Prusa Progress: Done!

 Whew - the printer is now fully assembled.  Despite an insufficient supply of gummy bears, this was a really fun little project.  I made a few mistakes and had to backtrack a bit but I enjoyed building this sucker.

Now it's time for my first test print:

 Well, that didn't seem to go all that well.  I'm pretty sure the Prusa logo isn't an abstract piece of art.  The troubleshooting guide on the Prusa website is very well done and I quickly diagnosed there were two problems - one of the drive belts (the one that moves the platform) was too loose and the print head was too close to the base.

A little repair work and let try again.

The printer does comes with a first layer calibration routine which I ran about 20 times tweaking the settings.  It prints a single line in a zig zag pattern and a small flat piece.  Useful for diagnosing, boring to blog about.  SO you only get to see the test results of full items.

Boom printing like a champ.

If you are considering getting into 3D printing, remember there are a lot of setting s you need to tweak to get the unit set up.  Also, since there are a lot of mechanical parts, you periodically need to readjust the printed as it's used.

I've got some new projects to get started on.