Next Reprap User Group Meeting is 2.25.12 at 6pm! Aside from basic introductions we’ll simply be assembling to mingle, meet, demonstrate and discuss all things Reprap and desktop manufacturing.  Memebers of the new premier hackerspace in town, Open Lab Idaho will also be there!
BYO- Bots, Beer and any other projects you might want to work on.

We’ve been hard at work in the wee hours making things happen with our progressive little community of open source 3D printing developers. While many aspects of the growing community behind Reprap concentrate on furthering the technology itself, we focus our energies on the social aspects that this type of technology brings us. For instance, we have engineered a way to local produce these 3d printers and combined our efforts in many ways to increase our buying power when ordering parts from elsewhere becomes a necessity.

Here is an outline about things that might be interesting to a prospective RepRapper;

-Our RUG Forum on Reprap. The powers that be have been great with giving us a home on the forums, just create a new profile and post away! Discussion at the first meeting touched on making a batch for the user group and walking through every detail of construction as a group. Great ideas for new topics like this deserve to be discussed further and the forum is a great place to do it.

-3D design software: Programs that were great for beginners like Openscad,  HeeksCAD,  Google Sketchup were introduced. Also other more sophisticated programs like several paid programs such as Rhino 3D and  Maya were discussed alongside open source alternatives like Blender.

Also discussed were plans for a future CNC Bootcamp where participants will each make by hand their own subtractive CNC using common parts and old computers running EMC2 on Linux.

If you would like to collaborate in any way in making or using desktop fabrication tools such as 3D printers and CNC’s by all means contact us here on the site, or by signing up with the RUG on the Reprap forums.  Let’s make things happen!

We have also made a forum for Idahoans who are interested in building or using a Reprap, come join in the discussion at Open Lab Idaho!