Friday, February 12, 2010

Reviving the Ponoko Darwin






Given all the growing interest in RepRap style printers, is there interest in restarting development of the Ponoko Darwin development? See it here

I am trying to talk one of the RepRap parts suppliers into offering the lasercut parts for this printer as an off the shelf purchase. I think the Ponoko Darwin still has some things going for it.

-It's honestly the pretties RepRap built, the ability to make it out of many colors makes it so unique. Say what you will the Rapman is hot little printer

-It would be the only Darwin that could be offered "off the shelf" while still completely following the GNU licence of the true RepRap.

-Would not suffer from the limitations of the screw drive like Mcwires

-It has a fully documented wiki already in place. (see the bottom of the main Ponoko site)

-Will run off any boards that can drive Makerbot or a normal Darwin.

-Given that a McWire requires $100 worth of metal, I personally would rather $200-$300 worth of lasercut parts for a REAL belt driven Reprap

-Ponoko is hard to order from (at least from me). If I could have ordered a Darwin lasercut kit, I likely wouldn't have bought a Makerbot.

Only real downside of Ponoko Darwin is it takes more screws/bolts, and the lasercut parts are easier to break.

So lets hear it, would YOU like to see a Darwin Lasercut kit available? Please comment!

3 comments:

  1. I think I would like to see a Mendel Laser Cut design. Particularly as it uses less materials.

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  2. Design it or we have what we have.

    Given the facts I would prefer access to what we have than a dream of something that noone is building. ;)

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