There are some things that are back in stock *now*:

60 new Sanguino kits are available.
15 more 5lb coils of ABS are available.

I’m doing RepRap stuff full time this week, and my freelance gig with the New York Times starts next week. I’ll be working part-time there, which means I’ll be able to put in 40-60 hours a week on RepRap. Lots of good things are in the pipeline. That freelance gig is probably 2-3 months, and after that its back to hacking full-time. Things are looking good. =)

Today is my last day at Vimeo. While I’m sad to leave such a fun and awesome company, I’m even more excited to be able to devote quite a bit more time to my true passion: building self-replicating 3D printers. It may not be obvious, but I’ve been extremely busy lately. On top of working a full-time job, I’ve been running the RRRF. This in and of itself is a full-time job. I think I’ve been averaging like 80 hour weeks or something crazy like that. It’s okay though, because I’m following my dream. Somehow in between orders, I’ve even managed to squeeze some research in.

The coming months are going to be very interesting, and I imagine that quite a few amazing things are going to come out of it. Obviously I’m going to be able to devote lots more time to research, and I have a list of things that I’ll be working feverishly on:

• lasercut extruder design (by Ian Adkins)
• lasercut darwin design (by Ian Adkins)
• new generation 3 electronics based on the Sanguino
• new stepper driver (cheaper, better, stronger, opto isolated)
• new opto isolator circuit design
• combined PWM / DC motor driver w/ MOSFETS and built-in opto isolation
• cool sanguino breakout shield
• hot new RepRap software and drivers for both Arduino and Sanguino

Basically, I’m really excited to have the chance to follow my dreams. I’d like to thank all the people who have ever bought something from the RRRF (all 800 of you!) Please stay tuned: the revolution has only just begun.

This is bad news with a bit of good/optimistic news. The bad news is that we’ve bought out all of the H21LOI chips from every North American supplier. Lead times from the manufacturer are about 34 weeks. The good news is that we managed to buy about a thousand opto isolators, and the RRRF is doing great. Our project is strong.

If you have a source for these parts that doesn’t charge an arm and a leg (ie: overseas suppliers) please let me know!

In the meantime, here is our solution: we’re switching to the H21LOB which is the H21LOI’s brother, but its output is inverted. We’ll be doing a new rev of the board as to eliminate confusion. It should be out within the month.

Complete Electronics Kits

I managed to order the last 87 H21LOIs from Digikey. Unfortunately we will have to start rationing the opto switches until the new board is out. We will only be sending out 3 endstops (instead of 6) for each order. Once I fill the outstanding orders, I’ll double check inventory and post the remaining ones on the site.

Lasercut McWire Cartesian Bots

I must apologize because it is taking a while to get the parts lasercut. It’s been nearly impossible to get to the FabLab to lasercut lately, and life has just been busy. Fortunately, NYC Resistor, the local hackerspace that I helped start has bought a lasercutter, and its being installed this week. Expect to see many new and exciting lasercut items coming out soon.

I’m going on vacation! I’m leaving NYC on Saturday, August 16th. I’m flying to Portland, Oregon with my wonderful girlfriend, Jen. We’re renting a convertible, and we’re driving down to San Francisco over the course of a week, camping and enjoying ourselves along the way. We fly back Saturday, August 23rd.

Basically, what this means is I’ll be out of town for a week, and no orders will be filled during that time.

The cutoff date for getting your order shipped is Wednesday, August 13th by 7PM EST. Any orders after that will be shipped Monday, August 25th.

I’ll explain the reason for the vacation in a follow up post, but I have good news for the future of RepRap and the RRRF.

Zach Smith
Director, RRRF

You can buy a kit from the RRRF for $25 or check out the Sanguino website.

Sanguino: Arduino’s Big Brother from Zach 'Iowa' Hoeken on Vimeo.

I’m proud to announce a new kit today that is the result of a couple of months of solid work. It is called the Magnetic Rotary Encoder, and it is awesome! When assembled, this board provides positioning feedback in multiple data formats. It uses a magnet, so there are no moving parts to wear out and its fairly tolerant of mis-alignment. Its also very precise, offering 10 bits of positional data (1024 different positions in 360 degrees.) This board sets a few new firsts for us at the RRRF:

1. First surface mount kit/pcb.
2. First board intended primarily for experimentation.
3. First board to use IDC headers!

You can buy it from the RRRF store for $20, and read all about it in the documentation.

Donations!

I am now accepting donations from the RRRF shop directly. A couple people have expressed interest in donating a bit extra on their order. Also, someone wanted to buy me a beer via the store, but I was unable to do so before. If you’d like to buy me a beer via the store, you can now simply add a donation to your cart. You must specify that you’d like the donation to go towards beer, otherwise I will spend it on PCBs and other stuff instead. Thanks!

The only downside is that the 12v motor costs a bit more, so I had to raise the price from $6.50 to $7.00

If you’re interested, I encourage you to buy today, as there has been quite a bit of interest, and I feel like that kit may sell out rather quickly. As always the RRRF is a not-for-profit and the money goes back into the RRRF to buy more kits for others and to fund further RepRap research.

Additionally, after many requests, the RRRF will now be accepting back orders on many of the easily obtainable products. This will help those who are interested in getting the products, as well as help the RRRF obtain those products. One of the main stumbling blocks so far has been that the RRRF is working with very limited capital, which makes it hard to keep all the items people want in stock. Having money available to buy more of those things will prevent more situations like: “The RRRF has $1k. Should I buy $1k worth of steppers, or should I buy $1k of stepper driver kits.”

You can buy the kit, the pcb, or read the documentation.

As always, your purchases with the RRRF allow us to continue our research and bring you even more awesome, open source hardware goodness.

You can even get an Arduino Diecimilia and USB cable as well!

You can buy it from the RRRF store today!