Few people in Vienna have just finished a RepRap Shotbot:
« This was a collaborative effort with a lot of people at the metalab, grl vienna, and monochrom! »
This machine will print out shotglasses this weekend at roboexotica.org
This is near the RepRap Holy-Grail, I hope it would print some RepRap parts soon! The hardware in use is 2 Arduino Board, and the new electronic parts from parts.rrrf.org.
Photos by Brex
I’ve just arrived few days ago at Madrid, and I’ve had the joy to received the RepRap Extruder Kit built this summer by RRRF!
The pieces are well cut, and there is some neat mechanical design (I’m new in this domain) helping to put pieces together.
The only issue has been the middle part, containing the driving screw, with one of the part just a millimeter short. It looks one-sided, if put on the wrong side, there’s a gap at the bottom of the piece near the plastic part.
Now, I’m just missing « 40mm length of 3mm braided steel wire », some « JB Weld high-temperature epoxy glue » to finish completely to assemble this extruder kit. Thanks to Fernando from Barcelona who gave me a ferreteria address to visit in Madrid to get this kind of pieces.
The next missing part is the PIC programmation, I’ve got some issue with the Olimex PG3B pogrammer and pkp (under Ubuntu), they seem unable to communicate, and the programmer board is stuck with PRG1 led once parallel port is open… Hope to solve this during the week before to leave to Berlin with everything connecting, and come back soon with all mechnaical parts!
A selection of links was needed to prepare this Fab Lab creation week:
A full list inventory to get your Fab Lab ready for all kind of fabrications and experiments (using Internet Archives, direct link no more available)
A simple manifesto with the few rules craftmen follows when building a new toy
Simple tutorials for various possible production in Fab Labs
A really complete tutorial, with lots of optic knowledge to learn
Some vendor where to find necessary items for Fab Lab
Great source for even more Fab Lab and fabbing related websites
Neil Gershenfeld (the author of FAB) made a fabulous presentation at TED this year to present his Fab Labs project:
It’s 18 minutes, but you learn so much that you’ll probably need to press ‘pause‘ to have the time to think 🙂
RepRap and Fab@Home are doing a great job to build an open-source solution to get a cheap fabbing solution for everybody, each one at various stage of production, each one with amazing ideas to continue the adventure?
Yesterday, it was proposed to build a bridge between the 2 communities, mainly because RepRap members need some parts to build first Darwin machines (which would be able to replicate themselves after), and Fab@Home might be able to produce these parts quickly. That’s the beginning of a faster way for everybody to generate more ideas:
Have a look at Fab@Home Ideas Gallery to see what’s possible today with fabbing!
RepRap shopping website has just appear online, this is the place where we’ll be able to buy parts to begin with the RepRap project.
There are probably few people readier than me to build their 3D-printer, and only few pieces are available on the shop. The shop should be filled on regular interval, so I’ll wait another time to to order all parts to build Las Indias printer. I’ve just ordered the PowerComm board now to test the connection between the Mac and the future machine, there is probably some hacking-fun to have here 🙂
Until then, I’ve just installed RepRap java source yesterday on my computer, it’s lauching well from Eclipse if you follow the simple step-by-step instructions, I just wonder how difficult it’ll be to communicate with the external electronic board, I’ve never used any USB->Serial comm. tools before…
Fabbing might be a coming revolution: far more accessible than nanotechnology, it would allow people to have a mini-industry at home to build common objects.
In coming months, my project it to build one of these 3D printers, that will be self-replating itself to spread fabbing in few places like Toulouse, Berlin or Madrid.
I’ve discovered RepRap this weekend, it seems the best options to follow, a great community around a small budget printer (400$ is their goal).
Now, let’s get it in practice, that’s a really extended project: electronic, software, mechanic, … a lot a new skills to learn!
Call me back in a month to see if something has been built yet 🙂
More links: