KC-Area Mini-Maker Faire

If you live the the Kansas City area (Northwest Missouri or Northeast Kansas) then visit the KC Mini-Maker Fair!

It's put on by Make:KC and CCCKC. I'm a member of CCCKC.

Hopefully I will be able to participate. In the least, I'll try to have Wintermute there! (I'm sure there'll be at least a few MakerBot Cucpcake CNCs to be seen.)

Official announcement: KC Mini-Makers Faire

Plastruder Fail — again!

I just rebuild my plastruder and installed the new MK5 Drive Gear, and it failed catastrophically!

Ok, well, I didn't blow a retainer or anything, but I think that's a testament to the Drop-in Paxtruder that I'm using.

But man, can that thing push! It twisted the filament up in the tiny space available. Here's a few more photos to show the damage (click on any photo to see it bigger):





And here's what the filament looks like when I pulled it out:




You can see that there's something binding it up, but I think the real problem is heat. I cleaned this out and plugged it back in, and my temperature reads 109ºC at room temperature, so I think my thermistor failed.

If that happened mid-build then that would explain this. The temperature got too low and the plastic was no longer liquid enough to extrude.

Wow.

Now to rebuild, again! Gah!