{"id":473,"date":"2008-08-02T20:41:17","date_gmt":"2008-08-03T00:41:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/?p=473"},"modified":"2008-08-02T20:41:17","modified_gmt":"2008-08-03T00:41:17","slug":"first-new-england-reprap-users-group-meeting-at-olin-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/?p=473","title":{"rendered":"First New England RepRap User&#8217;s Group Meeting at Olin College"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Toward the end of July a couple friends and I had the chance to drop in to the first New England RepRap usergroup meeting. RepRap is short for <a href=\"http:\/\/reprap.org\/bin\/view\/Main\/WebHome\">Replicating Rapid Prototyper<\/a> (a.k.a. 3D printer), the goal being an open-source machine design capable of making most of its own parts. The machine itself consists of a lightweight metal scaffold (made from inexpensive standard aluminum tubing and\/or Home-Despot-grade threaded rod), a flat (wood\/plastic) table, a printhead, and some stepper motors to move the table up and down (Z) and the printhead in the X and Y directions. The &#8220;printhead&#8221; (rather, extrusion head) pulls a thin strand of thermoplastic from a reel (kind of like extremely thick fishing line) into the moving head, where it is heated to its melting point and, on command, pooped (extruded) out of a nozzle onto the table starting at surface level. Successive layers of molten plastic are laid down, one on top of the next, to create a finished 3D plastic part.<\/p>\n<p><center><b><a href=\"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/images\/20080726_reprap\/album\/index.html\">[RepRap Usergroup Meeting Photos]<\/a><\/b><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Here are some photos and a video of a machine in action. This particular machine is an older design, and didn&#8217;t seem to have survived the transport to the meeting very well (and based on the printed parts shown at the meeting, might have still been a work in progress &#8211; the RepRap blog shows the machine is capable of <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.reprap.org\/2008\/07\/every-little-helps.html\">some much nicer parts<\/a>). Still, it was cool to see an emerging disruptive technology such as this one in a state that proves its feasibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Toward the end of July a couple friends and I had the chance to drop in to the first New England RepRap usergroup meeting. RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid Prototyper (a.k.a. 3D printer), the goal being an open-source machine design capable of making most of its own parts. The machine itself consists of a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","iawp_total_views":14,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[12,11,10],"class_list":["post-473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geek","tag-cnc","tag-machine","tag-reprap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":474,"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions\/474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tim.cexx.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}