Christmas Printing!

Seasons Greetings and Happy Holidays Everyone.

I hope you are all having a good end to the year, for me the last few RepRap months have been extremely interesting. Lots of machine testing and calibration, continuing and starting some new developments and printing a lot of presents for people.

More about machines and developments in the new year along with some overdue tutorials I plan to get completed over Christmas. - Have a great time and happy Christmas printing - Rich.

This is an advent Blog post for Christmas, my kids have been selecting Christmas things from Thingiverse to print out and put on their trees. I have been following and printing out the great advent calendar tree by Pleppik, other things have just naturally been printed out as presents and gifts.

Here is the progress with our printed Advent Tree - 

Days 1 & 2 - 

It starts with two nicely wrapped presents under the tree

Printed in Christmas Gold for the base of the tree.

Days 3 & 4 - 

Candy Cane  Sledge and an X-wing!

Trunk of the tree in woodland brown, Sledge is in punk star pink and X-wing in white and robot silver.

The Sledge is very fine, if you have a 0.5mm nozzle, you may wish to set the nozzle size to 0.35 if using Slic3r or it's not going to print out all that well.

Days 5 & 6 - 

Train and a bright white Snowman.

The train really needs some support to print correctly, I missed that and had a small shift in printing as the bottom got a little messed up, but it still fits in the box.

Days 7 & 8 - 

Glow in the dark candle and an orange coffee mug.

Green happens to be my favourite colour, so I tend to have quite a few different shades. I'm going for darker at the bottom, getting lighter as the tree gets taller.

Days 9 & 10 - 

Brown church and a slightly off-white igloo (Architects stone white).

We are starting to get some form and real colour to the advent tree. 

Days 11 & 12 - 

Gingerbread House and a Makerbot Replicator 2

The Gingerbread house needs support, or if you don't want to use support material then use my modified Gingerbread House here.

The Makerbot Replicator 2 model also needs support, but I have modified it slightly to allow it to print without any support, Get the non-support version here.

Days 13 & 14 - 

Tree in Nuclear Green ABS (the only bit in ABS so far) and the Gingerbread Man is in the much under used but so loved Buttercream PLA

Nuclear Christmas tree and a Gingerbread Man!

Days 15 & 16 - 

Bell and (good enough to eat) Candy Cane

The Awesome candy cane is printed in Awesome Aurora PLA from Faberdashery.co.uk - it's UV light reactive and changes colour from a wonderful light sugar pink to a stunning vivid blue.

Days 17 & 18 - 

 

Dr Who Tardis and a Pearl White snowflake

Day 18 had the 3rd different White PLA in this Advent tree, this time it's Pearly White, one of my favorite's

That's it for white now, if I need any more I'm going to have to get creative.

Days 19 & 20 - 

Day 19 was a Santa Hat, this is a little tricky to print in one part, and would require support material, I didn't fancy doing that, so I sliced it in half and glues it back together with a drop of superglue.

You can find my split version here

These boxes are printed in the 6th different Green plastic - Jade Green

The Day 19 Santa Hat is printed in the stunning new Mercury Red (Metallic PLA) - it basically makes anything you print look like a Super Hero, really fantastic material.

Day 20 is also a new Metallic PLA - this time Space Marine, totally intergalactic.

I'm almost out of different Greens - I did mention it's my favorite colour :) I have two remaining...

Days 21 & 22 - 

Some multicoloured prints - 

Burning logs (Brown,Red, Orange & Yellow)

Plate of cookies (White Plate, 'Butter cream' cookies, layer of 'Bling Bling gold' and 'Woodland brown')

The minty green was never going to really fit, but I wanted to use them all.

Days 23 & 24 - 

The Festivus Pole accompanied by a Grinchy Claus :)

And a super rocket!

Almost done !

Christmas Day - 

A snowy top of the tree, Bling Bling Gold star-burst and a Neon Cyber Yellow Star.

Have a great Christmas, Happy Holidays, Seasons Greetings !

Tree decorations - 

I'm loving this Gyroscopic snowflake by Roman_Hegglin, take a look on Thingiverse here.

It's BIG, and a great object, it's all printed in one go, when you pick it and move the rings a little the parts just start spinning perfectly!

Roman also has some smaller snowflakes on the Thingiverse link above, check them out.

My kids are selecting a thing a day to print, advent style to decorate their trees and rooms, here is the progress so far with links to the great Christmas models and designers on Thingiverse. 

