So, after deciding to go with the kit version of the Ultimaker Original +, the fun started at the beginning of December with the arrival of a pleasingly heavy box on my doorstep. At this point I would like to say that I absolutely love online shopping – the postman is to my mind a much improved version of Santa, delivering goodies to your doorstep all year round :).
Inside the box awaited three layers of components, with the laser cut plywood frame pieces at the very bottom. Getting these to my house unscathed had been my biggest worry, but luckily everything was well wrapped and nothing was damaged in transit.
But hold on! No packing list. I had literally no idea what anything was (only a few of the plastic bags were labelled) and so went into a mild state of panic. Luckily for the first step of the assembly process no instructions were needed – lightly sanding and painting the plywood parts. I had been to the DIY store earlier and decided on a colour scheme of satin blue for the main body and fluorescent pink for the moving parts. Mixing the paints with water to thin them down and adding custom pigment was something I had read about on various Ultimaker blogs, and it worked an absolute treat, leaving a lovely translucent matte finish.
This step took a lot longer than I thought, especially as I wanted to preserve the beautiful dark laser-cut edge on all the pieces. After I had painted all the sating blue structural parts, I started assembling the main frame.
My studio is starting to get a little crammed with me adding more and more gadgets over the years, so I had to start expanding upwards by modifying a huge ikea shelf with a pull out platform. It’s the perfect size for my Ultimaker, and the shelves above hold my collection of various filaments. The assembly process itself took about seven days in total, and there were various bumps in the road as the parts were not fully labelled (particularly the multiple bags of screws) and such operations rarely go completely smoothly. But by the end of December, as 2015 was dawning, my Ultimaker was fully pimped and ready to go…and here it is in all its glory, my ‘girly’ Ultimaker Original + as one of my (male) friends called it – with mood lighting!
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