Reprap 2014?

Hi guys. I'm new here. I just built my first 3d printer, a prusa i3, from a kit I got from makerfarm. I love the whole opensource idea which is why I want to build another soon. But it seems to me like there hasnt been anything new and cutting edge. It looks like the last few years have just been the mendel and prusa redesigned over and over again. Is reprap running dry? Does the future only hold yet another mendel variant?

I dont mean to bash anyone, its just I'm debating building my own custom reprap variant soon or waiting to see if 2014 holds anything special enough to wait on my new build.

I think you are missing the overview. Great improvements are made on different parts every week!

New kinds of hotends, new ways of extruding, new plastics, new vitamins, new electronics, new designs for X-ends and X-carriages, new materials for print bed surfaces...

I am currently designing and building a i3 mendel90 with some of my own ideas thrown in hybrid because I couldn't find a machine that met all my requirements

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Ohmarinus
I think you are missing the overview. Great improvements are made on different parts every week!

New kinds of hotends, new ways of extruding, new plastics, new vitamins, new electronics, new designs for X-ends and X-carriages, new materials for print bed surfaces...

Maybe I am missing this. Is there some sort of compendium for the new parts, besides being buried in random build threads?

I find it funny how you didn't get a reply to this question.

I'm bumping because I want to know the answer.

Me personally I've always been able to spot the weaknesses of machines and I usually built my own. Everything out there is based upon dollars and cents and not optimal performance. If I were you I would just go about building my own one thing to think about is the strength of the Z almost everything out there is nowhere near rigid enough that's why everybody likes the remote extruder idea keeping the weight of the extruder off the X carriage. But the major problem with this is it's not optimal if you make the Z rigid enough and motors with enough torque you will be able to move it fast with the weight of the extruder and achieve much better prints. You need a strong frame and your linear systems have to be continuously mounted not just round shafts supported on both ends that's a good start

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/16/2014 09:37PM by cnc dick.

I have just finished building my own design of i3.
It has a main powered heated bed controlled by a solidstate relay which in turn is controlled by the RAMPS.
It has 80mm fans that follow the tool head for cooling the part (automatic switch on and off) Has built in 3W LEDs that also follow the tool head.
The spool holder is built in too.
Changed from 5M Z leadscrews to M6 because they are 1mm per turn instead of 0.8mm per turn and are also stonger and normally straighter too.
Fitted Auto Bed Leveling (what a dream to use)
Increased the bed size to 200 x 250mm and the height to 275mm print size.
My own design of hotend, fan cooled all metal.
Built in LCD controller so I can print without a computer when needed (most of the time I use the LCD)
Every part has been redesigned to suit what I want.
Works well so far.
Once you have a printer, it is not too hard to redesign another to suit your own needs, in fact it is a very lot of fun.

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[regpye.com.au]
"Experience is the mother of all knowledge." --Leonardo da Vinci

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gman
I'm debating building my own custom reprap variant soon

You see? That's why there are no "RepRap" improvements. Because everybody builds his own.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

The official variants you see tend to be an accumulation of upgrades, updates and hacks.
Its best seen with Prusa i1 vs i2, the design its pretty much the same just with better printed parts, bearings and other tweaks.

You pretty much never see two identical RepRaps as every user wants slightly different things, spends different amounts or has different options available.
Thats were a lot of the official tweaks come from; someone has trouble with the nuts falling out of the endstop holders so designs one with nut holder everyone likes the idea so it becomes the new standard.

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My Reprap blog

jds-reprap.blogspot.com

it dried up years ago.
the forums are swamped with tech support problems that were solved years ago and could easily be figured out with a simple search.
It's really hard to get people to edit the wiki, especially because there's nobody providing any direction on what we should edit.
any real development happens on peoples individual blogs and never gets catologued on the wiki.
I hate to say it but i think the reprap project is dead, and it's just the library of support information that keeps the people coming here.

Occasionally you can find a new idea, but you have to be very active to spot it before it gets burried under all the help requests. For example this topic was created recently which could lead somewhere if someone is willing to experiment: [forums.reprap.org].

Maybe there needs to be a clearer separation between help and development.

i would also like to see a better separation of general help vs general development.

but i think there is still a lot of good ideas out there.

i wish there was a way to start to think about some sort of reprap foundation.

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[mike-mack.blogspot.com]

Ditto, there are help and support forums, and even spicific forums for specific parts and printer models and yet you find all sorts in the Repprappres and general forum, perhaps moderation and moving of posts?

Use the "Report" button to alert the mods to move a subject to a different forum.
I use the "Report" button almost every day.
If you don't clean up the forums it becomes difficult to find information.

I didn't know what the "Developers" section was for.
It needs a better descriptor, or a different title.

