yon Leveron blog

Below article lifted from http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome

The concept is quite keen. Amazingly, I had never heard of this before, but it makes perfect sense.

We are coming much closer to the future depicted in Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer (quite a read, in and of itself)

What is RepRap?

RepRap from Adrian Bowyer on Vimeo.

Look at your computer setup and imagine that you hooked up a 3D printer. Instead of printing on bits of paper this 3D printer makes real, robust, mechanical parts. To give you an idea of how robust, think Lego bricks and you’re in the right area. You could make lots of useful stuff, but interestingly you could also make most of the parts to make another 3D printer. That would be a machine that could copy itself.

RepRap is short for Replicating Rapid-prototyper. It is the practical self-copying 3D printer introduced in the video on the right – a self-replicating machine. This 3D printer builds the parts up in layers of plastic. This technology already exists, but the cheapest commercial machine would cost you about €30,000. And it isn’t even designed so that it can make itself. So what the RepRap team are doing is to develop and to give away the designs for a much cheaper machine with the novel capability of being able to self-copy (material costs are about €500). That way it’s accessible to small communities in the developing world as well as individuals in the developed world. Following the principles of the Free Software Movement we are distributing the RepRap machine at no cost to everyone under the GNU General Public Licence. So, if you have a RepRap machine, you can use it to make another and give that one to a friend…

The RepRap project became widely known after a large press coverage in March 2005, though the idea goes back to a paper on the web written by Adrian Bowyer on 2 February 2004.

RepRap Version I “Darwin” can be built by anyone now – see the Make your own RepRap link there or on the left, and for ways to get the bits and pieces you need, see the Obtaining Partslink. RepRap Version II “Mendel” will be released in a matter of days.

(view more at the official site : http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome )

The UPS gent arrived with this a bit before 5 PM yesterday; yay!

Even after careful review, I must admit I just wasn’t sure what to expect from a $120 (shipped) black and white laser.

Brother HL-2170W 23ppm Laser Printer with Wireless and Wired Network Interfaces

So far at least, it has exceeded my expectations.  Since even the home network has long been gigabit copper Ethernet, I decided to go the wired network route.  Call me a curmudgeon, but even though the wireless network setup was trivial I just really don’t have a need at present to put my documents out over the wireless, so I won’t; wireless B/G mode is disabled for the printer for now.  I can see that being handy if you wanted to power the printer in another room, however;  mo cabling needed!  (I have no idea if the wireless mode, assuming full strength / max speed G mode, would limit the output speed of 23 ppm or not)

Setup was a breeze, installing a standard Ethernet cable into the printers 10/100 port on the rear side. (which is where the USB cable input is, if so inclined).  Note to buyer : neither cable included, so plan appropriately so you are not stranded / charged shipping or tax for something small.

(side note : since my D-link switch has automatic crossover capability, I did test the printer out of curiosity with an old crossover cable relic; worked fine, though I suspect the printer had nothing to do with it)

I have not tested the USB mode, so I can’t comment there.  I suspect it works pretty well, since many folks would choose that method of connection.  I do like that it’s capable of that, should I ever need it.

I did read the quick install manual thoroughly before even opening the drum / toner pack.  Leisurely installation of cables, drum / toner, and untaping the top feed holder was about 5 minutes worth; checking out the paper tray, fanning the ole stack of 250 sheets, and installing was maybe another 3.  Have to adjust all of the widgets in the tray, just to see what sizes are possible, y’know.

I printed the built-in test page, as the manual noted it would no longer be available via a single touch button once the first print job was sent from the computer.  Check; it was in the highest resolution mode, and included graphics and font text designed to show off how well it prints.  It worked; the print quality was truly outstanding, much better than much higher priced office workgroup lasers from only a couple of years ago.

