You have likely read of the exploits of my 3 year-old daughter. We went to the Denver Mini Maker Faire on the weekend of May 3rd and 4th. This is a follow-up to tell you what I have been doing since then. 3-D printing is now what the home computer industry was at the end of the 70’s. While I was at the Faire I saw and smelled many 3-D printers. Despite the smell I decided to see if I could find one to fit in the budget.

Make did a special on 3-D printing. I purchased it, read through it, scanned it, flipped through it, looked for other articles on-line to compare to, and purchased the digital version on my iPad Mini. All my reading kept coming back to one printer. I slowly, deliberately, and unremorsefully fell head over heals for the printrbot simple Maker edition. I found one for $250 and snatched it up.

This was the work I did on Friday, May 16th:

Here you see the circuit board with some cables plugged in. In front of the bottom of the circuit board there is a metal rod popping up. That is the Z axis (up and down) motor. On the left are some steel cylinders. These are the bearings for the X axis (left and right). I will be sliding 10″ steel rods in them. The printer table will sit on these steel rods.

On the left is the logo for printrbot. The back of the pc board is logo’d. The total height is about 6 inches (at this point). This is not a large printer folks. The surface construction is laser cut plywood. This is convenient because it glues together with bolts holding stress points.

The little sanding drum that is sticking out is the X axis motor. Between the bearings there is an end stop switch . This way the bot knows when it can not pull any more.

This was an hours work, at a leisurely pace, late one Friday night. I ran into a problem with a power connector that I solved to my satisfaction.

This reminds me of seeing the Apple 1 in a wooden case.