I’ve been a busy bee over here at the RRRF. I’ve got 2 cool new boards that are very useful.

Thermocouple Sensor v1.0
This board provides simple, reliable, accurate, and large range (up to 1300C!) temperature sensing in a small package. It’s perfect for use with an Arduino board, or any other uC with an ADC converter on it. The board itself is cheap ($1.00), but the chip (AD595) costs about $15, and the thermocouple costs about $15 as well. Well worth it though.

Kit coming soon (next week!)

Arduino Breakout Shield v1.1
This board is a great addition to any prototyper’s toolbox. It plugs into an Arduino and transforms all pins into easy to use screw-terminal pins. Not only that, but it also gives you extra 5V, GND, 3.3V, and Supply voltage pins. Perfect for wiring up semi-permanent projects as well as prototyping. It’s pretty cheap too, only $10.00.

Kit coming soon (next week!)

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I’m proud to announce that the RRRF is now offering a new kit:

New: Opto Endstop Kit

Okay, its a super basic kit, but its a good first step towards offering the rest of our boards as kits. Its cheap too, at $2.25/per kit. You can get it from the store.

Back in Stock: Extruder Motors

The Solarbotics GM3 gearboxes are back in stock. I got 50 this time, so hopefully I’ll be able to maintain that for a month or so. Get it from the store.

Coming Soon: Lasercut McWire Kits

I have access to a lasercutter, and it means that I can get these kits lasercut on demand, and I dont need to do a bulk preorder. The leadtime will be about 1 week, but you’ll get a kit made by yours truly. Now in cool RepRap green! Also, the price has dropped to $100/kit. Woo! Order from the store.

Coming Soon: Stepper Motor Driver Kit

This is a favorite from folks, and being able to offer a kit with all the parts will be awesome. I dont have a timeframe yet, but probably 2-4 weeks is a good guess. Yay!

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Back in Stock

Back by popular demand, we have the old-style PIC based universal controller boards back in stock. Not only that, but there has been a price drop as well! They are now only $40/each for the pcb kit, and $6/each for the individual boards.

Coming Soon!

Opto Endstop Kits
I just ordered enough parts for full kits for the opto endstops. Its part of my bigger plan to eventually offer all the electronics as full kits that contain not only the PCB, but all the components needed for that PCB. Then all you’d have to do is buy the kit and assemble it. It will be nice because you’ll be guaranteed to have the proper parts and such. Yay!

Extruder Motors
I ran out of stock of the GM3 extruder motors, and I reordered 50 more a few days ago. They will be back soon!

Machined Extruder Parts
The next planned major purchase of the RRRF is to get the machined extruder parts made at Emachineshop.com (ptfe barrel, heater barrel, drive screw) I’ll probably have to do them in sets, as money becomes available since i’ll have to order at least $400 worth of each to make it make sense financially. More details as they come in.

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So, non profit corporations still have to file a tax form every year (Form 990) and I spent the better part of Sunday doing exactly that. I haven’t submitted it yet, precisely because I’m not 100% sure its right. I *think* its right… but many eyes make bugs shallow, right?

Anyway, if you are interested in helping out by looking over the tax form, feel free to do so! The tax form is a public document for non profits, so it would be public after filing it anyway. I’ve taken the luxury of checking it into subversion so that it wont get lost. It is located here: http://svn.reprap.org/trunk/users/hoeken/rrrf/taxes/2007/f990ez-2007.pdf

On the plus side, it is nice to have a cool overview of how 2007 went (it was the first year of the RRRF) We had a good amount of sales, and decent growth. Hopefully 2008 will be even better!

I’ll probably be submitting it March 15th, so get any comments to me before then!

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Universal Controller v1.2
I finally got enough cash flow to be able to afford another bulk round of PCBs. This time, its the Universal Controller Board. I ordered it yesterday, and it should be in stock within 10 days. I’ll definitely make a posting.

Donations!
The RRRF almost always has all of its money tied up into various items and we’re not quite to the point where we have enough cash to buy everything we want to be able to provide to researchers, but we’re getting closer. We’ve never really actively solicited donations, but a few people have asked about getting a donation box going. If you want to put such a box for donations to the RRRF on your website, here is the code you need:

<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post"><input type="hidden" name="cmd"value="_donations"><input type="hidden" name="business" value="hoeken@rrrf.org"><input type="hidden" name="item_name" value="RepRap Research Foundation"><input type="hidden" name="no_shipping" value="0"><input type="hidden" name="no_note" value="1"><input type="hidden" name="currency_code" value="USD"><input type="hidden" name="tax" value="0"><input type="hidden" name="lc" value="US"><input type="hidden" name="bn" value="PP-DonationsBF"><input type="image" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donate_LG.gif" border="0" name="submit" alt="Make payments with PayPal - it’s fast, free and secure!"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" height="1"><br /> </form>

or, send them to this link: Donate to the RRRF.

Oh, and if you want to donate to the RRRF, theres a button the the bottom left. We’d sure appreciate it!

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New Space with NYC Resistor!
Contrary to the grand name of the RepRap Research Foundation, its a small one-man operation. Previously, the RRRF was being run out of a small, 10′x20′ lofted space that I rented from my work. That was great, but it was not convenient at all. It was located in a part of Brooklyn that was not on my way home, and I wasted hours every week commuting. Recently, my friends and I started a hacker space here called NYC Resistor. We recently found and moved into a space in downtown Brooklyn which is much closer to me and basically awesome. It’s directly on my way home right now which means I save a ton of time. Not only that, but I’ll be surrounded by smart electronics hackers all the time.

