Buoyed by the success of our appearance at Reading Geek Night and inspired by the success of the eMakershop Masterclass we thought it would be great to run a Build Camp in the Reading area, to encourage the spread of RepRaps.

Spend a fun weekend assembling your bot, guided by those who have already made the mistakes and so know how to avoid them and without the hassle of sourcing any of the parts yourself. It is possible and very tempting to buy an pre-assembled printer, but by putting it all together yourself you not only get the satisfaction of seeing your efforts coming to fruition but also learn valuable lessons about how to operate and maintain your brand new toy!

Here are the several ways in which we plan to ease the pain of building your own 3D printer:

• avoid figuring out which machine to build and the various improvements to choose, or spending time calculating the bill of materials and sourcing them all – a kit will be provided for a set up that we  ourselves will have built and tested.
• be guided through the assembly instructions by those who have already built their own machines, passing on their hard-learned lessons and helping you avoid the various “gotchas” along the way
• access that extra pair of hands required at various points throughout the build that make it all so much easier, but you just don’t have if you’re building it on your own
• learn how to maintain your machine through constructing it
• receive advice on software chains and configuring and calibrating your machine and software
• be taught how to source objects to print and how to go about printing them
• get ongoing support in the form of a Thames Valley RepRap User Group, which we hope the build camp will be a springboard for.

So let us know if you’re interested, and we’ll put something together

UPDATE 13/08/2011: Sign up for the Thames Valley RepRap 3d Printer Build Party Planning Event at EventBrite.com to register your interest and be kept up to date with our plans.