[Imc-makerspace] purchase possibilites

[Colten Jackson]

A few options for 3D printers:

Printrbot:
$550 6x6 build platform: http://printrbot.com/shop/printrbot/
$700 8x8 build platform: http://printrbot.com/shop/printrbot-2/

these have a 3 week lead time til shipping, and the guy who started
the company sounds pretty great. From the reprap wiki:
http://reprap.org/wiki/Printrbot

"Through our "Print It Forward" program, we will ask each school to
print, assemble and donate a Printrbot to 3 other schools. Although
everyone is welcome to source their own parts, Printrbot.com will
offer discounts to make this feasible. By relying on schools and
Printrbot owners to print 3 other sets of parts to construct a
Printrbot, we hope to spread the RepRap love far and wide!"

Pretty true to the original Replicator dream, throw in a few parts
from the hardware store - $130 for the Printrbot motherboard to run
the whole thing. Maybe we can start a makerspace replicator program,
get makerspaces to build Printrbots for each other.

The Prusa Mandel:

$500 8x8x5.5 build envelope, includes all the parts except ones that
can be printed.
http://www.a2aprinter.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=42

Available from a lot of places, here's a list on the wiki:
http://reprap.org/wiki/Mendel_Buyers_Guide

This is most economical, judging from the availability it looks to be
the most popular.

Strangely, the original Makerbot Thing-o-Matic doesn't seem to be for
sale anywhere. They retailed at $1,100 anyway. There's a new, bigger
one for $1,700 they're selling on the Makerbot website.
http://store.makerbot.com/replicator-404.html

So we can talk about how much DIY we want to do, see if we can get in
contact with another makerspace that already has a 3d printer, see if
they can help us replicate it for us :) I think doing it
collaboratively would be the most fun, and get some guys with
experience to help us out.

On the other hand, for $200 more I really like the printrbot, much
cleaner design, 8"x8"x8" build envelope is the biggest, the Makerbot
Replicator is ~9"x6"x6"

Printrbot is largely laser cut wood construction, so we could do it a
lot cheaper if we collab with the fab lab and buy the parts seperately
- but there's not anything on the wikis i can find about people who
have already done so, so we'd be first adapters with this guy.

Totally different topic but it came across in my Singularity Hub
newsletter and I thought I'd share:

There's this guy, an open source DIY robot. We could play with gesture
recognition and autonomous navigation.
http://singularityhub.com/2012/05/01/want-a-robot-at-home-qbo-is-up-for-pre-order/

Lot's to talk about, hope this helps.