 Recently, I was at the East Coast Rep Rep Festival, and it was a blast. Let's check out some of the things that I saw and did. My name's Jim, and this is The Edge of Tech. The East Coast Rep Rep Festival, or IRF, is held in Bel Air, Maryland, and this is the first time since 2019 that it's been actually a live show. It's a two-day event, a Saturday and a Sunday, and it's filled with exhibitors, sponsors, presentations, and the best thing of all, the community. With everything going on at IRF, I have to admit that one thing caught my attention more than anything else the whole weekend. That's d*** racers, or, uh, I'm sorry, DIRF racers. I think that's what we were supposed to call them at IRF is, uh, DIRF racers, that. This. There were various events put on over the two days we were there, and they were brought to IRF by the real, not the fake one, but the real, Sam Prentis. All of this was backed and sponsored by PolyMaker. Now, PolyMaker actually supplied filament to print your whole racer, if you were going to IRF and if you were going to battle. So if you were going to IRF, you were going to build a racer, you reached out to PolyMaker, and they sponsored over 20 racers full of filament. Not everybody took them up on that offer, and there were some absolutely amazing looking racers at IRF, but the other cool thing is that PolyMaker put up over $3,000 in prizes for all the races combined. And it was just awesome of them to step up and sponsor this like they did. Now, there were three races on Saturday, and it started with a figure eight race, and that kind of went a little rogue. The race started, we were supposed to do five laps, like five figure eights, and then come back. But most of all, everybody just kind of went after everybody. I think only one or two people actually did, uh, the figure eights. And I know there was one clear winner. And I don't think many laps were actually made around the filament boxes as you saw there. The second of the three races was actually a team event, kind of captured the flag-ish. There was some of PolyMaker filament boxes on a rolling cart, and the idea was each team had to gang up together and push that to one side or to the other to win. Now, our team ended up winning. It was a whole lot of fun to run around and try to push this thing around. We had an amazing great push towards the end of the race. We won, and we actually gained 15 seconds of kind of sit time before the third race started. So we didn't have to start for actually 15 seconds after the rest of the team started. It was, it was so much fun to do this event. There was really a lot less bashing and more actually like teaming up and trying to figure out how to move this box. It was so cool. Last but not least was the main death- derp, derp race, derp race. This was everybody against everybody, and the idea was your racer sits like this, and this is your head of the racer. Under your head sits a little switch right here. That's the on-off switch for your racer. So you put your head on, you push it forward, everything turns on. During the death race, the idea was to knock everybody else's heads off by either hitting them with a bludger that's usually right here. Mine is actually still in my luggage, so I didn't attach it for this video, or tipping them over and running their head over. However you could get their machine to turn off, but once their machine was turned off, they were eliminated from the race. This was an epic battle. It went on for roughly like 10 minutes. It was crazy, and I think one or two racers actually smoked, like kind of smoked up or it didn't really catch on fire, but I think there were motors smoking and ESC smoking and stuff, so you had to pull them out of the race, which was really cool. Over 25 racers started the day, and in the end it all came down to me and Pooch. You know that guy, Pooch. I only had one working track, so one of these actually stripped out, but I had a bludger. I had something to swing. Pooch actually kept leaning his racer all the way forward, and he didn't have a bludger. It fell off in battle, and he was actually using the Tom Llama Poochacorn hat that he had on his racer and just trying to ram everybody. So it came down to Pooch and I. I was going in circles and like flipping my bludger around, and he was just ramming things, trying to ram me and knock me over, but the only way he could ever kill me is to actually get my racer knocked over, because he didn't have a bludger. And I kept swinging right over the top of his racer with my bludger, because his racer was like laying flat as you're seeing in the video here. It's kind of like Pooch was sleeping on the job, just throwing it out there. It was at that point where we kind of like had this going on for a couple minutes, that Sam picked up Pooch's racer, and before he could announce the winner, everyone was chanting, let him race. And Sam set Pooch's racer back upright, set him back on the ground. Pooch kind of started towards me. I turned, I aimed my bludger, and Pooch ran straight into it, knocking his head off, and I was victorious. My racer, beaten, broken. I didn't even know how broken it was, but it, you know, it actually won the first day of races. I won some great prizes from Polymaker, and I kind of want to pay it forward to the community. So stick around towards the end of the video, and I'll tell you what I'm going to do with some of the winnings, actually most of the winnings that I actually won this weekend. But I was victorious. Pooch, I took you out, man. It was you and me, and you went down. You're winner by default. They let it go. We got a Pooch win after he finally sat up and took his punishment. Now, I did mention there was two days of racing, and after the first day with the help of some fellow racers and their grinder, we fixed mine. We got it all back together, and we were ready for day two. Day two, one big death race. Everybody against everybody who actually had a running racer in day two. The field was significantly cut down. I would say probably at least 10 racers were not racing on day two, whether they were broken or couldn't make the race or stuff like that. I was out pretty quickly. Sam Prentice said go. I was still walking. I had no idea where my racer was. I just hit forward, came around the top of a box, and boom. I got my head knocked off within seconds, 10 seconds tops. So I was out for day two already, but it was a great battle. The top three winners, as you're seeing right here, totally deserved it. Their racers were on point. They were custom. They were great. They were fun. They really deserved to win the prizes from Pollymaker and a couple of printers from Foucault's as well, or Focus. I think you say it Focus. It was Focus? But the really cool thing about the death races, I'm sorry, durf races, thank you Denise for this amazing sign, by the way. Denise, you rock. You rock. Thank you. The best thing about the durf racers club is everybody helped everybody put stuff back together, fix their stuff. If they needed extra parts, people brought extra parts. I had a giant bag of them. Kind of like a giant pit stop all over different tables and we helped each other get each other's racers together and running. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for all being a part of it. And congratulations to our top three, totally deserved. You guys are amazing. While the durf racers had my attention most of the weekend, in between battles, I got to see some absolutely amazing stuff. Here are some of the really cool things that I got to see at IRF 2022. Shown so far. Let me know in the comments below. I'd be super interested to know what you thought was cool because there were so many cool things at IRF 2022 to show off. Also, if you haven't subscribed yet, I invite you to do that at this time. We have some really cool videos coming up. I would really appreciate that. Hit that bell if you want to get notified when the next cool videos come out. But if you're not subscribed, I definitely invite you to hit that button and check out more cool stuff that I have coming up. Now I've shown some pretty sweet stuff from really cool models to custom 3D printers to amazing displays. And I tell you what, I think you'd be very surprised to know what my favorite thing from IRF 2022 was. It was Chris Riley's custom candy claw machine. It was a combination of 3D printers and printed parts. It was filled with candy and benches from Chris's private Benchy collection. Chris said the only rule was you have to take what you win. And that was a genius way to shed some of his Benchy load because we know he has a ton of Benchy's. It has buttons and lights and even had sound. And if that wasn't cool enough, it was running a custom Marlin firmware. And Chris said one of the hardest parts was to actually get an extruder to home. Because if you watch, the extruder actually comes down with the claw on it. So that is, it was just such a cool machine. It lit up. I was there when he was putting it together. And it, I mean, it was like a masterpiece. People absolutely loved this machine all weekend. With that being said, great work, Chris. This was my favorite machine of IRF 2022. Now it's safe to say that IRF 2022 was a smashing success. I heard rumors of upwards of almost 2000 people coming through. And that is, it's amazing. But all of that would not be possible without the organizers and the volunteers that IRF has. You guys are excellent to work with. You are organized, everything has its place, and everybody knew what was going on before the event even started. So thank you guys so much for putting this together for us for an amazing weekend and having such awesome volunteers to help run the show for the whole time. You guys are awesome. It's because of you that this event has grown so big over the years. Now it's time to circle back and talk about my smashing victory from Saturday's death race. I'm sorry, turf race. The prizes won on the main event were 10 spools of polymaker filament and a $500 3D printer. This could be any printer with the included shipping cost up to $500. So that is an amazing grand prize for me to win on the first day. I don't need another 3D printer. So I talked to Nick at Polymaker and he said that I could give the $500 for a 3D printer away to you, the community. So what's going to happen is I'm going to announce a contest or some way to win this coming up soon but hit that subscribe button in the bell to get notified when that video comes out because I cannot wait to give someone in the community the $500 for a new 3D printer. That means you could have a shot to win my prize from IRF because I want to pass it on. I want to pay it forward to the community who keeps this channel and all of our channels running. So stay tuned. In the beginning of the video, I talked about community and that's how I want to end it. It was amazing to meet and talk to people and shake hands and fist bump or whatever everybody was doing just to talk and give advice and answer questions and BS for a little bit with different people. The icing on the cake when we get to do these live events. So if I saw you there, if you came up and said hi, if you waved at me from a distance, anything. Thank you. And to everybody on the DeathRacer team who helped everybody else or helped my vehicle as well, thank you guys so much. We have one of the best crews out there and I can't wait for the next one. And whatever the next one is, we'll see you there.