Rocky Mountain RepRap Festival 2023

yeah same here Jeff, gotta love Kansas.

1 Like

Your plate seems pretty full at the moment, but this topic, and the need for quiet at the festival, has inspired an idea for a festival project…someday.

A possible quieter CNC activity could be using a diamond engraver on acrylic to make edge lit signs. A multi-tiered rack with slots filled with LEDs would be an easy build and relatively inexpensive. The rack would get filled out as the festival ran on and the CNC kept cranking out signs. I’ve seen some nice, free SVG files for edge lit signs, plus I could see a few versions of your logo on these signs.

I’d also take it a bit further. Bases with remotes for these signs are cheap on Amazon, but are ugly plastic. It would be a simple CNC project to make a nice, wooden housing and then use the guts from an Amazon base to complete the build. And a wooden base would show how something can be made by combining CNC tools and materials (wood with router, acrylic with drag knife). You could have a couple of these wooden bases on the table displaying your logo.

You are showing them something they might see themselves making to sell or gift. The plastic sign is something they can handle and feel the engraving. And the cost of the plastic is low enough that you could afford to give away some of the engraved blanks. The plastic costs will depend on thickness and type, but if even if you just bought premade, 2mm blanks from Amazon, each blank would run less than $2.00. If you wanted to cut out your own sign blanks, you might get the cost below $0.75 each.

Note I’ve never made these signs, so there may be some issues I don’t know about. Edge-lit signs are on my 2023 projects-to-gift list. Laser projects have dominated this year.

2 Likes

Those would be fun. The materials would be cheap, but I doubt you would want to make 100x of them. Still, maybe make 1-2 the first day, and then have a raffle or contest to see who gets a custom one the second day.

Or, don’t do anything custom and have it just be the rmrrf logo with V1 on it and make as many as you can, and raffle them off the second day. If you make 3 or 10 or 20, you can just give away that many.

The plotting would be easier, because you would just make them in 3mins and hand them out immediately.

1 Like

It can be hard to say how much time you will have. I can get swarmed and get a thousand questions and stories for hours, then plenty of free time. I think MRRF Saturdays were always so busy it was hard to go to the restroom or even start a new drawing and those only took 30 seconds. Sunday, time to do all sorts of fun stuff.

Barry and Ron have always been a huge help hanging out with me. It lets someone still be around to answer questions or chat while the others get to look around and chat with others about what they brought to the event. I think the last one was so overwhelming I went back to my room for half hour to just gather myself and go back. At that point though it was so crowded, loud, and hot I would lose my voice right away and it could get a bit funky in there. I am sure post covid we will get a bit more room to breathe.

1 Like

Don’t get me wrong, I do not mean that in a negative way. It is so freaking awesome and I can’t wait to do it again! Just so very different from farting around in my garage alone.

1 Like

Consider giving away all the V1E logo’d (with website and/or QRCode) speed test coasters (well, the good ones at least) you’re likely to create and accumulate between now and RepRap while tuning/tweaking.

2 Likes

Oh that could be cool! I like making those

1 Like

Okay looks like we already need to start making some decisions.

Let’s use this picture as an example. We can have a table in the middle, or one or two booth spaces along the walls. A booth is 10’x10’ We can have 20’x10’ if we want. The tables are 8’ x 31" and we can have any number we want.

Things are very up in the air, the boot sizes seem a bit off for the tables. Any suggestions? 20’x10’ seems giant since the last two MRRF’s I had 4’x31" me and Ron split a table. We might be able to get them to switch up booth sizes if it makes sense.

They are okay with these layouts and the stuff that sticks over.

I like the three table in the lower left (gives us somewhere to sit) or the two table right above it (a couple chairs).

@barry99705 @jedidlanor any input since you guys have always been there? Any chance of you going?

I will not be there.

1 Like

Bummer

1 Like

I will be there for absolute certain. This is about 5 minutes from my house. I could actually bring my laser based on the MPCNC Burly version. I might even cut down the size a little bit. And, with even a little luck it could be operational including a scrubbed exhaust system.

In addition, I would like to propose that we consider putting together some sort of informal (no host) dinner for MPCNC’ers who attend. If the weather looks to be cooperative, I might even consider hosting a cook-out at my house. (Yes, it really IS 5 minutes…) In any case, there’s a pretty decent BBQ place just a stone’s throw from the event center. If we could put together a modest size group, we could probably take over their bar area.

5 Likes

Gotta run it past the cfo, but this looks fun.
I like that lower left one too.

2 Likes

WOW thanks Dave! We’ll as we get closer.

Fingers crossed for you Barry, I might be bringing my CFO.

1 Like

Room booked!

SWEEEEET

Tradition continues.

be an awesome time for a reveal, like the new mpcnc ideas you teased about, LOL

all joking aside, maybe a small portable scaled down model could be made. It may take off like wild fire.

Imagine a lr model that is 12 by 12 made from dowels, etc.

1 Like

SIGH!

Just for giggles I thought a nice week or two in the mountains before heading off to Europe on our annual migration might be cool. We’d have to come home first of course and we are of an age where jetlag doesn’t treat us kindly so business class would be best.

Prices are per person. Makes your postage costs @vicious1 look pretty competitive! :rofl: :rofl:

Good to know. I want to visit Australia someday… But $10k, geez.

For people flying in from nearer, check out southwest, we have a hub at DIA. And also united and frontier, but they usually show up in the aggregators and SW doesn’t. From a popular US airport, a SW flight should be pretty cheap, but no business class.

2 Likes

Oh my. My dreams of an Australian vacation have also been shattered, dang.