For starters the great Christmas tree by TopperDEL

Most of these are printed in the fantastic Pearly white PLA by Faberdashery

And yes, that is a very pink Christmas tree!

The winter star by Faberdasher

Try to print the modern star if your printer's up to it!

And if you fancy even more twinkle for your tree take a look at the new Sparkle range from Faberdashery.
Space Marine and Mercury Red look amazing and if your giving a Raspberry Pi for Christmas get hold of some Raspberry Spark and print my version of the Super Pi case.

Reindeer ornament by raldrich

Really like this one, slightly tricky to slice if you are using Slic3r - make sure your nozzle size is about 0.42mm and you should get nice lattice work - 

Also set the first layer width to be the same as the rest for a nice looking print.

Snowflake by JonMonaghan - I have printed so many of these, they are great to print and look amazing especially in different colours.

Snowman by ChristineBowyer - This little snowman is a real family favorite, we have printed a lot of these in many sizes, I even printed some in Sugar paste earlier this year.

Snowflake Ornament 6 Points within Circle by beauturner

This one is a really interesting one to slice, you can go for a big nozzle width and get just shells for a very quick printing time, or a smaller fine nozzle and get a lot of tiny infilling slow print but a more filled look.

I also had some interesting differences with two recent Slic3r versions while attempting to slice this model, here is what I was seeing with Version 0.9.1 (my usual version at the moment) and testing out V0.9.5 

This was with Slic3r V0.9.1 - 0.42mm nozzle and 0.67mm single wall width, no infill - Slic3r makes a few little mistakes in the model but this GCODE prints well and quickly, the middle section is just loose enough to pop it out if you feel like it.

GCODE file is 200KB

This was with identical settings as above but with Slic3r V0.9.5 - This actually makes for a nice looking print but it has lots of tiny points of infill and a lot of extruder moves - it should also NOT be doing any infill, all filling and solid layers were turned off.

GCODE file is 250KB

This version is back to Slic3r 0.9.1 but with 0.42mm nozzle and 0.47mm single wall width, 20% infill, you really do end up with a dual ring around the snowflake, a nice print and quite quick.

GCODE file is 400KB

To test the infill problem of Slicer V0.9.5 I used 0.42mm nozzle and 0.47mm single wall width (as above) but had 0% infill and 0 top and bottom layers, this should give a hollow object, as you can see above it made a nice and filled star. This GCODE, 2.5MB and has some nasty high speed infills causing resonance in my printer and a massive number of extruder reversals, not one to print!

The photo hanging on the tree was with a slightly tweaked single wall size of 0.5mm GCODE was about 1.5MB Using Slic3r V0.9.5 - I never did manage to get a really nice print out of V0.9.1 but as Slic3r has moved on quite a few revisions now  I'll take another go with the next version as I type this it's V 0.9.7

Ultimaker Christmas Robot by ultimakerinleipzig

A great little robot with support already designed into the model.

Christmas Tree ornament by akw

Butterfly, Ornament by ftdesigns

Traced Snowflake by Landru

Star Flake by IHeartRobotics

Little Green Man Christmas Ornament by gpvillamil printed in Jade Green

Angel by tc_fea -  Printed in Angelic pearl white and shimmering gold.

Grinchy Claus by Cerberus333

Gift Boxes -
Another popular present to print is the Extra Printable Companion cube by Keegi, this box is just perfect as a gift and can be scaled to any size easily.

The Original Companion cube upgrade was made by Landru, well worth a look if you don't want a box.

It also makes for an impressive Russian doll style stacking box set if you scale them to fit into each other.

Over the last few months I have printed more than I can count of these, the smallest being about 7mm and the biggest so far printed on a Rostock printer at about 186mm wide. 

The RepRap presentation at Cheltenham Geeks in November was great, lots of people turned up and we had quite an evening discussing all sorts of 3D printing and additive technologies. Thank you all for a great evening, can't wait to do it again. - I'll have the presentation and notes available soon (sorry for the delay)

Meeting in December (13th) for drinks and planning events and hacking for next year, see here and come along if you can.

Follow Cheltenham Geeks on Twitter here


Merry Christmas Everyone, and have a very Happy New Year!

Cheers,

Rich.

