A week or so ago I asked Vik Olliver (the same guy who made the “meccano glue gun” fabber – reLink) to post images of his latest device, Zaphod. I didn’t get any pictures, but we do now have a nice clip of the device in action over on YouTube. Excellent.

Meanwhile, for those who haven’t been following their progress, Dr. Bowyer has been spending time using RP output to create molds for metal bearings (Link). He appears to be using commerically-fabbed parts, but the comments section indicates that there could be some casting options using molds created by the RepRap device. I’m very much looking forward to seeing how this side of the project comes together since I still haven’t completely warmed up to the materials they’re using and casting is a very nice option. Hopefully we’ll see a RepRap-created mold used for some parts sometime this Fall.

On the software front there’s been plenty of progress over the past few months. plaasjaapie has put in quite a bit of effort working on paths and filling (I’d wished I had time to take a closer look rather than just reading his posts). I recall him starting out using Art of Illusion, but I’m not sure if he stayed with it or wrote new code. For those interested, it might be worth a look through the archives on the RepRap blog (Link).