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[Prusa] Interviews A Whole Bunch Of RepRappers

December 30, 2012 by 7 Comments

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Any time a media outlet or conference wants an expert on 3D printing there are two people to turn to. The most famous is [Bre Pettis] of MakerBot. The other is an awesome guy named [Prusa], designer of the most popular RepRap and possibly the most popular 3D printer of all time. He’s been putting his fame to use by interviewing all the big names in 3D printing and putting them all up on his YouTube account.

First up is [Kliment], RepRap core dev and creator of the Sprinter firmware and Pronterface host.

[Ruben Lubbes], RepRap community guru, tells [Prusa] about his collection of RepRap parts from famous RepRappers. It sound like a quite interesting collection that’s probably very valuable from a historical perspective. Who knows, in a few years it could be as interesting as [Gutenberg]’s first printing press or [Tim Berners-Lee]’s NEXT cube.

Next up is [Tonokip]. He developed the original Tonokip firmware, the firmware that all major RepRap firmwares are based on.

[Prusa] also interviewed [Jordan Miller] a.k.a. [jmil] of the Philly hackerspace Hive76 and the University of Pennsylvania. He made his name in the RepRap community for 3D bio printing.

Wrapping up the most interesting people, there’s also an interview with [Sound], developer of the Slic3r firmware. We’ve seen an interview of [Sound] before, and this interview continues the earlier one by talking about multiple extruders and how awesome the RepRap community is.

Lastly, and unfortunately, is a short video of [Prusa] interviewing me at the world Maker Faire last September. [Prusa] is a huge fan of Hackaday, so this interview is just two guys being star struck at each other.

Actually, the 2012 World Maker Faire had the largest number of current and former Hackaday alumni in one place ever. A group interview of  [Ian] (now of Dangerous Prototypes), [Phillip Torrone] (Adafruit), [Phil Burgess] (Adafruit), current Hackaday boss man [Caleb] and myself would have been awesome. We’ll try harder next year.

You can check out the good videos after the break.

[Prusa]’s Nozzle Prints Polycarbonate, PEEK, & Nylon

November 27, 2012 by 42 Comments

Oh, we’ve been sitting on this one for a while.

[Josef Prusa], brainchild behind what is probably the most popular 3D printer, has just unleashed a new hot end that is capable of printing objects in polycarbonate, PEEK, and nylon.

This new hot end is completely made out of stainless steel – there are no plastic parts made out PTFE or PEEK to keep the heat from transferring up to the extruder. Because the Prusa Nozzle can print these plastics, it’s also now possible to print parts for other hot ends such as the J Head and the Budaschnozzle.

We ran into [Prusa] at NYC Maker Faire a few months ago, and he was kind enough to go over the advancements in his new nozzle and new i3 printer. So far, it looks like the lack of a PEEK insulator isn’t doing the new hot end any harm – [Prusa] has left molten plastic in the nozzle for a few hours and nothing bad has come of it.

You can check out the interview below.

[youtube=www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzFpMZE366Q]

Again, thanks to [Prusa] for granting us an interview and providing some free advertising for Hackaday’s hosts for the NYC Maker Faire. Before you complain about the delay in getting this interview out to you, don’t worry; I slapped a few Makerbot stickers on the back of [Prusa]’s jacket. Everything’s cool.

Printing Custom Whistles For Everyone At Your RepRap Conference

April 28, 2012 by 6 Comments

When [Josef Prusa] speaks at a conference extolling the virtues of 3D printing, he likes to give out printed objects to show off the possibilities home-brew fabrication. A favorite of [Prusa] are whistles – they’re functional and show off exactly what a 3D printer can do. Printing out hundreds of whistles is a job for a factory and not a printer, so [Prusa] decided to customize each whistle with the initials of a conference attendee.

When [Prusa] was asked to attend the INFOTRENDY conference in Bratislava, he had a small audience (only 150 people) and a list of all the attendees a week before hand. It was the perfect scenario to whip up a Python script to generate the models for a whistle with the initials of each attendee emblazoned on the side.

The WhistleGen code is up on [Prusa]’s GitHub ready to print out custom whistles for your next conference. While the capabilities of WhistleGen are limited to just two letters of text, we’re sure someone will figure out a way to automate the generation custom conference badges very shortly.

See the example he sent us after the break.

Continue reading “Printing Custom Whistles For Everyone At Your RepRap Conference” →

The Twelve Days Of… Self-replicating

December 8, 2010 by 24 Comments

Okay, it’s more like the 23 days but who’s counting? [Kliment] is giving the gift of self-replication this holiday season by uploading one new printable part a day. If you follow along and print each one you’ll have a Prusa Mendel by Christmas (this started on 12/2 so you’ll need to catch up). The Prusa is a variation on the Mendel that uses bushings wherever possible, reducing the need for bearings down to just two.

So yeah, you need to have access to a 3D printer in order to make the parts for this 3D printer, but that’s how it always works. [Kliment] has gone the distance to make this little exercise enjoyable. The parts that take longer to print are reserved for the weekends, some have been altered to include a holiday theme, and all of them have been optimized to fit on a Makerbot build platform.

[Thanks Christopher]