Yearly RepRap adventures roundup 2012

Another year of RepRapping development adventures is over (for some historic reason my development season runs from October to the end of September each year)

In the last year’s roundup (2010-2011) I had the following to say – Link if you need a reminder.

This last 12 months have been intense and exciting and what a lot of changes this blossoming industry has seen.

Things I’m glad I got on and finished – (is anything ever finished?)

• Universal paste and Chocolate printing, I had been thinking about this for well over a year before actually starting any testing, it was a good learning curve in 3D design (Sketchup) and iterative model testing.

• I have countless people ask me about Chocolate printing!
• It has had quite a few revisions and design changes by other people for other machines and bigger syringes
• Parametric! Version by BonsaiBrain (ifeelbeta.de) - See Thingiverse for details


• Huxley Paste Extruder by mattroberts -Thingiverse

If you have not yet seen the wonderful video by RepRapBCN, take a look below!

• The 3way extruder – Colour blending, lots of further potential, great fun doing it and seeing the first prints.

Joris Van Tubergen also made a 3 filament extruder, but his goal was to be able to extrude more filament for the amazing Kamermaker project his aim is to be able to extrude 1kg and eventually 5kg/hour of plastic.

  

• Slic3r -

Switching across to Slic3r and doing the tutorials was a good experience.

Part1 - Settings and extruder calibration

Part 2 - Filament calibrating and printing

Part 3 - How low can you go? - printing with small layers

I have been meaning to mention the various translations of the Slic3r tutorials out there and also a new getting started guide by Ivan Bortolin and Lorenzo Cantini - the main website Can be found here

The new guide in English PDF and Italian Here

Other translations of my Slic3r tutorials and extended work can be found in Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Italian. - if you know of more do let me know.

Slic3r continues to move on and get stronger with more people using it every month.

If we had 3D printing awards Slic3r would get my vote for first place. My warmest thanks go to Alessandro for bringing Slic3r to all of us.

30 Days of creativity – Was hard work, but a very good focus for getting things started and having some fun with my printer.

I have really enjoyed printing more things for my kids this year, they love them!

It’s certainly easier when you have more than one printer up and running.

More group meetings with local RepRappers – it’s been a great year for getting people up and running.

Things I have not finished quite yet –

• Geared Peristaltic Pump – I have grand plans, and it's working so well but it’s going to take more time before I can get back onto this. Keep an eye out on this development, I'm planning a dedicated printer to use it for something interesting.

• Ceramic Printing, I had all the best intentions to do more ceramic printing, Precious metal clay printing and ‘other’ materials, but just not had the time to set it up again and have a good run at it. – When I think back I did the whole paste extruder development in about 2 weeks. - New 'RepRap year' resolution - 'find, use and develop more materials to 3D print with'

• Further rounds of Polycarbonate printing, I started and then got side-tracked. I’ll pick it up again at some point along with other sorts of materials (Like Laywood).
  
  

• My own machine development – Again started, many things worked out, but everything moves so fast it always needs a little rethink.
• My design looks a little like the TK-O from LulzBot (Aleph objects), so I may take some more inspiration from that to finish-off my 'ultimate 3D printing machine'.
• Recent time has been taken up with Rostock (see below) so what I learn from that and seeing how the TK-0 develops can go into the next revision
  
  
  
  

• Rostock+, doing it now, but stalled a little for the last 6 weeks, need to build some more electronics. 
• The ‘Plus’ part is for the use of Spectra fishing line (Like Tantillus below) instead of belts and pulleys, should look cool and be FAST!

• Tantillus, Building it up now...

• More tutorials and guides, I have started some, it’ll be easier to focus on them in the winter, but I want to make it easier for people to get good 3D printing results and understand more things about the process. > Still learning every day myself!

Things I wish I had more time/resources for –

• Actual 3D modelling and design, I’m planning to spend more time over winter doing 3D design and modelling, some organic and creative, other things more technical.
  
• I want to learn Autocad123D as I have failed to spend any time with it this year – if anyone knows any good starting guide? – I have not really used the Autocad interface and I find it quite counter intuitive.

• I have been inspired with so many works of 3D printing Art this year, far too many to mention, but ones you should really take a look at are the beautiful works by @Dizingof , the mechanical wonder of the planetary gears by aubenc and very stunning Trilobite’s! by AuntDaisy
  
   

• Print challenges are Great! - (link to the RepRap forum printing challenges section) 
• I love to print tricky models, it takes time to work out the best settings and it’s often different for each complex object, but hopefully we will continue to do challenges – they are a great way to learn ‘how to 3D print’

• I do wish I had more time to meet more of the 3D printing community; we need a few more places to meet up during the next year. Any ideas? maybe video links?

