Hola

[MoleMans]

Greetings

I am glad to see this group exists. I bought a cupcake about a year
ago, had some trouble getting it working (the extruder controller
board that I had was faulty) and then had a baby, so its been
mothballed for about 8 months now. I am hoping to get things fired up
again in the near future, and have a back log of projects to get going
on. If you all don't mind the questions I'd love to pick your brains
about how to tune my machine to resolve some of its difficulties (I
oooze!).

Anyway, glad to see the beginnings of a tinkerer community here,

Matt

[t mo]

invest in a stepper extruder as long as you are basically starting from scratch.  much easier to get it printing very well.

[Christopher Coleman]

I would double up on that advice.  My home cupcake is now running a modified mk5 extruder with the stepper, or course you could get the mk6.  I would also add here that we finished construction of the Thing-o-matic at DU, and they made so many massive improvements on it, I cant speak highly enough of the device.  I really see no reason not to let the students run it without supervision as it really runs itself, no more worries and complex startup procedures.  Still a bit of calibrating to be done, but it has really gotten down to a 5 minute demo and just a couple steps and it is printing.  I know a couple of ppl contacted me about stopping by to see it in action and some prints, drop me a line and I can setup a demo some evening.