A bargain

The cheapest commercially available 3d printer on the market is the Dimension uPrint Personal 3D Printer, clocking in at $14,900.  The media cartridges run $250 – and consist of coiled ABS in a plastic box.  I can’t tell from their website how much plastic is in each cartridge, so I don’t know how cost effective it is.  I’m not positive exactly how their cartridges operate – but I would not be surprised if they were tamper resistant, not able to be refilled, and contained special chips which authenticated them as being untampered and coming direct from the manufacturer.

Am I jaded by inkjets?  Probably.  I’m tired of buying printers with 1/3 full cartridges and expensive refills.  The warranties are so much worse:

“Expensive manufacturer refills only!  Only use paper made from unicorn tears and the hopes and dreams of orphans!  Only power your machine with live baby seals.  Using reasonably priced alternative supplies, making disparaging remarks, failure to properly maintain your machine, or printing will destroy your machine and void your warranty.”

My MakerBot came with more plastic than I can print in two years runs just barely over $1,000 with shipping.  If something were to happen to MakerBot Industries, I can always find new filament elsewhere, adapt my ‘bot to a new source, or even a new material entirely.  Or, I could just toss in a Dremel and have a mini-CNC/drill press.

Backing out the filament

I’ve found that backing out the filament after each print, while a pain, has been helpful in avoiding extruder jams.  Or, rather, I have found fewer extruder jams while doing this. 1

I suspect the reason this has helped is that it removes from the PTFE insulator any of the remaining plastic that might have been about to ooze near the barrel top.  Have you found that this helps you?

  1. Not to confuse coincidence, correlation and causation, but I have also found fewer extruder jams when wearing my underwear inside out… [↩]

Ideas for Cupcake CNC upgrades

Sometimes when using the ReplicatorG control panel I accidentally hit Z- instead of Z+ to adjust the stage height.  As you might imagine, this causes problems.  At best, I end up with the Z stage out of whack.  At worst, the hot and extruding print head slams into the build platform or model and knocks the Z stage out of whack.

Two possible upgrades would be:

  1. A simple bubble level for the build platform and/or Z stage to make it easy to verify the surface is level.  I would imagine bubble levels are relatively cheap.
  2. A bracket that fits around the lower section of the Z axis rods, which would prevent the Z stage from descending below a particular level.  It could be as simple as a little plastic nub that is bolted to the inside of the ‘bot that prevents the stage from being lowered.  Four of them would probably work fine.  OR, you could put an extra nut on each Z axis below the nut that supports the Z stage.  Someone could then design a little plastic widget that would fit on top of that extra nut and have a prong that sticks up – preventing the Z axis from lowering further.

A complete-ish RepRap sold

A few days ago I posted about a RepRap Mendel for sale on eBay with all electronics, motors, belts, etc fully assembled. 1  The auction (for a set sold in Ireland) settled at 760.00 Euros or about $1,017.18 USD.

Frankly, I would have thought it would have sold for more.  Printed parts are still selling in the $300-$450 range, electronics clocking in at $250 or so, bearings at $50, and all the other bits probably costing another $100 for belts, rods, nuts, bolts.  This means just the materials would cost $700 – $800.  Then there’s the delay and extra expense of sourcing all of the parts for yourself.

Interestingly, I had thought the bottom had fallen out of the RepRap printed parts eBay market.  However, a set of printed Mendel parts just sold on eBay for $455 on April 5.  I suspect the difference is that these parts are being generated and sold in the US which makes for an easier and slightly cheaper transaction

  1. To be fair, the seller mentioned it would require some adjustment to start printing. [↩]

MakerBot starter kit

A little while ago someone posted on the MakerBot Operators group that they were looking for printed pulleys.  Apparently he had managed to scavenge or hack together everything else.

This got me wondering – what printed parts would someone need to get a MakerBot rolling?  There’s the obvious printed pulleys.  If I had a friend who was putting one together, I’d probably want to give them a spare insulator retainer ring and Z axis pulley.  What else should be in a MakerBot starter/welcome kit?

Google Sketchup STL Import Plugin

I’m a big fan of Google Sketchup.  I know it’s not open source, but damn it sure is easy to use.  The other day I noticed this blog post about a new Sketchup STL Importer plugin.  Earlier I had posted about other useful Sketchup plugins, and this one will probably make my list too.  I’ve installed it, but not tried it out yet, so caveat emptor.

Two copies of Tetris and Achtung Baby

I just bought a Motorola Droid and was faced with a problem I always forget about when I get a new phone.  If I want Tetris on the phone, I need to purchase it all over again.  This makes me think back to the Actung Baby album by U2.

I’m fine with copyrights, even if the life span of copyrights has gotten ridiculous.  However, it’s pretty ridiculous that I’ve actually shelled out for a copy of Actung Baby on cassette and again on CD.  It’s the SAME music by the SAME band that I’ve ALREADY paid for.  :/

How MakerBot Industries can help RepRap even more

Some people have suggested MakerBot is somehow stealing thunder from the RepRap project. 1  Here’s a super simple way every MakerBot sold could, in a very small way, help the RepRap project.

Why not put a copy of every Mendel part as an STL on the SD card that comes with the MakerBot?  Actually, why not put Spacexula’s set of Mendel production STL’s?

This is a cheap and fast way to disseminate plans for RepRap files to people who are actually capable of making them.

  1. I totally disagree, but there you go. [↩]