Where does the overall cost come from?

This has been bugging me for a while now. I've been wanting to make a Prusa for a few months now, but the kit prices seem ridiculously high. The University I'm at will allow me to print off the required parts for the cost of the filament (or a fraction of the cost), but the only other things that would drive up the cost would be the motors, micro controllers, and heat pad.


Is there just a huge mark up on these kits or is there something I'm missing here?


Thanks

I'm not an expert here is what I know
1.guys got to make a living(your paying for the easy route and support when you buy an assembled machine or a kit)
2.the cheapest non-shady kit I have seen comes from here [printrbot.com] but they have a huge back log of kickstarter rewards that they need to ship first so you may be waiting a while
3.in my build I'm cutting the cost of electronics by using an arduino uno I already had and loading the teacup firmware on it
4.this site may also help to cut costs [www.thefrankes.com] especially with the link to cheap motors

Why don't you cost it yourself and see what number you get.
If you are only making one machine, sourcing all the parts from different suppliers can easily add up to the cost of a kit. Unless you have only seen very expensive kit prices?

What's your budget? and do you need everything apart from the plastic parts?

Can you get a hot-end made? if not a good quality one will cost about £40

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[richrap.blogspot.com]

I don't want to buy a kit I can I'll just get the parts for it, but the overall cost I keep seeing for those kits seems quite high, I was curious if it was close to the actual parts price. I'm almost 100% sure I can order the parts via the department I'm in which orders a massive of stuff at a time and they would give me a wholesale price on it.

I'm just not wanting to go over 400$ and I'm just trying to go through and see where the major costs for the build are coming from.

Ohh I've seen a few US companies selling hot-end's for 50$ for this model so I'll prob go with that.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/29/2012 02:29PM by bobasp1.

You can build one for $400 if you can get printed parts for free or cheap and are careful about sourcing components.

Kits are more expensive because of the time involved and the need to make a profit to make it worth-while. Trying to sell a kit for less than $500 is an excersize in futility for the most part, unless some serious corners are cut.

The electronics run anywhere from $100 to $200, the motors from $50 to $100, the hardware from $40 to $100, and the hot-end from $50 to $100. It all depends on where you source from, and whether you buy new or used motors, assembled or self-sourced electronics, etc.

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I'm still pretty new to this, but if you have access to a printer and have more time than money then I suggest buying a bare bones hardware kit and source the rest of the parts yourself. I bought my first partial kit from makerfarm (hardware and printed parts) in late January and just ordered my second kit (hardware only) from thingfarm north america. If you don't see exactly what you need on the website, email the owners and I bet they will work with you to get you exactly what you are after. The rest of the parts came from ultimachine, makergear, an old PC, radioshack, and home depot.

If you shop around, you can get all the parts for much less than the cost of a good kit (e.g. makergear prusa). Just plan to do some real-time problem solving when the part from supplier A needs a little tweaking to fit with the part from supplier B and neither parts are quite like what the build guide shows. I'm pretty sure the markup on the kits is to cover the effort to source all the parts, the effort to make sure all the parts actually work together, and to put together a modified build guide.

A solid kit should get you up and running more quickly. Building one from scratch will be more interesting/frustrating.

If you are more interested in the objects the printer makes, buy a good kit. If you are more interested in the printer itself, build it from scratch.

I built my Prusa starting with a kit of printed parts and the main "vitamins" purchased on eBay, then scrounged / cloud-sourced the rest (electronics, motors, power supply, heat-bed, etc). All-up cost to get the basic machine working with PLA (no heat-bed) was about AU$565 (including shipping), or about $610 including the heat-bed. (I had a few bits and pieces lying around which went into the build, which are not priced, such as wires, etc, and I have since added a few extra goodies, such as SD-RAMPS, X-Bee wireless, etc, but haven't included these in my pricing either.) See attached list of my components and prices:



This wasn't necessarily the "best" or "cheapest" machine I could have built for the money; for example, I was quite impatient to get things built, so some choices were based on speed of delivery, not just lowest up-front cost. Nevertheless, this gives you some idea of what it will cost you to do it yourself the "hard way", so someone selling an all-inclusive Prusa kit or similar for somewhere around the $1,000 mark sounds pretty fair to me.

(Then there is the question of kits which purport to be "all-inclusive" or "fully assembled", but which turn out not to be - but that is another story ...)

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Follow my Mendel Prusa build here: [julianh72.blogspot.com]

Keep shipping costs in mind, too. When you buy a kit, you're paying for shipping once. When you buy your parts from 5 different places, you're paying all their shipping costs. I self-sourced my first Prusa and easily spent $75 on shipping. I got great deals on the parts, but I managed to wipe out much of the savings by purchasing nearly every component from a different merchant.

