Sunday, June 12, 2011

 

Around the RepRap Community

So much has happened in the RepRap community since my last update.  Hackerspaces and building RepRap can really suck the time out of you.  Because there is so many awesome things going on in the community that are not documented in the RepRap wiki, this post is going to include lots of non wiki related material.



Makergear Mosaic

Anyone who knows me knows I have a soft spot for RP parts 3d printers, but the Mosaic is something special.  This is the 1st RepStrap kit avialable with linear motion rails on the X and Y axis and a multistart teflon coated ACME leadscrew with 2 linear rods on the Z.  It only takes a cursory glance to tell the design is inspired by the Up! by PP3DP but with all the things to not like about an Up! fixed:

UP! closed source / Mosaic will be open source after 1st shipment
Up! $2900 plus $150+ Shipping / Mosaic $999 + less than $50 shipping
Up! Proprietary Electronics  / Mosaic Ramps Electronics (No electrical part costs more than $30 to replace)

As you can tell, I am a bit stoked on the Mosaic, can't wait to see more pictures of the stuff that comes off the machine. 



Pronterface

Kliment, another one of our devs who seems to not sleep has released a really nice new printer interface for RepRap.  This interface is designed from the start to work with SD card on both Ramps and Sanguinololu.  The great thing is it defaults to 115200 connection speed so your not having to change the connection speed every time you turn on your machine.



Sprinter Firmware

Sprinter is a new generation of firmware for reprap.  This is the 1st firmware that has native support for SD card, and extreme acceleration.  This firmware can run a printer at up to 300mm/s, which really changes the quality of a print.  Sprinter has been tested and works on Gen6, Ramps, and Sanguinololu.


Complete Orca v0.2 Kit (Unassembled & experimental)
Mendelparts Orca

Mendel Parts is transitioning over to the Orca from their Sells Mendel design.  Orca is Mendelpart's 1st inhouse designed RepRap, and maintains the 200x200 traditional build area for a RepRap.  At $816 it's a really good deal on a kit.


EMaker Huxley

I love cheap, I love RP parts, and I am fascinated by the bowden extruder with 1.75 filament.  So here is something special.  This is a $475 full kit for a RepRap with 140x140x110mm build area, SD card support, and everything included for less that $500

Less than $500 for a full RepRap, That's right folks it took less than 1 year (Oct 2010 to now) for the cheapest RepRap kit to go from $1000 to sub $500.  No one knows how long term this price is considering it's from a reputable dealer though a kickstarter style offering, but he got the money for the project and he is saying around August is the delivery time.

Huza for a $500 RepRap kit!





Assembled MakerBot

For as long as I have been around this community I have seen people wanting a preassembled RepRap/RepStrap.  Well at long last it is here.  Makerbot is now offering to preassemble their $1300 Makerbot kit for an additional $1200 fee.

No news yet on how they are going to handle people who don't know how to fix their machines, but this should make for fun times in the Makerbot and RepRap IRC when people don't know how to take apart their hot end to clean out a jam.

I know I missed a lot of stuff in the post, the RepRap devs have been busy these past few months, I will attempt to get back to posting on a regular schedule again..  Thank you all for your work and have fun!

Comments:
Neil, do you have a reference for the statement that the Mosaic is going to be open source? I'm really hoping it is, but I've not been able to find anything on the Makergear site that would indicate one way or the other.
 
Great update Neil! With so much happening in the community it's things like this that help keep everyone in the loop! I've been following the mailing list and RSS feeds for a while now and still hadn't heard about kliment's printrun project!

Keep them coming!
 
I don't understand why Mosaic has a two-start leadscrew on their Z axis. On the Z axis, speed is mostly irrelevant, and precision is the most important aspect.
Wouldn't you want to have the very smallest lead you can get? That would mean a single start screw...
 
Even with a multi-start leadscrew you get far more resolution than you need, so better to trade some resolution for speed. On HydraRaptor I have a 25mm pitch screw, which means Z is my fastest axis, but I still have 0.0125mm resolution.
 
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pengyunfei2009
 
we are a factory which make prototype parts ,do you have any request ?please contact me ,my
Skype: pengyunfei2009
 
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