My first upgrade has been applied to my reprap.  It now has a spool holder and soon will have the spool attached (after I've gone through my current bit of plastic that I cut off).

This machine will hopefully only get better.

The obligatory yoda head.

It seems that everyone has to try out the yoda head to see how organic shapes look on their 3d printer.  It appears that I am no exception.

First prints

I got my new hot end and its performing like a dream.  I still haven't unlocked the secrets of PLA, but ABS was working after a little bit of nudging.

Some callibration and installing the hot end are needed, but here's a video of my first cube.

Physics by the balls.

Awhile back I tried to make a simple physics engine to deal with circle to circle collisions. I spent weeks on this and finally got semi-reliable results.

After playing with box2d for one morning, I got everything in a physics engine I had set up and more: I had n-gon collisions, circle collisions, and at a speed that far-exceeded my own engine.

Hopefully utilizing other's work I can design something without having to deal too much in the minutia.

Pointy End Problems

After re-wrapping the hot end of my extruder a couple times, I finally got the temperature to where it should be. Just as I started extruding the whole hot end assembly popped out of the PTFE tube. All that messing with it at temperature without a collar stripped the threading and allowed the entire barrel to slip right out.

I have on order a more reliable, preassembled hot end so I can put that behind me. Now I just wait on USPS + Canadian Postal Service... this might take some time.

Only a short time before they take over the world.

My reprap moves!

After a few mess ups with the electronics, which thankfully did not result in burning anything out, I have successfully made my creation move. Since this video I've managed to get extrusion working, and then immediately break the extruder.

Soon.

Who prints the 3d printer?

My many-color printer is almost operational. Almost all the structural elements are in place, the soldering for the motherboard is complete. Wiring the motors, endstops, and power supply, mounting the print bed and attaching the hot end and extruder are the only things left from printing.

I've already uploaded the marlin 1.0 rc2 firmware.