{"id":52,"date":"2011-09-21T10:40:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-21T09:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/3dprinters\/2011\/09\/21\/opening-thoughts\/"},"modified":"2011-09-21T10:40:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-21T09:40:00","slug":"opening-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/3dprinters\/2011\/09\/opening-thoughts.html","title":{"rendered":"Opening Thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This blog will be following the development of my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reprap.org\/wiki\/Prusa_Mendel\">Reprap Prusa Mendel<\/a>, from parts source contemplations, through the build process and on to things I eventually get around to printing and all the highs and lows in between.<\/p>\n<div style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"http:\/\/www.reprap.org\/mediawiki\/images\/thumb\/4\/4a\/Assembled-prusa-mendel.jpg\/190px-Assembled-prusa-mendel.jpg\" width=\"299\" \/><\/div>\n<p>The main issue for all people joining this 3D printer revolution is how to build your first machine, building the second one, or first child, is relatively straight forward &#8211; you just use your existing printer, but when you don&#8217;t already have a printer you have a couple of options:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Build some sort of bootstrap (repstrap) machine, extruder attached to a CNC machine of some sort &nbsp;to print out the parts for your printer.<\/li>\n<li>Buy a full or partial kit of parts that someone else has put together<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>Now whilst I am all for supporting the reprap community, I am also a cheapskate and object to paying some of the prices being charged for these kits, I am perfectly happy sourcing the vitamins, motors, electronics, etc from the cheapest suppliers I can find, rather than paying the premium for someone else putting it all together in a kit.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I have been researching parts suppliers, electronics options, etc. for quite a few months now and have made a few decisions and actually splashed out and bought a few items.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>To that end I have decided to go with a cast set of parts including a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reprap.org\/wiki\/Wade%27s_Geared_Extruder\">Wades Extruder<\/a> from&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/metrixcreatespace.com\/clonefactory\">Metrix Create:Space<\/a>&nbsp;at $50.00 and $15.00 shipping to the UK (\u00a342.20), these parts may not last forever, and will need drilling, but I am sure they will last long enough for me to print at least one child&#8217;s worth of parts, probably many more, but they are a whole lot cheaper than the going rate of about \u00a380.00 for an equivalent set of printed parts.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>I have decided to go with the <a href=\"http:\/\/reprap.org\/wiki\/Sanguinololu\">Sanguinololu <\/a>approach for the electronics, mainly because I feel it is a neat and compact solution. I like the RAMPS idea for Arduino, but believe the Sanguinololu can be built for less, has a smaller footprint and looks neater. I also really like the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reprap.org\/wiki\/Repic\">Repic<\/a>&nbsp;approach and will probably try this for my next controller &#8211; all through hole construction, PCB can be milled on the printer, PIC can be obtained for free (if you request a sample), but is still in development and is quite a steer from the ATMEGA based controllers that are currently the norm.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Rather than buy a ready built one, complete with drivers for \u00a399.00, I have bought a 1.3a circuit board from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ebay.co.uk\/\">Ebay <\/a>for \u00a34.50, and a couple of&nbsp;FTDI chips again from&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ebay.co.uk\/\">Ebay&nbsp;<\/a>for \u00a32.54 each, with free or minimal postage costs. I am thinking about some <a href=\"http:\/\/reprap.org\/wiki\/Stepstick\">StepStick<\/a> drivers from&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ebay.co.uk\/\">Ebay<\/a>&nbsp;at \u00a38.29 each.&nbsp;The remainder of the electronic components will be coming from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rapidonline.com\/\">Rapid<\/a>&nbsp;or from various multi packs of resistors and capacitors I have previously bought from HK &#8211; total cost should be around \u00a350-60.00 and doing my own soldering. I&#8217;ll add it all up properly when I have all the parts, along with the total cost of this build, just to see what it actually cost me.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The stepper motors I have bought, in keeping with my cheapskate nature, are used rather than new items, again from&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ebay.co.uk\/\">Ebay<\/a>, under \u00a330.00 for 5 Nema 17 steppers, I actually bought a set of 5&#215;29 oz\/in steppers and a set of 4&#215;55 oz\/in steppers as I need one with with the higher torque for the extruder. I will use the others, either on a second Prusa, or on a heated wire foam cutting CNC machine.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This blog will be following the development of my Reprap Prusa Mendel, from parts source contemplations, through the build process and on to things I eventually get around to printing and all the highs and lows in between. The main issue for all people joining this 3D printer revolution is how to build your first&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/3dprinters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/3dprinters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/3dprinters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/3dprinters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/3dprinters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/3dprinters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/3dprinters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/3dprinters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.hslracing.com\/3dprinters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}