I think the term Developers comes from programmers, I have no idea in what context they use that term.

I'm an engineer, in general I develop new ideas into a finished product, but the term developer never comes up in conversation.

Maybe "Research and Development" is better, with a note that post in that forum are to hammer out how a new "machine feature" might be accomplished.

"Let's design something! (I've got an idea ...)" is really confusing, look at the post, it's all mixed up.
The title needs to be changed to some thing else.

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Buback
It's really hard to get people to edit the wiki, especially because there's nobody providing any direction on what we should edit.

What direction do you need? A recommendation to put a FAQ into the wiki page of each item and answer questions there instead of here in the forum?

If yes, please go ahead and do it this way.

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Buback
I hate to say it but i think the reprap project is dead

Not quite. There's a small group still developing the hobbyist/altruistic way. @bryanandaimee and @bobc come to mind. And once everybody is off to the commercials I see good chances this way of developing is kept.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

Something like a to do page with a table; Page (link to page if its a current page), Type (electronics, printer, etc), Model (Prusa i3, RAMPS, Stepstick, etc), Work to be done, Importance

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My Reprap blog

jds-reprap.blogspot.com

Should we move this conversation over to the Administration, Announcements, Policy forum? Perhaps two new topics there. One for discussing forum reorganisation, and another for the wiki. Both with the focus of making development easier to find. If this is a good idea then I'm happy to create these topics * and quote relevant points that have been made already.

* When I get home from work tonight.

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dissidence
I wish there was a way to start to think about some sort of reprap foundation.

Not going to happen. We had that a long time ago, and the person running it abandoned it to start Makerbot. No "foundation" can survive without a person to champion it, protect it, operate it day-to-day. If this person could draw a salary from the foundation, then perhaps this could work. But there is zero incentive for an unpaid volunteer to take on such a thankless and demanding job.

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samp20
Occasionally you can find a new idea, but you have to be very active to spot it before it gets buried under all the help requests. For example this topic was created recently which could lead somewhere if someone is willing to experiment: [forums.reprap.org].

I don't know if this supports your point or refutes it, but that particular topic has been discussed at length in other places on the forum (for example: Full Color 3d Printer Project). If OP had done a little more searching, maybe they would have just read that thread instead of starting a new one.

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JoeDaStudd
Something like a to do page with a table; Page (link to page if its a current page), Type (electronics, printer, etc), Model (Prusa i3, RAMPS, Stepstick, etc), Work to be done, Importance

The RepRap Bounty Tracker is ideal for something like this. It is one giant to-do list and right now it is empty. There is a whole subforum intended to help encourage research and development with bounties but it is pretty quiet.

There are way too many subforums which must make it hard to moderate. I don't know the numbers, but i'm assuming there are too few moderators for the volume of visitors.

Maybe wiki-style editing is too clunky for most of what people would like to post. I know that's the case for me. When i was doing a lot of editing, i had to learn a whole mess of wiki esoterica to properly format my postings. I'm sure there are many people that would rather spend their time developing their widget than learning wiki editing.

There's a bit of a leadership vacuum without Adrian or Ed. There are many that promote the reprap project and printers in general, but nobody to really lead the community. I also feel that there's a strain of anarchy in some members who prefer the freeform, organic, laissez-faire, chaotic situation we're in, which is counter-productive. I was doing the Latest Stable Build to try to codify the developments of the community on a yearly basis and ended up spending so much time arguing semantics that it sapped my will to continue.

of course, the spirit of reprap lives on but it's not under the reprap umbrella

edit: I designed the Prism, but there are (afaik) so few users i don't know if it deserves it's own forum, or at least it should be a subforum of extruded aluminum (or even in a "legacy printers" forum). the mods can start there, to get the ball rolling.

Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 03/18/2014 03:46PM by Buback.

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Buback
There are way too many subforums which must make it hard to moderate. I don't know the numbers, but i'm assuming there are too few moderators for the volume of visitors.

Yep. There aren't very many active admins on these forums. I try to do what I can, but it's a lot of work trying to keep everyone posting in the proper forums, etc. At least the spam problem is quite small now.

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Buback
edit: I designed the Prism, but there are (afaik) so few users i don't know if it deserves it's own forum, or at least it should be a subforum of extruded aluminum (or even in a "legacy printers" forum). the mods can start there, to get the ball rolling.

Feel free to post suggestions to the "Administration, Announcements, Policy" sub-forum for changes you would like to see to the forums or wiki. I was thinking of adding a new sticky in "General" that would point people there, and maybe one for a list of wiki pages that need help. Unfortunately, it seems that most people don't read stickies or even do a basic search before posting. See the view count of the stickies currently in "General" vs. some of the other threads.

