Photo credit: Karen Blakeman

Dad and I ventured along to our first Reading Geek Night a in April and decided there and then that we wanted to demonstrate our RepRaps and share our experiences, booking ourselves in at the first opportunity with great anticipation. That night was tonight and the response was amazing, there was a definite buzz in the room (not just from the printer).

We arrived at 7.15pm and set up, fielding questions non-stop until we were kicked out at gone 11 (except the presentations of course!).

Photo credit: Karen Blakeman

Good old Mendel chuntered away for the large part of the evening producing key fobs, stars and butterflies, and seemed to be a hit. One of my favourite parts was watching the dawn of understanding on the faces in the room as it finally makes sense seeing it in person.

Photo credit: Karen Blakeman

Unfortunately despite our efforts Huxley wasn’t quite finished in time, but we brought it along anyway to demonstrate the evolving printer designs.

Photo credit: Karen Blakeman

We brought along some demo prints as well as having live printing, and the two that garnered the most interest were our watertight mini shot glass and the printable bearing. Jim, the organiser of Reading Geek Night, was also presented with his very own Reading Geek key fob.

Video credit: mikethebeeuk

Dad’s talk went down a treat too, a mix of background to 3D printing in general and RepRap specifically, a nod to the RepRap community and sharing some of our hard learnt lessons. A lot more could be said but we really would have been there all night. There are rumours of a video of the presentation appearing soon so watch this space.

UPDATE 16/08/2011: Here are the videos of the presentation on YouTube:

Video credit: RdgGeek

The amount of interest was incredible, and we hope to take things forward from here and get more RepRaps into homes and offices in the Thames Valley Area soon!

Video credits: mikethebeeuk, RdgGeek
Photo credits: Karen Blakeman