• Visiting more printing events and shows, they are great, but take time and money to attend. And are not very family friendly L very disappointed I could not make the London3Dprintshow and the 3D printing event in Eindhoven, but I did make it to a few events.

• I also didn't use IRC as much as I wanted, started off the year using it, then also started on Twitter and didn't have the time to do both along with doing actual physical developments of things.
• But I’ll get back on IRC soon, it’s a great community.

• I answer a lot of e-mails and messages, and try to help people as much as I can, recently the RepRap forum has boomed with new people and questions; it’s hard to keep up!

• I started a dedicated website (richrap.com), with the idea to show projects, tutorials, guides and general RepRap related developments. It needs more time spent on it, but it’s a start.

• Software development, I should spend more time refining some of my developments (3way extruder to be automatic, more firmware integration) I need enough long periods of time to focus on it.

Things I have not started yet (but are on my list) –

• Electronics – I was sure I would have time to do some real electronics development this year, but again so many new boards popped up, my own plans didn't need as much attention as I had thought- still we are some way off a real plug and play solution.
• Adrian just posted up a great little adapter to give your Sanguinololu a 32bit ARMboost
  
• A really big printer! – I really wanted to do something like the Kamermaker (room builder) - cost, space and time just let me down, but I still have a vision for something not quite as big...
  
• Concrete/cement printing – I’m seriously thinking about a good way to do this - anyone want to help me make it a reality?

• Loss wax casting (with PLA) – Some good examples this year, would love to give it a go.

• Resin printing – Almost got motivated to start on a LemonCurry, again didn't get time past reading all about the great project. – Interesting to see the Formlabs printer using a Laser and Resin just got over $2.9 Million on Kickstarter, Wow!

• Experimenting with new support materials – I did just start doing this, some interesting results with sugar, needs a lot more work, Sugar seems very compatible with PLA.

• Wax printing – Still not sure how best to move forwards with this – maybe try a new design of my heated universal paste extruder, it should work.
  
• A Portable 3D printer - I still don’t have a true portable printer (folding or just easy to carry) – finishing Tantillus is my best option for the moment.

• Lasers! – Powder and Sintering – I doubt I’ll be able to work on this area anytime soon! But it’s on the list!

I would still like to buy a new Lathe; still saving up…a few people have offered to help me out with new things needing machining – Thank you.

+++ Lots of stuff I have not even thought of yet !

Final thoughts - 

So, I have had some real proud moments in my 2012 RepRap developments; I have had fantastic people from all walks of life contact me. My work has been featured on lots of blogs and in magazines, interviewed, mentioned and cited in reports and academic works. I have done presentations and uploaded work and videos to university intranets and had people translate my projects into different languages.

Thank you all.

This is all open-source and as a hobby on a very teeny tiny budget, and I’m just one of many makers doing lots of things in this Great community.

The next development cycle has now started, I have some big goals for the next 12 months, no one knows where 3D printing is heading, and what it will look like in a further year, but it will continue to be exciting.

If you can make it, come and join us at Cheltenham Geeks in November, It's free but with limited spaces, go and register now over at meetup.com. Hamish and I will be presenting an evening of RepRap fun and developments, along with 3D printing demo's and beer, what more could you want? 

Thanks for reading; I hope you are enjoying the adventure, See you soon for more.

Rich.

TCT2012 show report and Industry growing pains.

I don’t normally do wider 3D printing industry news on this Blog as it’s a technical resource, but quite a few big things have happened over the last few weeks, that have made many people look in a slightly different light on the whole 3D printing industry. (Makerbot's decision to close source is discussed below)

I visited the TCT Liveshow at the NEC in the UK this week.

Todd Grimm opened the show with his presentation of where the 3D printing and Additive manufacturing industry is in it's life-cycle in a nutshell, "we are not yet ready for consumers using 3D printers" 

I had an interesting & mixed experience at this years TCT show – Quite a different one from last year, let me explain –

So last year I visited TCT in a professional capacity with suit, shirt and tie, this year I decided to go along as a Maker – Jeans and a Woolly Jumper – general enthusiast to see what reception I would get from all these many (different sized) companies looking to sell machines for the next desktop industrial revolution to the ‘general public’

I’m calling my dress code the ‘maker test’ would I get any attention at all from these companies?, I’m sad to say generally most of the companies failed, ignoring me for people in suits that actually had very little interest in their product offerings.

