3D Printing

The last two weeks have seen sales starting to increase slightly, I'm guessing that this might have something to do with the school holidays. The weather is a bit more variable, and sales always seem to be up slightly when it rains.
As ever, we have been really busy on the developement front (or playing, according to Kate)

3D printing is now viable in the workshop. I spent 12 hours over the last week or so assembling and calibrating a RepRap 3D printer. The printer was bought in kit form from RepRapPro, and was delivered in 10 days, just as promised.
Our Printer is the RepRap Mono Mendel. All the reprap printers are named after biologists.
I should have taken photos throughout the build, but to be honest, the instructions on the RepRapPro wiki are just so good, it is unneccessary for me to document further.
The only stumbling block came when it was time to download the software.
We have gone with Pronterface, and I didn't spot the "download all" button on GitHub, after several frustrating hours, I called in the big guns (Steve, our IT consultant). Steve looked, pondered, quizzed and generally drank all the coffe in the place before pointing out the download all button (do I need glasses?) 5 minutes later, we were ready to go.

As you can see from the close-up, I sleeved all the stepper motor wires. I only had green and yellow coloured sleeving, so I used this. I sleeved th wires because I was uncomfortable tie-wrapping them directly to screwed bar, the threads can be quite sharp, and easily able to puncture the PVC coating on the wires.
Things to note:

1. Before downloading anything, make a new folder for your files, we called ours 3D,  save everything to this location, and it will create a folder for your images, we store all our image file there
2. Do run through a calibration routine, the wiki for this is here
3. Do take your time, its easy to rush through, particularly when it comes to squaring the frame up. Time spent doing this right will pay off later. Work to the finest tolerance you can.
4. Don't assume that the settings are just right, all the options are fully configurable. If your prints are not great right off the bat, change something and look at the result
5. Do change only one setting at a time, so you can see what changes that makes

The plastic extrudes from the nozzle and sticks to the glass heated bed, but only if the glass is clean. I tried acetone, and this was hopeless. The best result came from a damp cloth with detergent, and then drying the glass with tissue.
Printing with black!
Not Happening! A new roll of PLA was delivered, and no matter what I tried, all I got was a big blob around the nozzle. result? the PLA was not good, and part of a bad batch, so it is being returned :(

Here is a very short video of the first print