Prusa Mendel parts starting to arrive

I’ve got a 3D printer build on the backburner. I picked up a set of the printed parts for a Prusa Mendel RepRap earlier this year from Paul over at MakerEngineering.com for a price that I couldn’t resist. My plan is to start building it after the CNRG/ORE robot games on June 11th are done. In order to start getting the parts in place, I ordered a set of Nema17 steppers as well as the various mechanical bits and pieces that I need to build the unit from Thingfarm NA. I likely could have sourced it all locally for less $$$, but my attention span is short enough that I didn’t want to get stuck on a fastener or two a month down the road and end up not finishing it.

Anyhow, with the pending postal strike starting tonite, the guys at Thingfarm upgraded my order to Fedex for free and I ended up getting the parts a heck of a lot faster than I was expecting! Andrew Netherton at Thingfarm NA rocks!

My kids are dying for me to get this thing up and running. They were fascinated by the machines that they saw at the Ottawa MiniMaker Faire last November and are ready to start building stuff. My one son has a list of lego figures that he wants built. 😉

My extruder nozzle is still in the mail… likely will be a few weeks until it gets here as its coming someplace in Europe and will surely by stalled by Canada Post at some point.

In celebration of the stuff arriving, I built up a new SumoORE minisumo robot in white. I hadn’t built any white ones until now because I wasn’t sure that they would look good. I was so wrong! I think white is my new favourite. I also got in my backlit 2×8 character LCDs today so I hooked a blue one up to the white robot and it looks pretty pimp.

Black is more of a traditional sumo colour in order to hide from your opponents, but white actually has some advantages too… if you manage to get under your opponent and they see the white of your blade, they may decide that they’ve seen the ring edge and start backing up! If you pull it off, its an easy win for your minisumo.