It has been long ago that we reported on our 3D printing adventures – see Hydraraptor’s Second Child. We are pleased to report that our copy of RepRap open source 3D printer has shown its first meaningful prints, thanks to our collaborator Peter Koeleman from the Netherlands:
Two years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Chris Palmer, developer of HydraRaptor, one of the key developers of the RepRap open source 3D printer project. Chris donated a set of plastic parts that he printed for us, with the intent that we produce a working 3D printer over a long weekend of work.
Two years later, we succeeded in making our RepRap Darwin 3D printer produce its first prints. This is thanks to Peter, who volunteered to take up the project on Factor e Farm’s behalf, so that both he and Factor e Farm would have a working copy of the printer.
In that time, the second prototype of RepRap, called Mendel, has already been released after Darwin, the first prototype. We are now beginning to refine the printing so we can make a Mendel with our Darwin. You can see our build log here. We’re curious, how many other Darwins are there doing that?
Our goals are to help make RepRap and 3D printing in general more replicable, by documenting success stories and making parts sourcing more turnkey. Peter’s experience indicated that a successful replication of RepRap required a lot of experimentation on parts choices. That may apply only to Darwin, and I don’t know about Mendel. RepRap people, what is the latest word on ease of replicability?
The easiest derrivative Reprap design to print, build, repair and assemble as of April 2011 is the ‘Prusa Mendel’. Have a look here: http://reprap.org/wiki/Prusa_Mendel