After what has been the second longest wait from a kickstarter, (I'm looking at you HackRF) I am officially a proud owner of a 3D printer! I have been drooling for one for years but even the smallest MakerBot's price tag was way outside of my reach. And this awesome piece of machinery surpasses those early printers in every way. Up to 175mm x 175mm x 125mm at 100mm/s in 50 micron layers, nerdgasm.
Build Guide
<coming soon>
First Prints
Of course the first thing I would print should be a glass to toast the machine. I grabbed the stl for the standard reprap christening mini mug and let Repetier do its thing.
...and the result was not so good. I was still so excited I was physically shaking but I knew the machine was capable of better. With a few tweaks I thought I would give it another try. A glass should at least hold liquid.
Success! The second print came out better than I could have hoped for. The quality approaches what I have seen commercial printers get out of PLA. A comparison between print #1 and print #2:
After that things got a little fuzzy. When I snapped out of my 3D printing hysteria I was greeted with many tiny creations, each with their own lessons learned.
One final print with my final remnants of PLA that shipped with the printer. Had to show off my Jeep pride. You wouldn't download a car?
Overall I am beyond ecstatic about how this all came out. I wish I could have gotten into the movement earlier but even building a RepRap was daunting and expensive. Having a kit turned this from a 6 month build into a 6 hour build. I cannot give enough props to QU-BD for creating this awesome printer to meet the need of people like me.
