Prusawire - April Fools gone Right

How did we get here?

So, for anyone following along the Prusawire project, you may know this already, but let's start from the beginning.

I came up with the idea of Prusawire just before Core ONE kits were about to begin shipping. I had just recently finished a Switchwire build, and I couldn't shake just how similar the Switchwire was to the MK3/MK4 line. When I looked at what was left over from a Core ONE Upgrade, the idea of re-using the leftover parts to build a Switchwire was just screaming at me. 

Koosh and Birb were relatively new members to the team, so we decided to take a crack at designing a conversion mod, so together, we made the Prusawire Alpha

And let's be real, this was a decent concept at best, but, we were happy with it at the time. At this point, Ella decided to help us “Clean up” the CAD, as she was interested in actually making this feasible.

“Cleanup The CAD”

The funniest thing truly was, that as we began the CAD Cleanup, we found so many things wrong with the design, and so it began; a complete overhaul of the design, spearheaded by Ella.

Little by little, we started getting parts, testing fits. At work, we found a bunch of scrap MK3 frames that were either scuffed or bent, I took them home for further testing. And as we started getting parts from PrintedSolid, Prusa, and other vendors, we start realizing exactly what had to be done to get this to work.

In a literal month, Ella took what we released as a joke, to something that looked already Phenomenal. She was unstoppable, and the baton had been passed to her. This was no longer just a Positron project, this was an Ella Fox project.

What started as a simple cleanup, turned into a full relay race. The goal; Make this real and make it work. This wasn't going to just be a joke idea, it was going to be an honest printer design, that would be reliable, and effective at what it intended to do.

Let the Printing Begin

This is when Ella started to print and test what we had been throwing together, here's a few photos of the early prints;

At this point in time, we only really had access to a Bear frame, but then LDO helped sponsor a few parts, and we were able to shift over to a MK4 frame proper.

And, of course, by “we” - it truly was Ella charging forward with determination.

And what we now know as the Prusawire started to evolve from this hodgepodge of parts and ideas.

The Prusawire

In a little over two months from the original April Fools Joke, Ella had taken this crazy design to something tangible, and a true homage to both Prusa and Voron, a beautiful harmony was evolving from the chaos, and we all just couldn't help but cheer her on.

We started planning the release, the serialization, all of that, including what kind of logo we would go with for the project, here's a few of the ideas, I was pretty proud of them myself

But ultimately, we landed on just using “Prusawire”
 

We were having fun, even finding parts of Prusa printers and others in completely unexpected places;

and in video games;

But it was time, and we were so happy to release the official Prusawire Beta;

If you're interested in the Prusawire, you can check it out here;

https://github.com/Positron3D/Prusawire

What was an idea to use old MK4S parts from a Core One upgrade, turned into something that could be done on any MK3 base machine, be that an MK3S, MK3+, MK4, MK4S, if it used the frame, it was a tangible approach.

And in the end, thanks to Ella's hard work, we have something truly awesome. I hope you all enjoyed this fun curtain pull back.