McWire Cartesian Bot Preorder
There has been a lot of interest recently in the McWire Cartesian Bot we’ve designed as a RepStrap platform. Due to the small nature of the RRRF at this point in time, we just don’t have the capital to fund an order of the parts. Instead, we’re doing a pre-order of lasercut parts. That way, the purchase is self-funding, everyone will get the parts they want, and things will be awesome. The cost is $125 and you can preorder on the RRRF Store.

First Print!
Sometimes I get so caught up in doing infrastructure work, documentation, and RRRF stuff that I don’t have enough time to work on my actual machine and do cool stuff. That all changed last weekend. I finally found some time to crank through some code and some bugs to get a first print on my Darwin machine! You can read more on the builders blog. Also cool to note is that this print was done using the Arduino electronics.

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Long time, no post. It’s pretty quiet on the RRRF front. I’m spending most of my time these days working on the actual machine which is a nice change. =) Still wanna get going on kits, but I also want time to actually enjoy building cool robots. Anyway, here’s whats up:

New Product: CAPA Filament
I got some CAPA filament from the UK. This plastic is very rare in filament form, and will probably go quickly. Order yours now if you dont want to miss out. Buy it here.

Price Drop: Stepper Motor Driver
Holy cow! I managed to re-order a board before it was out of stock. Not only that, but its now $2.50 cheaper!!! Now only $5.00 / ea. This board will drive the motor above, very nicely. Buy it here.

Back in stock: HDPE
Finally managed to get another shipment in. Lugging around 100lbs of plastic from my work to the lab on the NYC subways sure isn’t fun, but its definitely worth it to help out the RepRap community. Buy it here.

Out of stock stuff:
The universal boards our out of stock, as well as the dc motor driver boards. Unfortunately this means both electronics kits are out of stock. They have both been re-ordered and will be back in stock next week. Also, we’re out of stock on extruder stuff, but hope to have that back in stock soon as well. Stay tuned!

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Well, I’m back from my holiday break. I kicked 2008 in with a bang, and I’m ready to start rocking and rolling in 2008. I have big plans and I think things are really going to be awesome in the new year. I finally get back to the lab tonight and I’ll ship out the orders that I got while I was away.

Here’s whats new:

Price Drop: PowerComms v1.3
I did a huge order, and now I’m passing on the savings to you. From $5.00 to $3.50. Good stuff.

Out of Stock: Stepper Motors
These guys sold out in like 4 days. I’m ordering another round. These guys sure are fun!

New Product: Skate Bearings
Skate bearings are used heavily in the McWire design and are just generally awesome and handy. Unfortunately they are kinda pricey through skate shops. I found a bulk supplier and now am proud to offer some high quality YAK ABEC-3 bearings. A pack of 8 costs $5.00. Pretty darn good price I’d say.

RRRF New Years Resolutions:

• Kits, kits, kits! I want electronics kits + components, full extruder kits, and the holy grail: full RepRap machine kit.
• Keep everything in stock. Not always possible, but I’m trying.
• Get 501.3(c) tax exemption. We’re registered as a non-profit, but we don’t have the tax exemption… yet. I filled out most of the paperwork and now just have to go over it with the Software Freedom lawyers.
• Lose 5 pounds. (shipping costs hurt, ya know?

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Wow. Things have been crazy around here. I finally got caught up on all the orders from the MAKE podcast. I’m very sorry to those whose order was delayed, but that order volume was unprecedented, and I just got swamped. I’ve changed the software around to take quantity into account, so it should only allow you to buy things that are in stock from now on out. Also, its still just a one-man operation, and that one man (me!!) works a full-time job on the side, lol. I love ya though!

Anyway, here is the major news this round:

Vacation Notice:

I’m leaving home for xmas vacation and the last day to place orders if you want them shipped out in 2007 is December 20th, by 9pm EST. If you dont order by then, I wont be able to ship it out in time. Sorry for the short notice. Cheers!

Stepper Motors now in stock!
We ordered a bunch (48) of stepper motors from Keling Technology, Inc. These bad-boys are some awesome dual shafted NEMA 23 stepper motors, perfect for either Darwin or McWire. They really rock hard. Good power output, 8 wires for many different potential configurations, etc, etc. They’re also cheap… only $25 /ea.
You can buy them here.

Darwin Molded Parts Coming
I’ve placed an order from Ian over at Bitsfrombytes.com for 10 sets of molded parts for Darwin. They should be here in about a month. Once those sell out, I’ll purchase more. Regardless, the parts you need to assemble a Darwin style RepRap are *on their way*!

McWire Cartesian Bot Kits Coming
The McWire design is an alternative design based on lasercut acrylic and pipes that is quite robust and easy to assemble. It is intended to be a RepStrap design you can use for a variety of awesome things. I’ll be finishing up and documenting the design in January, and I have a lasercutter lined up to get kits out.

PCB + Component Kits Coming
One of the things I’d really like to accomplish in the new year is getting full electronic kits assembled. Kits that come with the PCB + all the components you need to assemble the kit… all for cheaper than you could buy them separately, except all from one place. (me!) No more buying PCB’s, digging up a bill of materials, and ordering the parts. (well, not like its that hard with parts.reprap.org, but still.)

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I’m looking for a machinist to make some of the parts for the extruder kit. More information is on the builders blog. I need your help in finding the best price… because it will help everyone!

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