First print!

First print...The 'repstrap' prints... it actually prints! :) I know that's the whole purpose of the device I've been building, but it is still quite exciting and amazing when everything starts working in harmony and it actually comes to life in a productive way, for the first time!After months of construction, assembly, alignment, calibration and testing, this past week saw my resprap pass a new milestone. I took a set of STL files (Greg Frost's...

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New build platform

I had reservations about the suitability of my original MDF (6mm) build platform and this past week proved it wasn't up to the job. With my latest extruder incarnation working consistently I was ready to start laying down some plastic, but no matter how much I fine tuned the level there was inevitably some part of the surface that was too high or too low. It proved too much of an obstacle so it had to go! I'm also dubious about the four-point...

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Extruder Hot-end v2

The previous extruder hot-end served me well as a 'proof of concept'. It showed that a stainless steel down tube, attached to a fan-cooled heatsink, could ensure the filament remained solid and ridged until it entered the hot-end melting chamber, and my single resistor hot-end had the heating capacity required to melt the PLA moving at a steady, if not slow, flow rate. It also allowed me to exercise my cold-end feed mechanism....

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