Current mood:	hopeful
Entry tags:	3d printer, hardware

Hardware
While waiting for the hardware for the RAID-to-be, I've decided to see if I can progress a little further with a pet hardware project of mine: a 3D printer. I've been working on this for nearly a year and a half now, on and off, but I've not put many hours in over that time.

If it works, I think it will be the cheapest 3D printer ever made, at about £400 (UK) instead of the more usual £40,000... but on the other hand, I'm basing it on a CNC machine with a linear speed of only 1cm/second, so at it's maximum resolution of 0.1mm, and without a parallel printing head, it will only print at 0.36 cubic centimeters (about 0.02 cubic inches) per hour.

To simplify things, the first version will only print in chocolate (nice low melting point), and use either sugar (yum!) or sand (yuck!) to fill any gaps. Sand will be easier, as it has a much higher melting temperature, but given how low the melting point of chocolate is, either should work OK.