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Buback
Maybe wiki-style editing is too clunky for most of what people would like to post. I know that's the case for me. When i was doing a lot of editing, i had to learn a whole mess of wiki esoterica to properly format my postings. I'm sure there are many people that would rather spend their time developing their widget than learning wiki editing.

It's not hard to learn, but it definitely is a bit clunky. I think the hope was that anyone can take an existing page with the format they like, copy/paste it to a new page, and just go through and edit text, using more copy/paste as necessary. There really shouldn't be too much that has to be learned. I haven't done much wiki editing, but am trying to get into it. If it can be cleaned up and organized, it could be a great reference. There already is a wealth of information there, it's just kind of a mess.

Edit: I might have to become the new SebastienBailard and start pushing the wiki as much as I can! The way I got my start years ago was by reading the wiki and these forums, back when most developments happened here. I would like to see a return to that as much as possible, though I do realize that the commercializing of everything RepRap will make that difficult.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/18/2014 04:14PM by NewPerfection.

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Help improve the RepRap wiki! Just click "Edit" in the top-right corner of the page and start typing. Anyone can edit the wiki!

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Buback
it dried up years ago.
the forums are swamped with tech support problems that were solved years ago and could easily be figured out with a simple search.
It's really hard to get people to edit the wiki, especially because there's nobody providing any direction on what we should edit.
any real development happens on peoples individual blogs and never gets catologued on the wiki.
I hate to say it but i think the reprap project is dead, and it's just the library of support information that keeps the people coming here.

In truth, this forum is about 50% used as a place for small businesses to discreetly leverage free advertising and for people to voice opinions about those things. The other 50% is made up of tech support, like you say and innovation (probably making up a small portion of that ~5%).

It's mostly a source of good information.. as for the project itself, I think it's been taken close to the limit that is sensible. Some parts will never make sense to print.. but to say the reprap project is dead implies that nobody is using printers to make printers. Development of the project might be stagnant, but in the past year, I've seen more people acquire a 3d printer via another 3d printer than every year before that combined. So it ain't dead.. but very few people are jumping to 3d print a plastic stepper motor for instance because it wouldn't work out very well and it hardly adds value to the project.

ya know i think one thing that i have noticed, is that not all the development is going on here so much, with so many other printers out there, i think more and more is going on outside of this forum/body than most people think.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/18/2014 09:02PM by dissidence.

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[mike-mack.blogspot.com]

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MattMoses

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JoeDaStudd
Something like a to do page with a table; Page (link to page if its a current page), Type (electronics, printer, etc), Model (Prusa i3, RAMPS, Stepstick, etc), Work to be done, Importance

The RepRap Bounty Tracker is ideal for something like this. It is one giant to-do list and right now it is empty. There is a whole subforum intended to help encourage research and development with bounties but it is pretty quiet.

Meant more to do with cleaning up the Wiki and making as much as information as possible available while being readable.
There is a lot of good information out there, but its split between random wiki pages, forum posts, blogs, thingiverse and youtube videos.
It makes it harder for anyone starting, means their could be dozens people spending time solving an issue which has already been fixed by someone and generally muddies the water.
If it could all be consolidated as much as possible in one place it would be amazing. I don't mind doing some of the work, but my knowledge is limited and I'm not well versed in wiki editing and management.

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My Reprap blog

jds-reprap.blogspot.com

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JoeDaStudd
Meant more to do with cleaning up the Wiki and making as much as information as possible available while being readable.
There is a lot of good information out there, but its split between random wiki pages, forum posts, blogs, thingiverse and youtube videos.
It makes it harder for anyone starting, means their could be dozens people spending time solving an issue which has already been fixed by someone and generally muddies the water.
If it could all be consolidated as much as possible in one place it would be amazing. I don't mind doing some of the work, but my knowledge is limited and I'm not well versed in wiki editing and management.

I've added some information on this to my signature. I'm going to try and lead an effort to clean up the wiki, and hopefully I can get some help doing so. I still believe it can be the go-to resource for open source RepRap-based 3D printers.

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Help improve the RepRap wiki! Just click "Edit" in the top-right corner of the page and start typing. Anyone can edit the wiki!

We could designate a month as "wiki editing month" and really publicize it during that month. maybe even designate other months on a "reprap calander" to push other stuff forward. General calls for wiki editing are great, but that most people treat them as white noise.

this is one of the best threads i've seen in months, btw.

I've added another task on the todo page to tidy up the subcategories and pages under the Development Index (The link in the left navigation pane). For example there's subcategories Development Software and Software when only one is really needed. This probably needs discussing a bit more first.

I'll be happy to lend a hand with the tidy up

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2014 01:51PM by samp20.

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samp20
I'll be happy to lend a hand with the tidy up

Cool, hopefully we can get more help.

