I’m in Chicago for a few more days, and I stopped by the Pumping Station: One hackerspace, where I met Bart Dring, inventor or MakerSlide.  There’s a picture on the forum at buildlog.net.  Bart is the second from the left, and his Quantum Delta 3-D printer is on the table.  That hackerspace is really nice.  It makes me wish I stayed in Chicago seven years ago.  But then again, if I hadn’t moved back to the UK, there would not have been an eShapeOko.

My spellchecker does not like “hackerspace”.  It suggests “hyperspace” (interesting, but no), “backspace” (no) and “Rackspace” (hmm… no).  It also objects to Dring, MakerSlide, buildlog.net and eShapeOko.  Shut up, spellchecker.

About half of the orders in Batch Five have now shipped.  Some have already arrived.  They’re not in the order in which they have been purchased, but in the order which made packing easier.  More than half of the remaining kits will ship on Monday.

The belt should be here soon too.

I have quality problems with the MXL belt.  I’ve ordered more from a reliable (but more expensive) supplier, and it should be here in a few days.  A few kits have shipped already (with good belt), and a few more are packed and waiting for couriers to pick them up.  Most still need the belt, so they will be delayed a few more days.  I’m sorry for this.

I still need to contact a few buyers to check whether they wanted larger kits, or NEMA23 upgrades.  If you’ve ordered extra belt or NEMA23 motors with your eShapeOko kit, expect an email soon.

Batch Five of eShapeOko kits is moving along, slowly.  We have all the parts, and we’re packaging them.  The first few Batch Five kits will leave tomorrow, and the rest early next week.

I changed the packaging method.  Instead of putting each type of part in its own little zip bag, I divided them, roughly, into one bag per assembly step.  That means fewer bags, less time for me to pack them, much easier to apply upgrades to the kits (NEMA23 motors on X, Y and even Z, longer rails, open end plates… all coming up soon in the store), and easier for you to find the parts when building the machine.  Where parts are very similar (for instance, the M5 Form A and Form B washers), I’ve put one of them in a separate bag.

The kits that ship this week are still packed in the old style, though.

All Batch Four eShapeOko kits have left!  Well, all but one kit, which will go out tomorrow.  I’ll email tracking numbers tonight.

I’m also slowly catching up with the backlog of other store orders.