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Work in progress Building an Reprap 3D printer

lowfat

lowfat

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xentr_thread_starter
So it has been my plan to buy a 3d printer for a few years now. Finally pulled the trigger on a Reprap Prusa i3 just over a week ago. This is an open source 3D printer. Which parts can easily be sourced from many places. Many of them can even be 3D printer.

I ordered everything from Aliexpress for about $350CAD after duty. It was extremely well packaged and the pieces aren't low quality stuff from the looks of it. Lets just say I wasn't expecting near this many parts either. :shok:

Over the next few days/weeks I'll be assembling it. Giving it the lowfat touch along the way. :whistle:

export-89.jpg


export-90.jpg
 
lowfat said:
So it has been my plan to buy a 3d printer for a few years now. Finally pulled the trigger on a Reprap Prusa i3 just over a week ago. This is an open source 3D printer. Which parts can easily be sourced from many places. Many of them can even be 3D printer.

I ordered everything from Aliexpress for about $350CAD after duty. It was extremely well packaged and the pieces aren't low quality stuff from the looks of it. Lets just say I wasn't expecting near this many parts either. :shok:

Over the next few days/weeks I'll be assembling it. Giving it the lowfat touch along the way. :whistle:
Click to expand...

That's not all plexi / acrylic is it???? That'd be one heck of a lot of polishing..... ;)

$350? That sounds like a more than reasonable price assuming it works as advertised.
 
xentr_thread_starter
sswilson said:
That's not all plexi / acrylic is it???? That'd be one heck of a lot of polishing..... ;)

$350? That sounds like a more than reasonable price assuming it works as advertised.
Click to expand...
It is acrylic but it all has that stupid film over it. Stuff is so hard to take off.

I will be sleeving all the wires though. Not sure what colours yet.
zoob said:
Wow nice project. $350 all-in is a great price. Will need to do some research on this :D
Click to expand...

Good price true. But the 'manual' is mostly non existent. About 25 pictures w/ no instructions at all. It really is a 3d jigsaw puzzle at first. So expect some frustration. Hopefully I'll be posting enough pictures to fill in the gaps of the 'manual' if anyone is interested in building one.
 
xentr_thread_starter
Build started off a bit daunting since the instructions were terrible. At first I didn't know how to screw the thing together since there are no threads. But after a bit it clicked.

You have to just set the nuts like so. Then screw the two pieces together.
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Went on to the screen. O boy did they mess designing this part up. Yup those are countersunk screws. :doh:

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That isn't really the bad part though. This was actually shown in the 'instructions'. They only included 4 spacers for this, when it needs 8. There are solder points that jam in to the front acrylic panel because of the lack of spacers. So the screen isn't flush. I'll probably go and grab better hardware for this as it drives me nuts.
export-97.jpg


Worked on mounting the motors. After this things started to make a lot more sense.
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Because of my stubby fingers I found that inserting the nuts before hand helped a lot.
export-101.jpg


It started to get a dark around this point so I didn't get more pictures. However it really was easy after this as you figure out how things should go. I've completed most of the printer except for the extruder (thing that melts the plastic) and the wiring. So I should definitely be done by tomorrow if all goes well.
 
xentr_thread_starter
Had taken a bunch more pics this morning of the progress but my computer locked up while moving them to Lightroom. Seems they are lost. :sad:

Anyways the printer is assembled completely. Now just working on cleaning up and sleeving the wiring.

A few pics of the extruder.
export-103.jpg


export-102.jpg


A few of the parts on the 3d printer are 3d printed. Including this nifty nozzle to direct airflow.
export-106.jpg


Worst designed piece of the entire printer. Took like 30 minutes to tighten the drive belt in place.
export-104.jpg


One of the other 3d printed parts. This one holds the X and extruder in place.
export-109.jpg


There are switches like this for all 3 axis that tell the starting/park positions of the extruder, bed, motors.
export-108.jpg


The progress of my wiring so far.
export-105.jpg
 
Curious to see if your prints look better than my XYZPrinting da Vinci 1.0 which I bought for $500+tax back on Christmas 2014.

Mine was simply pull out of the box, plug in, print :haha:
 
xentr_thread_starter
JD said:
Curious to see if your prints look better than my XYZPrinting da Vinci 1.0 which I bought for $500+tax back on Christmas 2014.

Mine was simply pull out of the box, plug in, print :haha:
Click to expand...

That was the printer I was originally going to buy. But I've heard their support is so-so. I also like the idea of an open sourced printer. Really easy for me to find / make parts for it. And I have pretty much unlimited choices when it comes to software.
 
Yeah a lot of limitations with it and my extruder doesn't support PLA either, only ABS. There was supposedly going to be an upgrade kit but I haven't seen it...

But really it was just for me to try out 3D printing, it's more of a toy for me :haha:
 
xentr_thread_starter
JD said:
But really it was just for me to try out 3D printing, it's more of a toy for me :haha:
Click to expand...

That is what mine is for me as well. Actually it is mostly to push me to learn to do some simple 3D design. I want to get some computer modding stuff CNC'ed later so I need to figure out how. :bleh:

Done the wiring except for the extruder. Should hopefully test printing tomorrow. :thumb:

export-110.jpg


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export-114.jpg
 
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