Reprappers of the world unite

This past weekend, I hosted the guys from our Fraser Valley RepRap group at my place so that we could actually setup our machines to print and tinker. This is something we’ve wanted to do at our regular meetings but the folks at Boston Pizza, while very accommodating, probably wouldn’t be too keen on us printing stuff on their tables during our meetups.

Brad (aka Sublime) was the first to show up with his Prusa Mendel shown here printing a part on my coffee table:

and he also brought along a nearly complete prototype of his fully printable, mini 3d printer. Look how cute it is! Note the pop can for scale inside.

Check out the super tiny hotend he made (although he is considering using a J-Head after seeing the ones we recently ordered):

Derek also brought along his Citadel Mendel prototype printer:

It was pretty cool to see so many printers in one place (my living room & kitchen counter) and that 2 of them were incredible prototype designs.

With Eugene’s help, I also got my new J-Head hotend setup:

Just need to wire it up to my Prusa and (finally) start printing.

This is definitely shaping up to be the year of 3d printing…it seems every day major media is covering different aspects of how this technology is changing the game.

UPDATE: Brad has just posted about his mini printer with a lot more details and specifications. Sounds like it is getting a lot of (justified) attention in the RepRap community.

UPDATE #2: Brad has named his mini-printer “Tantillus” and it now has a wiki page on the reprap site