Kickstarter

Hello MakerBeamers,

We are happy to announce that MakerBeam is now available in Europe! Visit http://www.makerbeam.eu/ to purchase starter kits. 

We remain in stock at SparkFun, for North American distribution (with international shipping as an option): http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10540

We are concentrating all our efforts at the present time on remaining in stock and growing our inventory. 

A word about our web presence: Glenn Powers left the project two months ago, to deepen his practice of Buddhist meditation. Attempts to get the site running starting from zero expertise have been unsatisfactory failures. We've finally given up and are hiring someone.

We're setting a deadline of the end of August for getting the standard together, both in Web and downloadable form. That's the two year anniversary of launching this project; it's been a long road transforming this from an idea into a business with actual revenue and sales outlets. We're looking forward to the next step; to our backers and friends, we cannot thank you enough for the enthusiasm and support. 

Hello MakerBeamers!

At long last, MakerBeam is on sale at SparkFun! 

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/10540

If you would like some in the next month, I'd recommend ordering as soon as possible, as supplies are still limited. We're working to alleviate this and get our production out ahead of demand.

We will also begin accepting wholesale orders; currently our lead time is at least six weeks on delivery. Please contact me (Sam) or Glenn through makerbeam.com for details.

We are giddy and somewhat overwhelmed. Our website is laying in pieces on the floor, as you may have noticed. We all have full-time jobs on top of MakerBeam, and have been focusing our energies on production and fulfillment rather than CSS and Twitter. We'll get there!

All of our backers and supporters have our profound thanks for their patience and enthusiasm. This would never have happened without you, and you will be enshrined on our site as soon as we have one again.

A word about the CAD: We have models for the beam and brackets; the screw exists only as a drawing/specification at present. All of this will be on the site; the beam profile is still available.

Thanks everyone! It's really, finally happening!

On Friday, Glenn and Sam appeared on the Public Knowledge In The Know podcast, to discuss open source hardware, Kickstarter, and the future of the MakerBeam project. Check it out!

The big piece of news mentioned is our new partnership with G and M Manufacturing, to develop our brackets and fittings. This week, we are ordering our first production batch of beam. We will not be retailing this directly, and are not yet set up to take wholesale orders, but both of these things are in the works. We have designs to finish, tooling to complete, and parts to source, but we're back in production.

There's a lot to come, including site changes, the long-awaited CAD files and standard, and more. The bottom line is that we're working every day to get to the place where you can buy MakerBeam online, and hack with it to your heart's content.

Here's a piece of the standard. This is a pdf copy of the diagram used to make the beam; the license is CC-SA.

There's more coming. Anyone who wants to help us with some IGES or STEP files, drop us a line!

http://www.scribd.com/doc/33392753/Mini-T-Cross-Section