At last it arrives!

The extrude head that I bought in October from Bitsfrombytes.com has finally arrived. It's like Christmas in December, wait a minute... never mind.

Anyhow, it's a very complete package. It would be even better with detailed printed instructions but it's not too hard to figure out from the assembly pdf on their web site.
My advice is don't try to go cheap on the delivery like I did. Six weeks of anticipation is a little much. Pay the bucks to have it mailed with some sort of tracking.

The parts arrived like this.

These are the parts spread out.

I hope to start on the heating element this weekend and post photos of the progress.

The First Blog I've Ever Posted In My Life!

I've been working on a repstrap machine ever since the first reprap blogs appeared and now feel that I've gotten enough momentum to actually blog about it myself.

My progress has been slow due to the dual difficulty of funds and materials, regardless I've managed to get McWire to at least do the initial motions and IF my BitsFromBytes extrude head ever arrives and IF I can get a decent download of 0.7ReprapDVD (bitTorrent has never worked for me) I could be reprapping till GM is profitable again.

Here are some views of what I've done so far.
This is a good view of the Cartesian Bot so far. This is shown without the electronics. Unlike the Darwin machine this machine moves the XY platform and lifts the Z for printing, much like a CNC milling machine.





This is the front of the McWire made using parts from Home Depot and misc. hardware stores. I've also built and added the boards from Reprap Research Foundation, Thanks Zach!