Long time no post!

As I have been very busy with my other pet project, an Electric Vehicle conversion
http://electrobeatev.blogspot.co.uk/
The 3D printer blog has been neglected somewhat.
However as you can see on that blog I am now using it proper to develop and print my own parts for my Electric car conversion.
(well at least the charger side of it anyhow as this is the only part I am really getting my hands dirty on until we get to the wiring stage, any day now)
So the printer itself is getting used and for exactly what I built it for too, a lot of 3D printer builders/users are only interested in 3D printing for “3D printing’s” sake, and therefore you see a lot of trashy plastic crap being uploaded to thingiverse all the time, however that is not to say that there aren’t a lot of great thing designers out there and lots of them do post on thingiverse it is just a shame that they get lost in the background noise of plastic crap that swamps this great site.
Still that is the way of the web I guess 75% crap 25% diamonds! Moan over.
One diamond I found recently was the “J1772 inlet by erroneus” obviously only relevant to Electric car builders but if you are building an EV and search eBay for a j1772 charge socket they cost around £100, and a J1772 – J1772 cable is around £270!
This is just legalized extortion and is exactly why 3D printers are so cool.
Erroneus covers his arse (and fairly enough!) by stating that “I don't think it is a good idea to actually charge a car with this printed connector” but after speaking with an EV expert/friend Steve (7 years+ experience) he and I both agree that if this was printed in 100% ABS at high quality and correctly fitted with bullet plug contacts of the correct type for the J1772 standard that there is no reason why this socket would not be perfectly capable of charging an Electric Car.
In fact I am going to test this theory as I am just completing an open source 12-15KW battery charger from “EmotorWerks” and will be charging my 10KW Lithium polymer pack with it shortly.
Once I have proven the charger works properly I am going to try charging it through one of these connector sockets.
However I will need to convince Erroneus to model me up an J1772 plug as well or find someone who is a lot better at CAD than I am ;-)