1st set of Mendel parts for sell

Decided to go with the Reprap forum for selling my 1st Mendel set. I posted it over in the RepRap For Sale forum. If it doesn't sell there by Wednsday I guess I wil put it on Ebay, but would prefer to avoid that.

I will be using the funds from this sale to build my 2nd Mendel for myself. I already have the screws, bolts, threaded rods, extruder parts, and electronics for my 1st, so all that's left is the Rod, belts, motors, and other odds and ends for it.

I got the following from McMasters:$44.91

1 9 ft. 7959K24 Trapezoidal-Tooth Neoprene Belting XL Trade Size, .200" Pitch, 1/4" Width Monday morning $1.82 ft. 16.38
2 1 each 6484K509 Trapezoidal Tooth Neoprene Timing Belt .200" Pitch, Trade Sz 370XL, 37" Outer Circle, 1/4" W Monday morning $5.09 each 5.09
3 2 each 5544T27 12L14 Carbon Steel Tight-Tolerance Metric Rod 8mm Diameter, 6' Length Monday morning $11.72 each 23.44

From Alltronics I purchased: $59.47

24M014 Lin Engineering Nema 17 1.8deg 24V 2A bipolar stepper motor $12.95 $38.85
28M063 Lin Engineering 4218L-01D-02 bipolar stepper motor $8.95 $8.95

From VXD : $59.47
1 kit9060 - 48 Bearing 624ZZ and 2 Bearing 608ZZ:Shielded $49.95

From TECHZONE on Ebay : $$47.45

RepRap Laser cut Thick Sheet Set
Item# 300411320929 $36.75 USD 1 $36.75 USD

In hindsight, I think next time I will be buying Ultimachines Kit, and Technzones Lasercut Kit & Techzones Electronics kit.

That would have left me with only the $60 from Alltornics for the motors, and $25 from Mcmasters. for basicly everything I would have needed.

$210 Hardware Ultimachine
$60 Altronics
$25 Belts Mccmasters
$37 Lasercut Techzone
$226 Electronics Techzone (And you get your powersupply and USB connector included)

That's $560 for basically everything you need for Mendel besides your Extruder parts and RP parts. I will be making my own RP so that's not really that bad. I think the way I did it turned out more like $600, but considering it was my 1st time, mistakes where made. I am sure more mistakes will happen.

In defence of Makerbot/Bre

A lot of people are up in arms over Bre's post on the Makerbot Blog. They say he over reacted. As someone who works with intellectual property rights as my day job, I just have to inform the nay naysayers that Bre had an absolute right to get annoyed, he honestly had the right to call a lawyer if he had chosen too. Here is why.

-Under GFDL, uploading your designs replaces righting a check as the way you "pay" the person who designed it, and gain the right to sell it as a commercial product.

-The person who runs Techzonestore on Ebay has been offering Gen 3 based boards for sell on the RepRap forum for 8 weeks, that's 2 full months, and had not made any move to publish the design. Not a thing was said until they had sold likely over 30 full sets and unnumbered individual boards. I can only assume SOMEONE at Makerbot has to go to the RepRap forum every so often, or I at least hope they do.

-Even after being informed that they where breaking the GFDL, they continued to post new boards on Ebay, and if you read the forum, it sound like they where dragging their feet on uploading the files (They didn't refuse, but they definately didn't seem in a hurry either).

-Makerbot, or more specifically the guys that run Makerbot are not hard to contact, just type in Makerbot NY phone number and google gives you their office number. I am sure if they had called and said "We modified your files for gen3 electronics, but can't figure out how to upload them to comply with GFDL, can you help?" I am sure that they would have receive all curtisy. Before you call fowl, how many modified versions of the Makerbot are posted on Thingiverse? If they wanted to protect their profit, they wouldn't be there.

As far as the people who are accusing Makerbot of having some form of profit motive in this, get real. If Techzone had done what they did to Makerbot to my company (or any other medium sized company), the CFO would have sent layers and demanded back payment, and compensation (which would have been in their right), not posted a slightly terse blog post.

Bre is a passionate guy, he looks like he is going to cry or dance whenever he talks about 3d printing. I don't think Bre was mad, I think Bre was hurt. Luckily it looks like Techzone is going to upload the files, and Sebastian the head of the Wiki gnomes will make sure they are in a modifiable format so the letter of the law is followed.

