And so the legal battles begin

This is an interesting article on the Ars Technica site about 3d printers and copyright problems.

The next Napster? Copyright questions as 3D printing comes of age

More photos in the Flickr pool

Great googly mooglies! Time flies when you're busy making a living.

I've finally gotten around to processing my photos of the build so far and uploading them to my Flickr photo set.

A few notes -

I started my build using the instructions on the RepRap wiki as the instructions on the MakerGear site had not been posted yet. There are a few minor differences between the standard Prusa Mendel and the MakerGear Prusa Mendel.


The front bottom rod assembly and rear bottom rod assembly are different. Instead of using the M3 washers on the sides of the bearing, the MakerGear version replaces them with a printed pulley snapped onto the bearing.

Also, the top rod mount on one side is meant to be further away from the top vertex connector.

I've since corrected these on my build. I've got a few photos of the corrected parts but have not processed them yet for uploading.

I'm now going forward using Gary Hodgson's Prusa Mendel Visual Instructions and the MakerGear instructions. Between the two it looks a very thorough set of steps to complete the build.

3D printers at TX/RX Labs

I spent the evening at the TX/RX Labs hackerspace. They are running a series of Hack-B-Qs where each Friday night in March they cover a different topic. Tonight's topic was 3D printers.

When I first arrived I was greeted by Allison Whitley, the resident artist. She showed me around and we chatted about the hackerspace.

I listened to some folks talking about a multi-touch desktop (a topic coming up later in the month) before moving on to see the 3D printers. They had a 3D printer busily printing out parts for another 3D printer. The print run had just started and you could barely see the layer of plastic. It took a little over an hour and a half to get to the finished products.

Frank came over and started talking about the printer (a RepRap Mendel model.) He showed off some of the software used to go from 3D design in a cad program (he used Art Of Illusion), to generating g-code (Skeinforge) and finally sending the code to the printer (sand.py, a python script.)

I met Kelly, who was working on building another printer. He had actually started the print on the first machine. His frame was nearby. It was extremely helpful to be able to see the device up close and see how each part was put together.

I met several other people - Ed, PG, John, Rex, and many others whose names I didn't get.

In all it was a great evening. Too much to process right now and way too tired to process it anyway.

The box arrives, the adventure begins

Today, the box arrived. Actually it arrived yesterday, but the Postal Service couldn't leave it at the door. A friend of mine was good enough to pick it up for me while I was at work today (thanks dude!) It was waiting for me when I got home.

The first thing I noticed was a large tear along one edge. I am going to trust that nothing is damaged.

I opened the box and found a nice letter from the MakerGear folks with some information about the kit as well as the parts manifest. I carefully unpacked the various bags of parts and made a quick visual scan. It looks like everything is there. I also have some 3 mm black ABS plastic when I get it all together and am ready for printing.

In addition to all the parts they included samples of 3 mm and 1.75 mm glow-in-the-dark ABS plastic. Even better, they threw in a small Ghirardelli chocolate. :-)

I've started a Flickr set and will be adding to it as the build proceeds.

Let the adventure begin!

The parts have been shipped!

I received an e-mail from the folks at MakerGear this afternoon that the Prusa Mendel Kit has been shipped. Woohoo!

It should be on it's way to me through the auspices of the United States Postal Service. I expect it should be here by next Friday at the latest.

Parts - They are a thing of beauty

The folks over at MakerGear posted some photos of the parts in the Prusa Mendel Kit. It is great to see what I'll be getting, and hopefully they will be shipping the kits soon.

Looking at the photos this looks a little daunting. But I think I'm up to building it. It looks like a large chunk of it is the nuts, bolts, and misc. small parts. Looking at pictures of the Prusa Mendel people have posted online it doesn't look that complicated.

Update

The nice folks at MakerGear sent out an e-mail yesterday telling me that the Prusa Mendel kits should be shipping soon. I'm eagerly awaiting the notice that the order has been shipped.