Just to be contrary, I of course skipped 100% of the driver disk that came with the Brother.  I’ve been running Windows 7 RTM, Ultimate 64 for a few weeks, and of course having that popular conversation with a number of vendors : “We’ll support that new OS once the final version ships”.  Well, this is the final version, even if it’s not on retailers shelves for a bit.  Early adopters – always have to be prepared for this

I did make sure in my research that the HL-2170W was Vista 64 compatible, a strong indicator that it would work (more or less) under Win7 64 bit.  I let Windows look for the printer, and it found it via two interfaces : the built in web interface, and the “standard” printer interface.  Being somewhat old fashioned there I suppose, I went with the standard.

Installed fine.  Tested fine via the Windows Test Page print job many of you are familiar with.  Another page to the home recycle bin.  I set the sleep time via the web interface, for example http://172.30.100.5/ to one minute.  The large glowing led power button can be set to dim significantly or turn off when sleeping; I chose to dim it, so I’d know the print had power still. (I print so little that it and the scanner are on an external surge suppressor, on the filter-only side of the UPS; makes it easy to leave both powered down 100% instead of sleeping, considering my very low use there)

The speed is pretty much on with their 23 page per minute claim; timed output from hitting “print” on the computer, to a sleeping printer was measured at 14 seconds until the page started emerging.  I consider that plenty good for my own home office needs.

It was simple to set the resolution way down to 300 dpi from their highest default, and to set toner saver on.  I’m not trying to impress with the output, and the visual difference to me takes pretty close looking.

I’m impressed, and so far feel this is a great printer for the money.  No more dried out inkjet bits, and I really don’t need the capability or expense of color.  Since it has enterprise type page count for the printer, as well as the current drum and toner cartridges, we’ll see how many pages we get out of the starter “1000 page” toner cartridge that’s included with it.  I predict it’ll be a while before I report back here.

It was also time to drop the the old inkjet beast off at the component recycler; wanted to make the most of any drive over there. After considerable research I chose a good home black and white laser printer :

Brother HL-2170W 23ppm Laser Printer with Wireless and Wired Network Interfaces

Figuring conservatively (getting 80% of rated service on toner / drum, etc.) and rounding up (to more expensive) it looks to work out to about 3.1 cents per page, for the hardware side of things, over the cost-effective life of the printer before recycling it. (the drum is too expensive; at 12k sheets, it’s less expensive to recycle and start again; of course, 12k will likely never happen for me, hah).

Add paper costs (obtained locally) of another .9 cents for nice, jam-resistant in the past “internal use quality” paper, about 4 cents a page. Costs go down with “more enterprise grade” hardware, but up-front costs sure rise. I will manually duplex the tiny amount of printouts I need per month, since it’s a rare day that I actually print a page. I just got tired of inkjet “tech” drying out, and in my limited experience this isn’t a factor with lasers.

If anyone has any great wisdom on some current good choices for the following two things, please share / reply / comment :

1.  Desired : monochrome laser printer.  Light duty / home office use, maybe 10 pages tops average per day.  I just don’t want an inkjet drying out. Does not need to be networked, but if it’s ethernet based that’s fine too.  Simple USB would work, and stuff.

Thinking along the lines of something via NewEgg, etc.  While I’m not expecting to get under $100, am hoping that it doesn’t get too steep from there ($500 probably not doable for this project )

http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=630&name=Printer-Laser-Printers Just no idea on what it currently good, my limited knowledge is also horribly dated.

2.  Desired : document scanner.  Not sure on the pros and cons of sheet feed scanners and other sorts; I’ve primarily only used the flat bed sort, and am leaning heavily this direction right now. How do you scan your passport on the other?

Scan volume again : low.   http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=44&name=Scanner-Flatbed-Scanners

At times I will use these two together as a poor man’s photo-copier for those 2 whopping copies I need.  More realistic, I will be scanning color and B&W into .PDF form to email.  The less paper used, the better I like it even when there are multiple cases stacked in the home office.

One last caveat : both must work with Windows 7.  Chances are pretty darned high if it worked with Vista, it will work.  If you’ve got stellar recommendations as to what you like, I’ll check on the compatibility.

Thanks, please comment away!