RepRap: Blog

Wow, what a mess. Hope you can get it put back together in time. Could be worse, I suppose. The first thing I thought of, as I read the word "airport" was that security had flagged it as suspicious and decided to "neutralize" it.
 

You tried to ship it more or less fully assembled then?
 

Damn, that's some real damage. That must have been a really rough trip.

My RepRap machine has traveled from home to friends and family now, but only by car, though. I guess that's not nearly as stressful. It never had much problems except for the Z-axis endstop was always bent, but that thing is so weakly tightned (on purpose) to be able to adjust it single-handedly.

I think that unless you disassemble it entirely it is actually weaker. The 'cube' is strongest with all corner brackets + rods in place. Removing the stepper and perhaps Y carriage is easy though and removes some considerable weight.

I really hope you can put things back together and print replacement parts during the demo... RepRap's can heal themselves, luckily. :)
 

As a silver-lining the reprap 'repairing' itself by building a new motor bracket and corner blocks will make a great demonstration ;-}>

Assuming the epoxy holds.
 

Are you set up in the expo center?
 

I expect it was never a high priority in the design of current reprap generations, but doesn't the basic structure of the machines lend itself really well to making the machine collapsible and portable?