Last year, only Bits from Bytes and A1 technology were representing the lower-end market sector and entry level machines.

This year was very different.

The A1 technology stand was empty; they didn’t turn up on Day 1. 

 3D Systems - Cube - 

My very first stop was on the 3D systems stand, just by accident, but the Cube was on display at the front of the stand with the Cathy Lewis guarding the Cube printer.

(Cathy lewis is the 3D systems representative in the Cnet video shown lower down in this post, in an interview with Makerbot on the Replicator at CES2012)

The Cube was trying to print, but unfortunately very badly, the drive mechanism looked like it was partially blocked resulting in terrible surface quality with lots of little holes and pips where variable extrusion was occurring. It was also printing very slowly and at one set speed (I estimate about 20mm/Sec), with only slightly faster travel speeds.

What is it doing with that bridge? and why is the surface quality so bad. And why has it wasted Raft material on sections with nothing on them! - Poor software!

I stood looking at the Cube for many minutes, many other people in suits asked the same things time and time over, how much is it “$1300” says Cathy, do you have a brochure, “no, sorry we don’t” – How much are the cartridges “$50 each, and they can print about 10 of these” – pointing to a 1.5” high chess piece.

Finally, after everyone else had gone I said to Cathy it was nice to see a big company doing a reasonably low cost machine “yes, some people think we are crazy”.

I asked if she likes the printed cases (pointing to a number of Raspberry Pi cases scattered around the Cube printer) – “yes they are wonderful, people really like them”

Do you know who designed it? I ask, no says Cathy, Well I had a hand in it’s design, really says Cathy, not really believing me. How did we get hold of it then asks Cathy...

Well, you would have got it from Thingiverse, I said. At this point Cathy’s face says it all, she looks really uncomfortable and clearly wants to stop talking to me as soon as possible. We then briefly discussed what a Raspberry Pi actually was, Cathy had no interest whatsoever, and I was left wondering how they were going to sell and support this machine to the general user and enthusiast?

In many ways it was worth going to the show just to see her face, in that moment and short conversation.

It was then that I realised the Cube had not printed any of these cases they had on display around the Cube printer, but they had been printed on a Bits from Bytes machine. BFB showed my same printed RPi case on their blog Aug 16th, with no mention of the case origin or designers. – so much for Creative commons Attribution – So I’ll do it here – the Original case was designed by HansH

I then changed it in Sketchup after using a Raspberry Pi for a little while and released my derivative to Thingiverse.

Makerbot - Replicator 1/2

Makerbot had the Replicator V1 at the show, I didn’t see it actually printing anything all day, everyone else had running machines.

If you want to be a Makerbot Distributer, the Minimum order quantity is 10 machines and for that they will give you 25% discount, Makerbot has two resellers in the UK, and they were very keen to sign up more on these terms.

I was fortunate enough to be standing on the Makerbot stand when Todd Grimm asked the Senior American Makerbot Sales representative a few interesting questions, the response coloured by recent events and the Replicator 2 launch.

Todd asked about the Replicator 2, what makes this machine a pro grade (prosumer) machine and how is it different from Version1?

Makerbot – It’s now 100micron layer resolution and we have tightly controlled PLA printing materials that deviate less than 100micron in size.

This machine is PLA only, we have removed the heated bed so users can get printing faster and we have a simple 3 point levelling system.

It’s also a single extruder system only.

I was thinking – That’s a lot to remove, why is it then so much more expensive than a Replicator V1? And can’t a Replicator V1 do 100micron? It should be able?

When pushed on the reason it was now a Pro machine, the support staff were talked up as the main reason for Makerbot being different at the lower-end machines – Thingiverse was also mentioned a lot in the conversations and is obviously very important for them -

Makerbot – “Some people will not like that we have gone closed source, but they all use Thingiverse whether they like it or not, we have the biggest community”

The discussion continued, I moved on.

Sadly, they also failed the Maker test; I was reasonably ignored every time I went on their stand. I didn’t pick up a Makerbot sticker… Where would I put it now?

