History

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A brief History of the project thus far...

Originally conceived as a CNC router for plastic sheet, to make an end effector for a battery changing docking station for a little 'bot I had built, this lead to web research, which lead to reading about the RepRap project, which got me thinking about recursive production and modularity ...among things...

In September of 2009 I put up the CubeSpawn website and started tweeting the maker community, talked to several members of the Austin Hackerspace that was just beginning to form and this lead to getting a Kickstarter invite from John Griessen ( ecosensory.com, Austin hackerspace)

So, I put in a Kickstarter bid for $10,000 to develop the CubeSpawn prototypes, this effort ultimately failed, but indicated a great deal of interest was present. At that time I also entered the design into the Pepsi "Refresh Everything" contest for $25,000.
This also failed to produce results, but the degree of preparation for these contests was likely inadequate, so it goes... ;-)

Over the course of 2010 a number of design problems, mechanical drawings and so forth have been worked on and refined, and the payoff is approaching:

A functioning 3 axis CNC Cube has been the goal for this year and parts have been cut and fit, and redesigned to the point that all the major pieces will meet the various criteria:
Easy to make, with simple shop or hand tools
Low cost,
Strong enough, (some appear over-engineered - but they are intended to serve in other roles)
Light enough,
and as universal as practical at this point.

Many people showed interest and support during the initial phase, but more legwork was needed before the idea was ready for their help.

2011 should start to conform to the plans I had for 2010, since the major hurdles have been jumped. Stay Tuned!