For all you lazy buggers...

BIG news!

Ian Atkins of Bits and Bytes, where a lot of you have been getting kits to build Darwins has put together a full package of Darwin parts that is being marketed through...

[www.unimatic.co.uk]

for UKP750. At current exchange rates that is US$1,100. Unimatic is an engineering firm specialising in the education market.

The big advantage to buying from Unimatic is that while you have to screw the bits together to make the Darwin itself, all the electronics boards are fully assembled and tested for you.

Ian tells me that they will also be offering filament feed stock as well.

That is going to take SO much drama out of building and running a Darwin for you guys.

Rejoice!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/05/2009 11:03AM by Forrest Higgs.

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Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas A. Edison

Will we also supply them direct via www.bitsfrombytes.com as always.

It's the Version 3 that some of you are already waiting for.

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Ian
[www.bitsfrombytes.com]

Ian: I obviously haven't been keeping up. Are you supplying preassembled controller boards from Bits and Bytes, too?

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Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas A. Edison

Ian,

I'm glad to hear that this offering (RapMan)is a marketing/support channel for Ian's work!

Unimatic's webpage mentions both polycarbonate and UPVC in their list of extrudable polymers. Have you/they had success with these? If so, could you please give some detail about the extrusion temperatures used? Breakdown of UPVC into toxics is a concern, IMHO.

Thanks much,

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Larry Pfeffer,

My blog about building repstrap Cerberus:
[repstrap-cerberus.blogspot.com]

Why the abandonment of the RepRap name? Also, any plans to credit the photos used in the "RepMan samples" sidebar?

Exciting to see the RepRap being picked up commercially, although I hope that the open source nature of the project won't be downplayed to the customers; it would be a shame for Unimatic to succeed in widely distributing these to users who never realize the existence of, let alone participate in, the community behind the project and the replication capabilities of the machine.

I think that you need to look at it positively. Ian is going to get a lot of business and a LOT more Darwins {who cares what they're called?} are going to be out in the field. The load on the developer community is going to decline and we'll have more time to extend the state of the art.

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Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas A. Edison

The load on the developer community is going to decline? With the level of disconnect between the "Rapman" and the RepRap that there seems to be, I'm not sure this will have any effect on the community beyond Ian himself. Then again, I suppose getting more rapid prototypers into people's hands is never a bad thing.

Hey, my Darwin was built with parts directly from Ian. I wouldn't be posting here if not for Ian's help. Or producing parts for others.

So far I've contributed back to the community one complete set of Darwin parts and two more extruders, all built using Ian's hand cast Darwin parts. I think the hand cast parts were very labor intensive to produce, so now he's switched to building these RapMan lasercut Rep(Strap)s instead, to increase the production rate. From what I've seen, these RapMans (RapMen?) produce even better printed parts.

This can only be a very, very good thing! I'm a little daunted at the pile of requests I've got for more sets of Darwin parts, there's no way I can produce them without hugely scaling up my single Darwin operation. Which is exactly what Ian has been up to, and he's doing it successfully.

So hats off to Ian, and thanks!

Wade

Wade Wrote:
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>
> From
> what I've seen, these RapMans (RapMen?) produce
> even better printed parts.
>
If I heard Ian right, he's supplying the parts kits for the Rapmans, too.

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Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas A. Edison

Looking over the builders' blog conversations, it looks like things are all good and well intentioned. Kudos to Ian for making this happen!