Maketbot are obviously seeing a change on Thingiverse, they are trying to focus on the Terms of Service questions that also sparked up debate and fractures in the community along with the bigger issue of going closed source – They even have their Lawyer trying to explain that ‘everything will be ok’ Trust us.

Can people in the community trust a company that changes one of its most fundamental founding principal’s?

Will Makerbot’s new Pro-sumer customer appear, and will 3D Systems now be free to take the entry level sector with the Cube? Do any of us now really care?

It’s never a dull moment with 3D printing.

Remembering back - On 3Dprinting.com the blog post in Jan2012 stated this about the video below –

“This is a great interview that shows the development in the personal 3D printer market and the differences between the open-source product of MakerBot and the closed-source product of 3D Systems.”

I do now wonder how different 3D systems and Makerbot will look in Jan2013 at the next CES?

If it's consumers or pro-sumers they are after then maybe the closed source 3D printer war has now started, while the open source community just marches on regardless, I hope Makerbot does not regret it's decision.

Also look out for the comment about the Replicator case looking wooden, I bet they was the point Replicator V2 got a metal overcoat!

And Cnet just posted - Pulling back from open sourcehardware, MakerBot angers some adherents

Enough of all that.

Here are some really great things I spotted at the Show - 

3D printed Mug - Bits From Bytes had a separate bigger stand (last year just a corner of 3D systems) I spotted Ian Adkins and Ed Sells (Sells Mendel) walking around; they were doing a lot of research by the looks of things.

Another one from BFB, they ignored me and so failed the 'Maker test' this time around.

There was a lot of 3D scanners at the show, this chap with the beard was being 3D scanned with a hand-held unit.

This is a Prop for a Film printed with a Voxeljet 3D printer - they can print 4m x 2m objects!

Voxeljet printers are used by Car companies to make massive prototype parts.

Propshop model-makers Ltd - Passed the 'Maker test' with flying colours, he even showed me some secret new massive 3D printed models for a new film coming out on his iPad.

Another Voxeljet print

Ultimaker - 

Yea! Ultimaker! - Always had their machines running all day! - They had the busiest stand out of almost everyone, including many of the really big names. 

Very friendly people and amazing quality things on display, thanks Ultimaker you made my Day!

I also met Paul Candler on the Ultimaker stand, he has made some of the finest profiles for Netfabb. Ultimaker users are enjoying resolutions down to 20microns!

Needless to say Ultimaker passed my Maker test.

Leapfrog - 

It's big, slow printing and looks like a BFB printer with a metal overcoat. I could not find out much more about it as they didn't talk to me :( 

Fabbster - 

Fabbster have a Closed source printer (Sintermask) that operates in a similar to most RepRaps, it has no heated bed at the moment and uses Rafts for prints. Quality is reasonable.

They have a patented stick deposit system, this is basically Injection moulded plastic sticks of material that are loaded into a magazine and snap together as they exit into a PTFE tube onto it's way to the extruder.

They have many materials including a flexible (soft PLA style) that was very nice to handle.

The machine is big and well built. They were very nice at the show and passionate about people using their printers and materials. They passed the Maker test and we chatted for some time about the machine.

MiiCraft - 

I ended up with a very bad photo of the Miicraft printer, so I'll just show some of the printed objects.

Very nice people and happy to tell and show you everything about their resin based 3D printer.

Ships from Taiwan, UV resin is quite expensive, machine is $2200 but the results were stunning! - Very good, Maker test - pass

PP3Dp - 

The PP3Dp printers are looking a little old now, but still performing well, if not a little slow to print.

Didn't talk much, they were not really communicating with the people showing interest. 

They had some free samples of screw-pots and a few different machines. Maker test - Poor (D-)

Mcor - 

Inside an Mcor 3D printer (not really a printer, it cuts models out of sheets of office paper)

They are all paper. I'm not sure it that's a good thing or not. They must be selling machines? and I expect they will do well in the movie industry, props, and animation maybe even some product design etc. but I can't quite see a good use as functional models and certainly not with consumers.

Very friendly and animated about their machines and low-cost process. Maker test - Pass

Lots of other companies were at the show, some interesting, others looking very dated. Most of the others ignored me.

Thanks for reading,

Rich.

Other news - 

The open Hardware summit is going on as I type this - Follow it and check out what's being said.

We may be getting our own Mini Maker Faire down in Bristol (UK) - keep looking out and googling for further announcements.

Check out this video featured on the Discovery channel -