Categories
Fab Academy Providence -Year II - Teaching tutorials / notes

How to Manually Reset the Start Point on the Epilog Mini Laser Cutter

Problems:

  1. The laser cutter is not beginning to cut where you want it to. (It is beginning too far up or down on the material to be cut or is cutting too far left or right)
  2. The laser is cutting off the bed area (far left or far right).

Solution – Manually Reset the X/Y start point

When the laser is not running:

  1. Make sure the laser “pointer” is on.
  2. Press the X/Y off button on the laser control panel.
  3. Press the “Go” button
  4. Manually (with your hands) move the laser head (use the pointer to gauge the actual start point).
  5. Press the “set home” button
  6. Press the “job” button
  7. Send your file to the laser
  8. Press “go” to print the file.
Categories
Fab Academy AS220 - Providence, RI Fab Academy Providence -Year II - Teaching Laser Cutting

Laser-Cut Acrylic Press-Fit Construction Kit

I am working through all of the Fab Academy / How to Make Almost Anything projects a second time (as a TA) with the students of the 2011 Fab Academy. My project from last year for the computer-controlled cutting unit was a tension-fit construction kit made from a deck of cards. This year I did some text cuts in masionite (hardboard) and then used some brightly colored acrylic that I found in the scrap bin at AS220 Labs. The resulting construction kit used pink, white, opaque black, translucent black, and blue acrylic. I created the following piece styles:

  • rectangular star piece (cut in black)
  • rectangular diamond piece (cut in white)
  • round piece (cut in all colors)
  • bottom connector piece (used to connect any two pieces together or to help the construction stand up)
  • standard connector piece

""

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Masionite Test Cuts


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Categories
Fab Academy AS220 - Providence, RI Fab Academy Providence -Year II - Teaching tutorials / notes

Mercurial Troubleshooting

Mercurial Logo

Last year at Fab Academy we used Bazaar for distributed version control.  This year we are using Mercurial.

Mercurial Troubleshooting / Notes From 02.02.2011 Session With Neil Gershenfeld:

TAKE NOTE: If you try to push and Mercurial mentions:

  • multiple branches
  • multiple heads
  • outstanding uncommitted changes
  • archive has diverged
  • or any other similar message
  • and then asks if you want to push anyway..

DON’T DO IT! This creates multiple heads.

After you give Mercurial a command, look at the output, read all the messages and respond to them.

These notes should help with some common problems we have all been having.

General Command Meanings:
pull pulls down current state of the archive (brings changes)
merge remote hg directory has new changes, if your local copy is an older version, merge reconciles them.
commit stores a “snapshot” of your copy of the archive
push sends changes back to central server we are all using (MIT copy)
update takes the changes and puts them in the working copy of the directory

Updated Steps:

– if you added new work to your directory:

hg add
hg commit -m "your commit message here"
hg pull

– if you get new stuff (files added) when / after pulling
– you need to merge:

hg merge
hg push

If You Delete a Local File / Directory in Your “firstname_lastname” folder:

  • You will need to tell Mercurial to “record a delete for missing files”
  • You will run into problems if you don’t do this!

– Depicted Here:

hg add
hg rm -A

– You will get a very long listing both of removed files and files that Mercurial says “still exist and will not be removed”.

Example:

[many files listed above as “not removing”…………]
not removing
Web/videos/video/module_02.html: file still exists (use -f to force removal)
removing
Web/labs/providence/anna_kaziunas_france/resources/html_workshop/HTML_Basics_2.0.odp

  • >>> do not force remove anything
  • This is what should happen.
  • Mercural is updating.
hg commit -m "your commit message here"
hg pull

Errors and Issues:

If the Archive Has Diverged:

You try to push and get any of the following:

  • “archive has diverged” message
  • “abort: push creates new remote heads on branch ‘default’!”
  • “abort: crosses branches”
  • or something similar to the above messages

– You need to Pull and Merge. DO NOT FORCE PUSH.

– First, pull to make sure you have an up to date copy of the archive.

hg pull

– if you try to push and get: “abort: outstanding uncommitted changes (use ‘hg status’ to list changes)”

hg commit -m "your commit message here"

– You should check status:

hg status

– if you have a “!” in front front of a file or directory name in the status listing, it means you deleted a file that Mercurial is tracking.

– Mercurial gets confused.

Example:

$hg status
!
Web/labs/providence/AnnaKaziunasFrance/resources/html_workshop/HTML_Basics_2.0.odp
!
Web/labs/providence/AnnaKaziunasFrance/resources/html_workshop/HTML_Basics_2.0.pdf

– To fix this –> do the following:

hg add

– tell Mercurial to record a delete for missing files

hg rm -A
hg commit -m "your commit message here"
hg pull

– if you get a message about “multiple heads” –> see next topic below.

If Mercurial Mentions “Multiple Heads”:

Example:

$ hg pull
pulling from ssh://hg@fab.cba.mit.edu/academy
searching for changes
adding changesets
adding manifests
adding file changes
added 50 changesets with 162 changes to 113 files (+1 heads)
abort: crosses branches (merge branches or use –check to force update)
warning: changegroup hook exited with status 255
(run ‘hg heads’ to see heads, ‘hg merge’ to merge)

– to remove heads, list heads:

hg heads

– Mercurial will list heads .

Example:

$ hg heads
changeset: 480:00cdd8eef593
tag: tip
parent: 479:f09cf2bc12ba
parent: 476:e519545ebdd5
user: Kinga Kubowicz <email@gmail.com>
date: Thu Feb 03 13:40:38 2011 +0100

summary: merge
changeset: 430:da050aca6ab4
user: Anna Kaziunas France <email@kaziunas.com>
date: Thu Feb 03 08:23:21 2011 -0500
summary: created external css for resources page

  • To merge with one of these heads (you can have many heads) –> type the number after “changeset:”
  • I have shown the number in bold so you can see them more easily.
  • For example, to merge with head –>changeset: 480:00cdd8eef593

– type:

hg merge 480

– If there are multiple heads (more than one listed as the output of hg heads) you wil need to repeat the merge for each head until there is only one left
– Then commit your changes:

hg commit -m "commit message"
hg push

– don”t push if it says you shouldn’t – “archive has diverged” – then pull instead.

hg pull
hg update
hg heads

– if you can’t get all the heads resolved or the error messages – re-clone the archive.

To Re-Clone The Archive:

– if you have new work in your firstname_lastname directory, make a copy and save in a directory outside of the “academy” directory
– delete the “academy” directory
– re-initialize the hg repository:

hg init

The rest of the instructions are here: http://academy.cba.mit.edu/tutorials/mercurial/ follow steps 5 to the end of the tutorial.

If You Get a “waiting for log on working directory” Message:

– use CONTROL + C to interrupt

.DS_Store Error – MAC only

– If you try to merge and get the following:

$ hg merge

local changed Web/labs/.DS_Store which remote deleted
(d)elete? ged version or

–> hit the <ENTER> key.
– Then commit the changes

hg commit -m "removed .DSstore file"
Categories
Arduino / Processing Flexible Circuits Sewing / Fashion / Costume

Soft Circuit Experiment – LED Matrix Capelet: Part I

LED Capelet Sketch

I recently began a soft circuit experiment in the form of a capelet that is adorned with an LED matrix using Lilypad LEDs.  The process documented here shows the process of cutting of the material and lining, pressing out the seams, and marking the LED positions, and beginning to sew on the first matrix (of 4 – 3 x 7 matrices) to test it.  I will post more as I continue to prototype and test the project.

LED Capelet CuttingLED Capelet CuttingLED CapeletLED Capelet LED CapeletLED CapeletLED Capelet