Round 3 of this year's HackadayPrize ends today. Time to give a quick look on what I am working on:

1.) The lathe that I need to improve the design of my direct granule extruder has arrived:

While the first two versions were build with less expensive machinery, sometimes you have to make a more expensive investment to drive machine evolution...

2.) I am trying to fight warping. I took two spools of ABS that are in my workshop for years now, to check if warping can be minimized by changing the print sequence. While printing flat, 2mm plates works indeed fine, I am still struggling with printing my 50mm high test object, which is a simple 100x50x50mm box. My personal challenge is to print that box without a printer enclosure (which is the common way to fight warping).

3.) I am doing some coding to give you a new kind of access to your machinery, because a tool with a built in microcontroller is just as good as the software that runs on it. 3D printers with a pen attached to the print head are great devices to teach coordinate systems and basics of Gcode and machine control.