Nice! That sounds like a fun project. Let me know if you need any help, I’m a CAD Designer (SolidWorks) at a machine shop in Lakeville. Learning from your build would help me with my own (much smaller, around 4’ high). I’m shooting for as smooth and accurate as possible. My Replicator has pretty bad ringing when you get up to speeds above 60mm/s (plus the hot end kinda sucks).
I’d definitely be interested!
I saw there was a request to hold off until after the 23rd. I am out of town the 22nd-31st, but if you guys don’t want to put off scheduling it until June I totally understand.
Hopefully it’s a hit; I’d be interested in seeing something like this become a regular meet up. We had a web design meet up going on once a month up in Duluth, and that worked out great!
If the first meetup goes well Id love to make it a monthly thing. Maybe the first or last Friday/Saturday of the month kind of thing?
So what days, times and locations work best for everyone?
Friday evenings or Saturday/Sunday anytime works best for me. I am south of the metro but I can meet somewhere in the cities (south metro preferred).
My vote is for a brewery as a meeting place for two reasons.
1. Really good beer 
2. Large open rooms with open seating (no need for reservations or splitting up between tables/booths).
Most breweries have food trucks outside (most of which have excellent food). My suggestions are:
- Fulton Brewery is pretty centrally located and has a good size tap room.
- Summit Brewing is a little further south but has a big tap room and picnic bench seating which makes it great for large groups.
- Tin Whiskers Brewing seems like appropriate place to meet (owned by a bunch of electrical engineers) and has great beer (my personal favorite), plus Black Sheep coal fired pizza is next door. The only downside is the tap room is a little on the small side.
Other Twin Cities Breweries
Would be interested in a semi local get together as well. I went to the Reprapfest in Indiana last month; and been interested in working up some local options as well.
Gary
Me too. I am a reseller but have also been trying to look up folks interested in doing this. I wouldn’t use it to pitch anyone, but would like to attend, so I’ll leave it to your discretion. I’m East of St. Cloud, too far to ask to meet in the North Metro. But you pick the place, I’ll be there (anytime over the weekend works for me - it’s 70 miles for me to get to Bloomington).
I’ve been fooled by pubs who say that they have a “quiet place to meet.” Let’s make sure we can talk, not shout.
PS. If it turn’s into a good thing, in the future we could play with creating hacker chapters:) ?
You would be more than welcome to attend if you want to make the drive. For me I just want to see a casual get together for people to relax and talk shop.
Good point though, “Quiet” is a relative term :P.I will say most of the breweries I’ve been to have been quieter than bars or brew pubs. We could see if a local haskerspace (such as Twin Cities Maker) would be willing to let us use their space?