optional. (I might go edit the wiki if I can figure out how).
3. Check out which other Useful Software Packages you need.
   • I installed netfabb Studio Basic;
   • I already had Sketchup;
   • and OpenSCAD.

Note, there are alternate host applications, two keys ones appear to be the Skeinforge/ReplicatorG duo and RepSnapper. I will be trying these in the future to see which suits me best.

Ok, that means I now have the firmware needed to continue with setting up the electronics.

Step 7: Wiring wonders & woes

This forum post by rhmorrison refers to faulty soldering almost blowing his electronics, but more importantly, he describes that moving the stepper motors before powering the electronics will like up the corresponding LED (kind of like the electric motor light bulb generator we all made as kids).

Because of this I decided to do the inter board wiring before hooking up any power to the boards. There seems to be no one clear description and image of this all working. I referenced the following:

1. Nudel's ground pin image. (Shows the stepper to main board connections).
2. The Tech Zone Official Electronics Installation Page. (Shows the extruder controller to main board connections)
3. The Tech Zone HowTo page.

For what it's worth my LED's all lit up when tested by moving the stepper back and forth.

For what's it worth, I will be changing the I2C wiring (one of the 2 wire connectors between the main board and extruder controller) to include a ground wire following Mdbaughman2's experiences.

Step 8: Getting connected

The Ho

wTo page says if you have 2 pins next to the serial connector you can put a jumper on them for the board to be powered from the USB connection. (In the recent versions of Techzone remix electronics sets sold from Ebay - May 2010).

On my board, there is what would appear to be two pins that have been permanently shorted/bridged, there are also no connectors for external power, so I figured the board is permanently configured to be USB powered (don't know what this means for using the SD card slot then). Anyway, I figured the best was to give it a go.

Having kept the Arduino Getting Started w/ Arduino on Windows page open since installing the software, I followed the steps on there. Basically the following:

1. Plug in the USB connector to your PC;
2. When prompted for drivers point to your Arduino/drivers folder (or check the FTDI site for newer ones);
3. Open the Arduino application, and revert to the Microcontroller firmware installation instructions (see next step).

Step 9: Loading the firmware (eventually)

I could eventually continue following the steps under the Programming the Motherboard heading on the Microcontroller firmware installation page.

I followed these steps (any folder locations refer to sub-folders off Reprap\mendel\firmware\FiveD_GCode):

1. Copied configuration.h.dist to configuration.h in the FiveD_GCode_Interpreter and Extruder folders
2. Load the FiveD_GCode_Interpreter/FiveD_GCode_Interpreter.pde sketchbook
3. Modified the configuration.h tab to match my setup (guessed most of it as I don't know what applies yet - it seems to be pretty much setup for the v3 electronics which the TechZone stuff is - For the hardware, I left it as standard for now, but will need to change when I figure out the steps, etc on the ScrapStrap) and saved.
4. Selected the Tools->Board->Sanguino board and then Sketch->Verify/Compile
5. My board was still connected to the PC from Step 8. (if your's isn't, reconnect now).
6. Selected Upload to I/O Board and ... It fails!!

Binary sketch size: 22514 bytes (of a 63488 byte maximum)
avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_disable(): protocol error, expect=0x14, resp=0x51

More in Part 3...

Plastic Phantastic

Just a quick note tonight. While trying to figure my way through the electronics I figured I needed to also get a move on with the extruder parts.

I decided to give in and do the sensible thing, so instead of trying to make an extruder manually I bought a set of RP parts for a Wade's extruder from NopHead of Hydraraptor fame. This is fitting as the heater portion will be based on his Plumbstruder design.

The parts arrived today and are fantastic. These are the first printed parts that i have seen and touched physically, and they definitely inspire me to continue on this quest. Having said that, progress is likely to slow over the next few weeks due to work commitments and holidays.

Here are some pictures of the bits and progress so far (more detailed descriptions will be included in a future post on the plumbstruder - you'll also see that I now have the proper stand-off's for my electronics):