*> James [04.07.2013. @19:38:00 +0000]: > Hello, > > Not sure how many folks are using 3D printers yet > via Gentoo. If so your shared experiences are of keen > interest to me. > > I did find these excellent resources [1]. > > [1] http://www.makerbot.com/support/guides/design/ > [2] http://www.thingiverse.com/categories Hi James, I am using 3D printers. With friends, we created a makerspace (fablab/hackerspace)[1] where we are building and using 3D printers (and lots of other things). The main resource to build a 3D printer we use is [2]. Thingiverse [3] is great to find new 3D models, but you can also create your own ones. For that, I am using OpenSCAD (in Portage, media-gfx/openscap). It is also possible to use Blender with an ad hoc plugin to export to .STL files. On other systems, there are proprietary software, but I do not use them (sketchup seems to be very easy to use). A friend (Emmanuel Gilloz aka watsdesign on Thingiverse[4]) designed the Foldarap [5] which is a folding RepRap (it is amazing!). He crowdfunded it a first time [6] but there was too many demands. Then he crowdfunded a second time [7], and I think it is not yet finished. With a colleague, we bought 2 RepRapPro Mendel [8] for the Computer Science department where we teach. And today I tried to calibrate one. But for the moment, students are not so interested in building and creating things. They are fascinated, they want to use them (as consumers), but not to create 3D models, or to design new 3D printers. I am using Printrun [9] to control the 3D printer and to send gcode to it. To generate gcode from 3D models (.STL files), I am using Slic3r [10]. Of course, all these software are working without any problem on Gentoo. Regards, JC [1] http://www.nybi.cc (in Frenchi :\ ) [2] http://www.reprap.org [3] http://www.thingiverse.com [4] http://www.thingiverse.com/watsdesign/designs [5] http://reprap.org/wiki/FoldaRap [6] http://www.ulule.com/foldarap/ (first batch) [7] http://goteo.org/project/foldarap-peer-to-peer-edition (2nd batch) [8] http://www.reprappro.com [9] http://github.com/kliment/Printrun [10] http://slic3r.org