Month: June 2016

3D Print Cost Calculator Update

Thanks for all the great feedback and suggestions from the previous post.As many of you have suggested, I am now using GitHub. Thankfully they have a desktop application now, so I can ease myself in before jumping into the command prompt again.Here’s the GitHub link. Go here for downloads and source code.: http://ift.tt/1Pqupiw v2.1.0 update is out. Basically everything is customizable now! Change electricity rates, extraneous profit costs, and add as many printers as you want without recompiling!Quick imgur of v2.1.0: http://ift.tt/1PZMYj9 ThreadOf course, suggestions are always welcome. http://ift.tt/1rovktM

Another Cautionary Tale – Check your printer for fire hazards

I just turned my printer on and got a nice whiff of burning plastic. Not the pleasant sugar of PLA or the carcinogenic ABS, but that truly nasty smell of burning plastic. And then the power on the printer started flickering on and off. Not good.I took a look at my CTC Replicator clone, and sure enough, the connector for the power to the motherboard was burnt and melted, and the ground cable to the connector had lost its insulation. The copper wiring was a nice corroded brown (rather than the shiny copper it would normally be). This tells me that the problem has been occurring for a while, I had just never noticed it.I have my printer in my bedroom, and I’m usually around when it’s printing. But even with this being the case, I hadn’t noticed the problem before today. I’m lucky that it didn’t catch fire and burn my house down.So a warning to all: Be careful, and check your power/cable connections somewhat regularly! Look for discoloration of connectors and cabling, any unusual smells of burning plastic, anything out of the ordinary.Here’s my burnt power connection: http://ift.tt/1VXTurK http://ift.tt/260Pr0C

So my college bought 40 Makerbots last year… Are we screwed?

I don’t know everything on the subject, but I understand that Makerbot is outsourcing it’s manufacturing, and people keep predicting the companies fall in about 2 years. Considering that my school bought a entire lab of their printers, of which 5 or so always seem to be malfunctioning…When and if Makerbot goes under, what will happen to our lab, and the software that supports it? http://ift.tt/1rokCU3