Maker Faire S.F. 2012

[bdring]

A guy stopped by to announce his $34 extruder. It is a complete MK7 clone with some "inprovements". It does not include the stepper motor, but takes a standard NEMA 17. I think he is going to Kickstart the project, but he already had some samples running.

He makes them in his own professional machine shop in the US.

[Enraged]

Sounds interesting. If it's a quality product, I'm sure he will sell lots of them.

[mxk]

Those were the QU-BD folks, right? One of the reasons I went to Maker Faire was to see their bot. It's big, stiff, and heavy, and will take a (Bosch?) router if you want a combo machine. The extruder looked pretty neat, and the price was right. They don't use just a toothed gear like Makerbot, they also have a groove in it they claim will grab the filament even better. They told me the Kickstarter project will launch next week. I will be looking for it.

It was GREAT to finally meet you, Edward, Brook and a few other people I had wanted to meet. Mike's ORDish bot was even more impressive in person than in photos, and I saw Roy's Azteeg boards on lots of bots. I ran into Terrence Tam of OpenBeam in the Inventables booth, he had samples that looked pretty good. He said that should be shipping in about two weeks.

[kongorilla]

Bart, I wish you had posted in the ORD section about going to Maker Faire. I check the "General Discussion" threads only very occasionally. I live 3 miles away from the fairgrounds and I have a fully built Hadron I could've brought to the show. It's strange I didn't see you there. I walked around the whole Faire multiple times over the course of Sunday. Where were you?

At least I got to talk to Mike a long time about his ORDish Bot. Thanks, Mike!

It certainly was the year of 3D printing. Even booths that weren't about 3D printing had printers making their stuff. I was glad to see it wasn't just Prusa Mendels and Makerbots, too. While those machines are still novel to the general public, I've seen enough of them. The variety of machines on display was very encouraging. Previous to the show, I wasn't aware of the number of designs the Printrbot crew is working on. I would've liked to see the Makergear M Series machine there. (Please don't tell me they were there, too).

[bdring]

I was pretty close to the ORD-ish bot, but more towards the front. The ORD-ish booth had fresh baked cookies too. I think that was all I ate the first day.

There were so many people that you did not have a very far line of sight to spot things (at least at my height).

[mike]

I think I've recovered from Maker Faire, and my voice isn't doing a Barry White impersonation any more

It was great meeting Bart in person, and getting a chance to talk to the ORD folk who stopped by to say Hi!

The extruders from QU-BD looked really good -- I'm thinking about using them for dual extruders when they come out.