We had a great turnout at tonight’s 3D print meeting!
Welcome newcomers: Alex, Kevan, Efrem, Nate, Terry and Claire (did I miss anyone?), along with returning guests Enric and Jill.
It was a busy night with a lot happening. We demonstrated a print on the Replicator II, printing a key-holder Nate found on Thingiverse. I brought my delta and demonstrated a simple print on it as well, to show how the workflow differs for the open-source toolchain.
Next we discussed design a bit using Jill’s water bottle stopper as an example to model in Fusion360. That’s a great example since there are so many ways to do it. Watch for a future post on how to model the thread.
Enric brought along a few of his electronic-project enclosures for show-and-tell. He’s also been doing some interesting experiments with light-pipes for wearable-electronics.
The highlight for me was Terry and Claire’s new Prusa i3 printer! They got a very inexpensive kit from AliExpress for under $200!, and had just finished assembling when they brought it here. After a bit of testing and fiddling with wires we had it mostly working. Unfortunately it was getting a bit late so had to stop a few inches short of that exciting first print. I sent them off with a list of things to do, after extracting a solemn promise to send us pictures.
I was very impressed with the quality of the kit; and the price was better than you could do sourcing the individual components yourself. According to Terry, shipping was very fast. I got the impression the instructions were a bit on the thin side, but that’s what we’re here for.
5/19/2016: After I wrote this, Terry was good enough to send me a copy of the digital instruction manual that came on an SD card with the kit. I must say, It looks a lot better than I expected:
Terry and Claire: we’d LOVE for you to write up a review of the kit and your experience building it. I always tell folks how easy it is, but the opinion of a power-geek like me simply can’t be trusted. If word gets out that normal well-adjusted folks like you can do it, maybe more would give it a try.
-Matt