Some of you may recall, many months ago I posted about my Ifactory machine. Well life gets in the way sometimes, but it is running and I've been upgrading the spindle and making parts for it. Sort of a Reprap, the machine making parts to improve itself. I've posted some photos and a couple of videos. I am really anxious to get a print head installed so I can start 3D printing. I bought a QuBD extruder hot end but it clearly needs improvement.
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The purpose of the Ifactory is to get my grandson involved in manufacturing. We have one little product, a paint scraper for removing bottom paint from boats. I've got all the materials cut up ready for machining for about 8 of them. We will start machining the parts soon and hope to sell them on Ebay.
Werner Berry did a beautiful job on his Berrybot and I see Rad Racer is also building a very nice machine. Well I have been inspired to take a crack at it as well. I've got a variation on the Berrybot partially modeled in Solid Works that I have been working on for a couple of months. The design is a little different, and I believe it will be quite a bit easier to build, and should be substantially more accurate than the Berrybot. The Berrybot is probably one of the most accurate machines already so that should be pretty neat. I hope that my grandson and I will be able to offer a kit of just CNC machined parts that will allow others to build a Berrybot style machine that is very accurate using just hand tools. I have a full time job, and he is a full time elementary school student, so no kickstarters, preorders or any of that. We are just going to build some and put them up for sale on Ebay. I currently want to make parts for three. One for my grandson, and two for a couple of friends that are both electronic and computer whizzes. I expect that once they get some mechanical parts in hand the electronics will wind up being pretty amazing. Once does real time video image fusion, the other has a 1/2 million dollar circuit board assembly machine.
