Free As In Steins

Apologies readers, but the project has been on the backburner for a little while, but no longer. Just a quick update before things get crazy with the posts here. I'm currently unemployed (damn mining collapse) but have made the reprap my job for the next few weeks. So the designs will be coming thick and fast soon.

Updates are:

The Perth hacklab is definately getting extremely close to coming about. Go to our website at http://hacklabperth.org for my details. When it gets going, I plan on being a major part of the groups educational segment. I'll be working on the reprap group, and the arduino microcontroller group.

The thingiverse site is filling up with data pretty quickly with plenty of stuff, among the most promising is a lasercuttable high power electric motor. It's a first generation, but as a proof of concept it's great.

Simon Kirkby is doing some great stuff with his makerbot, and is currently the main person doing actual major printing in perth given I've been a little distracted with an Extruder re-design. Him and I are going to work together on more R&D work on the reprap system. Our current next major project looks to be experiments on running larger bore extruders and seeing the effect of them on both build speed and strength. After that it's parallel heads time.

I'm currently doing alot of messing around with using resistors as heating instead of nichrome wire, since this is alot safer than nichrome. More info soon.

The 3d scanner design I had as my last post will be updated with a version 2. If anyone wants to have a look at it, please give me any ideas on it's improvement. I prefer zero overhang designs which are millable and printable, but any ideas are welcome.

As always, if anyone wants to make a post, email me and I'll get back to you ASAP.

-Peter "letsburn00" Hillier