[UPDATE 10/21/2021 -After 2018 I started posting my updates on my Patreon page, and so I'm filling in the back-logs for this project retroactively so the whole story is in both places. You can also read all of these posts with their original photo formatting here]

Well it's the end of April, and that means I get to tell you how I spent your money! First of all, a big THANK YOU to everyone who just became a patron on my birthday! My monthly budget nearly doubled overnight! I can't tell you how much it means to me to be able to go and drop $100 on a part that I need and know it's not all out of my own pocket. 

Here's what I bought this month:

$99 A 36x24" Harbor Freight Polypropylene service cart

$12.99- Thermistor for the HDPE print head

$12.45- Fans to cut down on goop-age (that's a technical term)

$12.95 Shaft Coupler

$9.99- 5x 24v cartridge heaters (bc apparently you really shouldn't run 12V ones at 24V...)

$10.89- 5x Aluminum hot ends (not as hot as they sound)

$86.00- 4:1 Stepper Motor

And here's what I did this month:

-Printed my best vase ever at the ReClaim It Earth Day event! (above)

-Put the printer on a service cart so that I can move it more easily

-Started building a second (and much improved) print head so that I can try printing with HDPE (#2) in addition to PP (#5)

And here's what I'm working on next:

-Adding a Z-bed to let me print objects taller than 5"

-Building a new version of my extruder to print with HDPE (I sure HDPE so at least)

-Creating a step-by-step build tutorial for the extruder

-Taking it all to SOAK at the end of May!