On a side note: I'm not sure why colons ( : ) in URL's break forum posts sometimes.

On another side note: I wish there was an option to disable smileys in posts. I've turned the option on in the forum settings, but the option doesn't seem to appear when posting. I think a file needs to be modified somewhere.

Further side note: I figured out the colon URL problem. The forum tries to replace URL text with smilies if it matches one of the defaults, like : P  : D  : )  : X  : S  : o

An additional side note: Even replacing colons with the HTML character code for a colon ( & #58; without the space) doesn't prevent smiley creation. Annoying.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2014 02:18PM by NewPerfection.

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Help improve the RepRap wiki! Just click "Edit" in the top-right corner of the page and start typing. Anyone can edit the wiki!

I am not here to rock the boat but I would like to voice my opinion on this.

I believe the Wiki is a lost cause as nothing in RepRap stays the same for more than a few weeks at best. So when ever there is a page about a subject like electronics it needs to be edited all the time to be kept up to date. But that requires the person developing that item to know about that general electronics page and update that page, plus the individual page for their electronics, plus their file repo, plus post about it here. I think if the wiki were to have all general pages removed and only have the pages with individual subjects on them (as in one page for RAMPS 1.4, one page for Gen7, etc) and no general page it would remove a lot of the confusion (you won't find pages like that on wikipedia). Let the automatic indexing be done by the tags and stop creating pages that need to be manually updated every time something is added.

Also when I started in RepRap I had no idea that the forum was for Development and not for help. All other forums I have used for a device or product were created to give help to those that need it.

I personally feel the forum is the best (official RepRap place) to keep up with developments because the newest stuff is near the top and the old goes away. That is the opposite of the Wiki where the oldest stuff gets the most hits because of how search engines sort things by popularity. I see a lot of posts that start with the wiki says this is the current or best or newest and those items are so outdated most of us know nothing about them. This is why the Wiki needs to be impartial, no pages that are based on opinion, just pages with facts about one specific item.

Another thing that is hurting RepRap is the people that have moved to things like G+ which makes the Forum here look like the most well organized place on the web.

Last thing I would like to add is the main thing that I think has damaged RepRap is commercialism. If it were not for all the people getting into RepRap for profit I think there would be more good stuff being posted. But as it is I have stopped posting ideas and the such because they get taken by people looking to market the idea and not share the development. Not to say that everyone or even the majority is like that but there are enough of them to make people hide their work now.

My opinion on what would help the forum would be to make the pages actual Sub pages of headings. Right now people come along and start looking at the forum and see the first section heading is marked "FORUM" and then " Library - projects, parts, arts, docs, and policy" and then they stop scrolling. If there were just a few sections on the first page that forced people to make a decision on which section they wanted to post in they may actually post somewhere other than the general section. If you look at the "Printing" forum that got moved up to the "FORUM" section it is getting a lot more usage because that is as far as people scroll.

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FFF Settings Calculator	Gcode post processors	Geometric Object Deposition Tool Blog
Tantillus.org	Mini Printable Lathe	How NOT to install a Pololu driver

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Sublime
I believe the Wiki is a lost cause as nothing in RepRap stays the same for more than a few weeks at best. So when ever there is a page about a subject like electronics it needs to be edited all the time to be kept up to date. But that requires the person developing that item to know about that general electronics page and update that page, plus the individual page for their electronics, plus their file repo, plus post about it here. I think if the wiki were to have all general pages removed and only have the pages with individual subjects on them (as in one page for RAMPS 1.4, one page for Gen7, etc) and no general page it would remove a lot of the confusion (you won't find pages like that on wikipedia). Let the automatic indexing be done by the tags and stop creating pages that need to be manually updated every time something is added.

I agree 90% with everything you said except I think the opposite w/ regards to the wiki.
I like the wiki, but it just doesn't work for printer designs. Something like Github is a better format for those, which keeps all the files together and updated, with a single person responsible per design, and easy forking. having a clear forking/branching arrangement would also be nice since it would allow a user to go back and look at an early generation, which might have similar and more comprehensive build docs.

Where the wiki would be useful is with general knowledge, like understanding gear ratios or belt standards or thermoplastic options. I know there are a number of great pages, such as the Glossary, that are useful for any new user regardless of their printer type. I had to learn a whole new lingo when i first started, and i think that's why so many people post "what should i buy" questions; They don't know where to start or even understand what they're looking for.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2014 03:13PM by Buback.

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NewPerfection
On a side note: I'm not sure why colons ( : ) in URL's break forum posts sometimes.

use #3A, without the & and ;

Example:

[ url =http : //reprap.org/wiki/Special%3ASpecialPages]Wiki Special Pages [ / url]

Take the spaces out and post it and you get:

[reprap.org]