Fabr Update

Lou Amadio has provided an update on his quest to design and build his own inexpensive 3D printer. Lou has chosen to bypass the RepRap and fab@home projects and go his own way, and a key design element is to use off-the-shelf parts only. We've covered Lou's adventure before, twice.

In this update, Lou indicates that issues he's uncovered have evidently also been encountered by the RepRap project, causing them to take on similar solutions. Correspondingly, Fabr is becoming a little bit closer to RepRap so that Lou can "better leverage the software and firmware from the RepRap team."

In fact, Lou believes the two projects are so close in design now that he says: "In essence, Fabr is a RepRap."
 
Maybe there are only a few ways to do this?

Via OoeyGUI

OoeyGui Continues

We've written about Lou Amadio's garage-based "Fabr" project before, in which he's building his own 3D printer - including self-designed portions of the machine itself. He's now released code and Sketchups for the 3D printer, the controller board and the decomposer plugin - which apparently has run across some difficulties with Sketchup.

An upcoming post on Fabbaloo will discuss some of the software tools used to prepare 3D models.

Via OoeyGui.com

3D Toys with Fabr

Many people are considering unique uses for and implications of 3D printing. Lou Amadio wants to be able to print toys for his four-year-old son, or at least create replacement components for those toys inevitably broken or lost by the youngster.

Lou's approach is a bit more extreme than many might consider: he's not only going to print the toys, he's creating the 3D printer to do it with! He's been following the RepRap project, but instead has designed the Fabr. According to Lou's blog post, he designed Fabr as:

as a 3D printer which uses commonly available parts, requires minimal part fabrication, is highly accurate, and has enough power to not only extrude plastic, but can be used to mill metal, wood or plastic

Via OoeyGui