At hack.lu we got a great present from kd85: a brand new Thing-o-matic Makerbot, complete with heated, automated build platform. As soon as the conference was over, we rushed to our beloved space to start putting it all together.
Here are some pictures taken during the construction. Most of them from unpacking, after that, hands were busier building the machine than taking photos!
donator
unboxing
checking all material
smell of lasercut wood
getting instructions online
here we go
looks cool
halfway through assembling the body
electronics still to do
hardware build finished
What to say about the buildup? From Kenn’s perspective, putting together the wood structure, it was an absolute joy. Georges had to work a little harder to with the twiddly bits in the extruder, but hackers always love a challenge! And of course no kit is complete unless, well, it’s incomplete: there were magically some nuts missing, but a good hackerspace always has this stuff around. The extruder needed partial disassembling, because the misunderstanding of a couple English words made a basic error possible. Plus, some cables were short and had to get an extension. All in all, the build was done in about 2 days and it looks great. Thanks so much to kd85 for gifting us this wonderful machine.
Now to get the software going and commission our brand new makerbot!