Any chance of a meetup in the Boston area soon?

I'm helping a friend put together a Mendel (Botmill axis) and the support out of the company hasn't been so good.
We've gotten it mostly put together, but are scratching our heads on how to attach the endstops.

It would be good if someone who is experienced could look our work over. We are total Reprap virgins....

Thanks,
Kevin

Kevin,

I live in RI but work in Framingham MA, I could meet up if you have a place or we could meetup at our hackerspace in Providence RI AS200 labs nextweek.

Bruce Wattendorf

We are also noobs at RepRap but have considerable experience with electronics / AVR programming and motor control. We'd love to join a meet-up to see someone's RepRap in action and hear about your experiences building and operating one. We're in Brookline but we have wheels.

Hi,
I have a RepRap Prusa Mendel I2 that is mostly functional, running Marlin Firmware.
(still waiting on the glass before going crazy with calibrations)
It moves can move in x,y and z and can extrude using Pronterface, even printed a test box.
I am no expert but feel free to respond.. hopefully all the kinks will be worked out by then.

Running a printrbot + here. Pretty much dialed it in and printing at .2mm layer height consistently. Put a lot of hours into my bot so i could give you a hand if you need help. Also, if you need a replacement part just let me know. Im based here in downtown boston.

I emailed molly rubenstein at artisans asylum the other day to ask if we could use their meeting space. She never wrote back. Maybe I'll bug her again. Does anyone have a place we can hold a meeting? If the last one at Jeff's house is any indication, then pick a time and place and people will show. Otherwise it's just guys arguing over the internet.

The new Microsoft store has a room they let community groups use. I can check on availability

We have all three axes on the Mendel moving smoothly, and then crashed the extruder into the bed. It revealed another error, one of our helpers had installed the extruder without some of the captive nuts. It wasn't his fault, the botmill instructions were horribly sparse.
It probably turned out to be a good thing, as though the extruder seemed solid, it was because the screws threaded themselves into the plastic.
Those threads were the only thing that got "damaged" when push came to shove.

It's mostly reassembled, but it was late so first extrusion isn't until next time.

I have a stupid Noob question: In pronterface, do you mechanically position the head at home, or roughly centered where you want to print before printing?

Thanks,
Kevin

Kevin,
You shouldn't have to manually position any axis once you have your endstops properly configured. It IS possible to not home before printing and manually center and level your printhead, but it's really worth the effort to set up homing so that you can hit print and walk away.