In the last month I've printed 5 different kinds of plastic: clear/red/green pla and white/black abs. Flushing out the extruder is a pain. At them moment I have PLA and ABS extruders, but I'm tempted to have one for each type:

I also managed to complete the X carriage assembly today. This was an easy build, but I like the belt tensioner function which you can see at the left hand side of the part.

Mendel90 X Carriage fan assembly

This is a really easy part of the build. But it's a fantastic printed part. It ducts air onto the printed plastic but avoids cooling the hot end. This IMHO is what RepRap is all about: a custom design for a none trivial function.

Here you can see the underside where the air duct avoids the hot end which protrudes from the centre:

Mendel90 Y axis

Managed to finish my Mendel90 kit Y axis today. I like the way the cables are routed under the dibond base. A small detail, but it keeps the build neat.

Adventure Sports Claymore Mine

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Steve at OperationLasertag had another project for me last year. This time to create software for use on the Milestag Add-On board to allow it to be used as a claymore mine with Adventure Sports lasertag equipment.

Using a digital scope, I reverse engineered the AS IR protocol (which is unencrypted and based upon the open Milestag protocol with minor modifications), and developed my own software in C to send an AS Admin-Kill packet. This worked first time, and Steve packed the add-on module into a rather realistic looking claymore mine which can be activated by remote control:

Guns of many colours

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Over Christmas I managed to complete all the coloured parts for two sets of team lasertag guns for Steve at OperationLasertag.

Each team has either red or green flash diffuser/cooling fins:

I also printed 2 guns with coloured focus tubes to identify them as referee guns:

The coloured plastic is PLA from Faberdashery.

Mendel90 Print Bed

After a break of a few days, I finally got around to completing my Mendel90 print bed assembly.

As mentioned, I'd agreed with nophead to accept some parts that were not finished, and the only task that needed doing here was tapping the Dibond to M3.
To do this I used a tapping chuck:

This is ideal for tapping soft, thin materials as you can turn it with one hand, whilst using the other to keep the tap straight.
I was then able to fit the M3 spacers, and after wiring, attach the heater PCB to the carriage: