Hello anyone!

I started building my RepRap at the beginning of August, and so far I've spent £400 (including £114 on ABS filament), and built the electronics and the extruder. My original plan was to try to beg/buy a set of plastic parts off someone, but this seems to be impossible, so I'm using BodgeIt's approach, and making all the bits as best I can. Once it works, I can replace them with my own printed parts. If anyone with a working machine reads this and wants to offer me a few parts they've got spare, I'd be very grateful!

The title of my blog, "Oak & Silicon", reflects both the materials I'm planning to make the machine from (I happen to have a lot of oak offcuts to use up) and the combination of low and high tech in this hobby that appeals to my sense of humour or irony or something. There's something almost steampunk about cooking up fine-pitch surface-mount PCBs in an old frying pan over a gas flame.

I'm planning to write a few posts on what I've done and learnt so far, before I catch up with what I'm struggling with at the moment. Of course, if I manage my usual rate of writing, I'll never catch up.