Just remember folks, you pay for the design you modified by inviting FURTHER MODIFICATION of your design. If you deviate from this path, it will start with terse blog posts, and it will likely end with lawyers and pain for the community.

Updated Google Reader Bundle

Reader bundle is now up to 118 different blogs, I did a few changes.

-Found 4 more non English blogs
-The Automatic Ebay update now includes the whole world, not just the US. (I didn't know some dude in Ireland was selling fully cast Mendel parts, can't wait to see one of those put together).
-Removed the Makergear and Makerbot user forums, they are full of great infomation, but with the two of them, They where the majority of traffic. With them removed we are now back down to around 20 posts a day, all new.

If I don't have you in the list, or you can think of some way I could improve this bundle let me know!

If you want to preview or subscribe to the feed go to this link

RepRap/Makerbot quick reference sheet

I am working a RepRap/Makerbot/Rapman quick reference sheet currently. Trying to include all those little things that are easy to forget, but are also hard to find/ learn when you start. Currently the sheet has:

-All the common G & M codes that you would ever likely alter. Basically how to turn on and off the extruder, set the temps, and move the head. Not including the no longer used G/M codes, they will just confuse you.

-A quick break down of the main Skeinforge settings, separating the skein-forge settings into 2 families descriptive (speed, temp, diameters, heights), and manipulative (all the ratios, and manipulations like oozebane, stretch,)

-All the basic Blender keystrokes to move and manipulate in basic ways solid objects in Blender. Also a list of useful scripts python scrips for blender like align (aligns objects along their maximum axises), batch import of stl files, and a few others that I don't see how you use blender without.

-a small Imperial/metric conversion chart

-conversion chart for mm/s (how skein forge Judges speed), to G code F values (mm/minute)

-Melt and max temps for ABS,& PLA.

Can anyone else think of stuff I need to added to this (or is useless and should be took out)? Most of this stuff is already on the sheet, it's two sided, with the Blender and Skein forge stuff on the back, charts on the front.

Once I do any changes you suggest, I will upload it to Thingiverse as a ods and pdf

I love this image

http://blog.daum.net/sasundae/32

A Korean language news site did a write up on RepRap, unfortunately they don't posted the article as a image, so no way to translate. They did make this AWSOME image. Is it theirs or has it been in the community for a while and I haven't seen it?

Also they have a GREAT photo of Adrian.

Odds, ends, and scratching my head

Lots of little tid bits of interest have came up this week, that I haven't seen posted elseware.

-In Ireland, foton-atd has put a full set of Mendel parts, that where cast in Polyester resin up. Only 23 euros with 11 hours left. He admits that the parts are low quality. I feel sorry for the guy, $23 Euros isn't going to cover the cost of the resin (after the %8 for Ebay). Makes me wonder how many of these parts are workable.

-The drama over Profound Device's Repstrap continues. James has been selling his "Mendel kits" for 6 weeks now, he has a listed of over 30 kits sold on his website. He has uploaded dozens of videos showing you everything but the device printing, or moving along by strings of gcode. The natives are getting restless over at the RepRap forum for good reason. His asking price started at $300, and is now up to $500. That means he has took in $9,000-$15,000 thousand dollars, on a printer that hasn't even printed yet.

He claims to have sent out 5 kits to date. Honestly if he has sold 5 of these kits, I am in the wrong business. $500 for glorified Mcwire, that hasn't printed yet, vs $750 for a Makerbot that has HUNDREDS of functioning bots all across the whole world... Caveat emptor...

-The Google Reader Reprap feed is now up to 110 feeds. I have been digging the internet trying to finding none English blogs, and have found quite a few that I have never seen anywhere else. To subscribe jut go to my page and hit subscribe on the right. It sort of fun because it pulls up all the photos & videos from the main sites, so you get a preview of blog posts to come, and some photos of Repraps that aren't being blogged about.

-On ebay, and in the RepRap forum sale section there are aluminum retainer rings for Makerbots available. Never broken a retainer ring before, but DANG that thing looks tuff.

-Mendel is spreading like wildfire, in just the last few weeks it looks like Mendel has went from 2-3 to 10+ in the wild. LOTS of people are building it. Makes me wonder how long till we have more Mendels in the wild than Darwins.

-Be sure to check out the vender page I set up. Stuff is being added all the time.

-Jazzmasterson has posted some great photos on Flick that show him using a Hemostat as an ad hock 3mm wrench. Great idea, I think I will be going to the medical supply store on Monday.