Anybody hear of this - 3D printers for every FIRST team

[Kevin Ray]

On the smooth side of the build plate is a sheet of Kapton which helps the filament adhere to the plate (at least is on the Replicator 2X). There are some other tricks for removing a build from the deck. Try holding a can of compressed air upside down and letting the cold air "shrink" the build momentarily. It usually pops right off. Also, you may not have to do a lot of rafting (building a stable adhering surface on the build plate) for the Replicator 2X that you might have to do for other printers because of the heated build plate.
Many downloads from Thingiverse (warehouse of 3D models) are made on other brands of printers and you may have to make adjustments to the printer settings prior to hitting "print".

Finally, I can't wait until there is a plethora of FIRST-specific models out there on CD's white pages or Thingiverse for teams to share. There are literally hundreds of parts that can go on a bot that can be printed and I think this year will bear that out. I just hope the Makerbot will accept the carbon fiber Pla from the Proto Plant Inc. guys. That could open a lot of doors.