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.