Kickstarter

Safety first

More machines will be arriving at backer homes this week and I wanted to remind everyone that it is important to not leave your machine running unattended and especially so around children. The desired nozzle temperature is around 185C (365F) which is not something that should be ignored.

Also keep in mind that your Printxel is a beta machine and is still in active development and as a beta user you are part of the development process. While I've not had any dangerous incidents in the hundreds and hundreds of hours I've ran each of my machines that does not mean the machine should not be treated without caution.

I guess all I am saying is please please keep an eye on your machine and make sure it is unplugged when not in use.

New batch

I'm on a new batch now (12,13,14,15,16). The plan for this batch is to finish upgrading previous backer machines and to cut and drill all the metal I have on hand. For December I have a good amount of available time to work on the project. I do have another work contract that might happen in January, but who knows. If you feel that it's just taking too long to get your printer let me know and I'll send you a full refund. Your printer will just go to the next in line and it's no big deal.

Google+ Printxel community

Everything Printxel related that is not R&D is going to move over to the new Printxel community page
https://plus.google.com/communities/110411966679260261946 and I will phase out the other efforts. I intend on posting regularly to the community page as I currently do on my G+ projects page and it will be the best source for everything Printxel.

Design Changes

I've made a few changes to the design for the most recent batch. Many of the changes have been made for production purposes, but I've also improved the design as well.

Here's a list of notable changes:

• Aluminum tubes have been added to all pushfit bearings. Pushfit bearings are designed to be slightly compressed for proper operation. The tubes allow for better alignment and will better maintain their diameters over time when compared to being directly pushed into plastic parts.
• The new filament tensioning design makes correct tensioning less of an art and requires less fiddling. 
• Z-axis belt tensioning is now easier and performed on the y-axis. 
• The under extruder cooling fan has been removed. This fan is meant to more quickly cool the PLA after it has been deposited. Extra cooling can be useful for very small and dense parts or for parts with larger overhangs, but my current thoughts are that this fan is too small to be effective and an external cooling source is a better choice.
• There is a new way to mechanically fine-tune the zmin and zmax sides of the y-axis. 
• There are now two additional buttons that allow for realtime fine-tuning of the z height while a print is in progress. 

I've offered backers who have already received their kits help in incorporating the above changes and I hope to continue that practice throughout the beta. I will likely continue to make design changes and if you'd prefer to be in a later batch rather than earlier batch let me know. 

Refunds

As many of you know there was a Kickstarter bug that allowed the campaign to go above the intended 25 kits limit and end with 34 kits. Kickstarter recently gave me the opportunity to refund those backers above the limit. The 26-34 backers will retain their spots, but I won't be holding their money until their kit is ready to send. I'd like to extend that offer to all backers.

Assembled

The plan for the project was to ship kits out first as a baby step towards offering assembled kits, but I've been really fighting the reality that delivering a kit (at least for me) is more time-consuming overall. Your kit is now going to be *assembled and fully tested before it is shipped out. Shipping may require some disassembly on my side so that it is not prohibitively expensive to package and deliver. I will also be covering any extra shipping cost.

*If you really, really would like you kit to arrive unassembled I can fully disassemble the kit for you before shipping.

The source files have been released and can be found here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:29558

If you would prefer to scratch build instead of waiting and already have access to a printer send me a message and I can rework your pledge into an at cost materials kit.

I've started on kits 4 through 8 and currently have a mix of metal and printed parts. The plan is to ship these next 5 kits as one batch. When I previously tried doing batches I would end up getting overwhelmed and would revert back to one kit at a time. My organization is much better at this point and I think I can now handle 5 kits at once.

Kit #2 went out today and it will hopefully be the last kit that I need to put so much effort into. This kit was created, fully assembled, tested, fully disassembled and bagged, assembled again while making videos, disassembled and bagged again, and finally shipped. The plan for the remaining kits is that I will be working from just the BOM (Bill Of Materials) and I will only be performing test fitting and not actual assembly. If you're interested you can look at the BOM here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xXD9Lbc5E4sZxvonPbvyOFpvKBixbEbL_ZD3-85f77Q/edit