Few days left !

One week after the last update, we went from 208 to 252%, I well did to add a limit ! For those who missed the occasion to reserve a kit : you can still self-source the parts, or we will probably make a 2nd serie later :)

Otherwise, during the last days :

*I picked up my new vehicle, a recumbent bike with a big coffer, thus I may be able to deliver myself those who are not too far ^^ (cf)

Distribution of the rewards

*I updated my spreadsheet for the 1st batch, now I have the addresses of everyone and organized things in separated sheets for each rewards. Too bad that the Ulule's export of the contributors informations is almost unusable, even sadder that they don't make that kind of stats like on kickstarter while all you need is in the database.

*The FoldaRap is now also on GitHub : https://github.com/EmmanuelG/Foldarap to make following the minors changes easier :)

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The FoldaRap power supply :

For the promised technical side of this news, a little explanation of a critical piece of every machine : the power supply unit.

When I was looking for a psu, my criteria were that it must be in 12V (the eMaker Huxley on which I'm based is in 19V, that not ideal for the 12v fans...and most important very compact.
I found a bunch of psu on eBay, with a price ranging from 15-40€. If the price was attractive their size is growing quickly depending of the specs... while someone suggested me to use a psu around 200W or better, it seems impossible to conciliate everything

And during a night at the makerspace, while we were talking about the quality of the products made in china, I check for less cheap solutions from known suppliers like Mouser, Farnell or Radiospare... it's on this last that I found the little jewel that is the TXH240-112, a cryptic name to say that it is a 12 V - 20 A, or 240 W, psu, and it's size is only 100 x 150 x 35 mm which is just perfect for the FoldaRap ! On the downside it have a high unit cost of 125€ (which lower a little less under 90 when ordering lot of 20 at the manufacturer).

So yes it is not cheap, and maybe we could use one of a smaller spec (I need to think to check the consumption by the way). Nonetheless there is some points that make me say it's still worth it :

*with an efficiency of 90%, it's only cooled by air convection, without any need of an additional fan (remember it can deliver up to 240 watts !), it's alway less noise and we waste a little less energy (think of an eventual human/battery/solar powered reprap).

*high quality : I'm not very good at electronics but a simple observation shows that this one is filled with components, to have a stable and clean output, while the cheaper psu's have way less components (even seen one that was almost empty)... it still works but can lead to failure and sometimes to burn your mainboard (there was a thread on the forum about that but I can't find it). If there is a problem we can be sure that it's not from that part of the machine.

*and most important, design for the long term : our actual repraps are nice, but they will probably not last forever, not in themselves (they are not maintenance-intensive), but we will probably invent better machines. A strong point of these machines was to be often designed to be made from off-the-shelf components, hence with this modular characteristic we will be able to make a new model from the parts of an old one - by example that's why I spent time to make an hinge to avoid having to drill holes in the aluminium extrusions. And in the same manner I think this excellent psu will be always of some use in other projects in the future :)

But if you find better don't hesitate to share it with all ^^