Any pointers for making this work in 2017?

[maso27]

I have begun an SLA printer project with lasershark, and am finding nothing but dead ends.

I have established that Creation Workshop disappeared from the open-source scene sometime in 2014.  I've found an old lasershark plugin for it but haven't had any luck making it work with the versions I can scrounge from forums.

Trying to compile lasershark_3dp either for raspberry pi or for Windows 10 x64 has been less than straightforward, and videos from Stimpy, who appears to be one of the few who got it working, are missing or else impossible to make out due to poor video resolution.

So, has anyone got any tips?  Have people just given up on laser-based SLA printers?

[Macpod]

Hi Maso27,

Creation Workshop is software by Envision Labs so if you want support for this you will need to contact this company. If they have gone closed source that is disappointing to hear but understandable. Developing 3d-printer software takes a significant amount of time both to write the software and support it.

lasershark_3dp is pre-alpha code as mentioned on the github page. I developed it under Linux Mint 14 and it should compile just fine on other linux platforms provided you have installed the proper support libraries. Windows is not supported at the moment.

The objective of lasershark_3dp was to act as a "print server". You would attach a raspberry pi to a lasershark, and then run a web server as well as the lasershark_3dp server on the pi.

The webserver on the pi would host a html5/javascript site that would allow you to upload stl files and slice them. These would then be sent in json-encoded png layers over a network connection to the lasershark_3dp server to print.

The front end does not exist yet. If you are up to the challenge of writing this I can answer protocol questions.

If you are only interested in this from an end-user perspective you may want to consider finding another 3d slicer package that will export png layers. You can then use a conglomerate of lasershark_stdin_display_image, lasershark_stdin, a command line app to control your stepper motors, and finally a script to loop through all the layers.

[maso27]

Thanks for responding Macpod.

My initial intent for this project was to focus more on the hardware than the software side of things.  As I learn more it appears I need to adjust my expectations.

It's nice to hear a little bit about what's intended with lasershark_3dp.  Compiling it for the pi has been laborious due to libjson-rpc-cpp issues, and when I couldn't find any recent info I began to get frustrated.

I'll say that I make up for my lack of coding skills with tenacity, so I'll see if I can think of anything to further my desires.

[maso27]

Okay.
I got libjson-rpc-cpp to build and install on raspberry pi.

(notes for posterity):

Code: [Select]

sudo aptitude install libargtable2-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libmicrohttpd-dev doxygen libjsoncpp-dev
wget https://github.com/cinemast/libjson-rpc-cpp/archive/v0.7.0.tar.gz
tar -xzvf v0.7.0.tar.gz  --THEN follow the build instructions at https://github.com/cinemast/libjson-rpc-cpp --
Their current git pull won't build for raspbian so I had to grab an earlier release.  I've reported an issue.

But I'm still having the following error with lasershark_3dp:

Code: [Select]

abstractlasersharkjsonserver.h:8:25: fatal error: jsonrpc/rpc.h: No such file or directory
Any ideas?

[Macpod]

Is there a particular attribute of lasershark_3dp that you want/need? If you just want to work on the hardware then lasershark_display_image and lasershark_stdin seems like it would be a better fit for you.

lasershark_3dp requires the client send png layers and this is what lasershark_display_image accepts too. In the end the difference is going to be the network connectivity and for your purposes doesn't seem like a needed component.