March 7-8th 2026 marked the 3rd #SMRRF, the Sanjay Mortimer RepRap Festival.

A fund-raising event by The Sanjay Mortimer Foundation (SMF) whose aim is to offer guidance to #Neurodiverse Youth and help them achieve their goals in #STEM fields.

Honestly, my favorite anecdote about the #SMF was there was an individual who was very interested in #drones and #quadcopters, and the #SMF helped to find them a placement at a company who manufactured drones for search and rescue.

So, why do I have a soft spot for the #SMF? Easy, I have membership on the #autism spectrum. I finally got the shiny piece of paper 2 years ago…

I wish that something like the #SMF existed when I was younger, who knows where Doug would be now… but this isn’t a sob story, this is a celebration post!
Let’s get back to it!

SMRRF2026 happened, I went big.

I may have a mild obsession with a toy called PrintABlok, designed by a chap named Joseph Larson, who goes by The 3D Printing Professor. He released #PrintABlok under a #Creative Commons license which allows you to tweak and remix them as you like. When he did this he said “Have fun”, and I’ve done just that.

I would like to think I have been having fun with this toy for the last 4 years! So much so that I have designed and built 4 #3DPrinters with it using Tinkercad, and this year I opted to share the fun.

With the help of Sunlu 3D and Prusa Research who provided the filament, I printed around 17 kilos of #PrintABlok across my small collection of 3D Printers (including a C1 generously lent to me by Construct3d) to give to the makers so they had something to build and play with at #SMRRF2026.

And the best bit about this #STEM pile of #PrintABlok was being able to tell them they could keep their creations.
Their faces, the giant smiles, the joy they had… that is what #SMRRF2026 was about for me.
Enabling others to have fun, to explore, to create.

If I can design 3D Printers out of a TOY, what can THEY make?

I also kind of printed my own table for the event… that happened.

Finally!

With the help of LDO Motors, Bigtree Tech, E3D, Fabreeko, 3DJake, and Prusa Research, we built a new PrintABlok Printer and put it into the auction to raise funds for the Sanjay Mortimer Foundation.
The printer raised £185, which was a nice addition to the roughly £113,000 raised over the weekend.

Thank you so much to everyone who has supported my descent into #PrintABlok madness over the years. I can’t wait for the next one.

Shoutouts & Support:

n.b. Images Incoming!