Introduction

Hello, and welcome to my new blog. First of all I'd like to say that English isn't my first language, but I decided to make this blog in English, so it would be accessible to more people. So don't expect a literary masterpiece.

A little more about myself: I am 22 year old student and live in Belgium. I'm currently studying computer science at the K.U.Leuven. I do some web-developing in my free time. The biggest site I help working on is unicreatures. I also like to assemble and modify computers for myself and for friends.

A few weeks ago I found this site reprap.org. It is a community project about making a self-replicating 3D printer. I really liked the concept and started reading more about it. I have a few drawers full of old pc-parts at home, and I like assembling and upgrading my computer. This RepRap however would be a lot bigger and harder to make, and has much more potential for upgrading. Sounds like fun.

I quickly realized however that it would be expensive to buy all the parts, so I started searching for the cheapest parts. I also wanted them to be of acceptable quality. To give an example: some of the plastic parts sell for under 100€, but it looks like they will fall apart within a month. That would just ruin all the fun, so I decided to buy the items somewhere in the middle of the price range. I ordered the plastic parts from nophead and the other hardware from mendel-parts. I asked both of them to wait a little with the shipping, so the items should arrive here around 13 September. I haven't ordered the electronics and motors yet, because it looks like mendel-parts will have some cheaper and less complicated electronics coming soon. 

Today then I decided to make a blog about my progression with the project. I plan to modify my RepRap in the future, hopefully improving it that way. Maybe my experiences could be useful to others, and this blog looked like the best form of communication to the rest of the world. I'll try to post updates with pictures whenever I do things on the project. For now though, my recreation time is over and I'm going to study a little more for my re-examinations. See you soon.