And as with everything, you get what you pay for. J-heads go for $55, and I've found them to be great hot ends, but you need to buy/source your own wire insulation, you need to lengthen the heater wires and crimp them to connecting terminals, you need to get some screws to mount it to your extruder body, etc, etc. That all adds time and cost. In the beginning, the thrill of doing it all yourself will make this seem like a fun challenge. Once you've done it a few times, you'll probably start to see the value of paying a bit more to have other people do some of the labor for you! (e.g. spools of filament vs loose coils, pre-assembled hot ends, pre-connectorized motor wires, pre-assembled electronics, etc)

There's also value in that a kit is far more likely to have the individual parts work together. Especially when you're building your first machine, it's tough to know with perfect certainly beforehand that everything you buy will work seamlessly with everything else. Once you open the boxes, you're probably going to have at least one moment of disappointment where you realize you mis-measured a threaded rod and now it's 20 mm too short or that your bearings don't slide well on your budget rods (don't cheap out on your smooth rods) or that your electronics kit didn't come with endstops like you thought it did. And when this happens, it's ever so tempting to just overnight yourself the correct part, at much higher cost of course Building it all yourself is incredibly rewarding, but keep in mind that the cost is likely to wind up 20 to 40 percent higher than you anticipate.

Wraithnot Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm still pretty new to this, but if you have
> access to a printer and have more time than money
> then I suggest buying a bare bones hardware kit
> and source the rest of the parts yourself. I
> bought my first partial kit from makerfarm
> (hardware and printed parts) in late January and
> just ordered my second kit (hardware only) from
> thingfarm north america. If you don't see exactly
> what you need on the website, email the owners and
> I bet they will work with you to get you exactly
> what you are after. The rest of the parts came
> from ultimachine, makergear, an old PC,
> radioshack, and home depot.
>
> If you shop around, you can get all the parts for
> much less than the cost of a good kit (e.g.
> makergear prusa). Just plan to do some real-time
> problem solving when the part from supplier A
> needs a little tweaking to fit with the part from
> supplier B and neither parts are quite like what
> the build guide shows. I'm pretty sure the markup
> on the kits is to cover the effort to source all
> the parts, the effort to make sure all the parts
> actually work together, and to put together a
> modified build guide.
>
> A solid kit should get you up and running more
> quickly. Building one from scratch will be more
> interesting/frustrating.
>
> If you are more interested in the objects the
> printer makes, buy a good kit. If you are more
> interested in the printer itself, build it from
> scratch.

Ohh wow this is a nice price for the vitamins 81$ for the set or most of it. [thingfarm.org]

Thanks everyone! I will keep going through to find everything. My question now is about the microcontrollers, is it one board per axis or just one for the whole thing? Also can I use something like an arduino uno or does it need to be a bit diffrent so it can controll everything *port wise*?

one board controls all 3 axis's and the extruder
here is a thread on the subject of useing an uno as a microcontroller [forums.reprap.org]
but I would say if you don't already have and arduino uno lying around would may want to look into something more futureproof

bobasp1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ohh wow this is a nice price for the vitamins 81$
> for the set or most of it.
> [thingfarm.org]
> ct=21


I used that vitamins kit for my Prusa and again, you get what you pay for. It pretty much works, but here are the issues I had:
1. The smooth rods are 5/16" and zinc-plated, so they're actually not very smooth and you need SAE bushings. Because of the rods' roughness, you cannot use PLA or bronze bushings. You can use LM8UUs if you're okay with oiling the rod every few days.
2. Short M3 screws instead of real set screws for your printed gears. Real screws didn't fit, so I had to go out and buy some set screws.
3. Very expensive shipping if you're not in Canada. For US customers, expect to pay 20-40. This is especially true if you get the motors from that site. The price is good, but you get killed on the shipping. In addition, the motors come with very short 300mm leads so you'll need to lengthen them (UGH).

At least on paper, the azteeg x1 looks like a pretty good deal. But you'll still need to source the stepper drivers.

bobasp1 Wrote:
> Ohh wow this is a nice price for the vitamins 81$
> for the set or most of it.
> [thingfarm.org]
> ct=21
>
> Thanks everyone! I will keep going through to find
> everything. My question now is about the
> microcontrollers, is it one board per axis or just
> one for the whole thing? Also can I use something
> like an arduino uno or does it need to be a bit
> diffrent so it can controll everything *port
> wise*?

Pointedstick Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> bobasp1 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Ohh wow this is a nice price for the vitamins
> 81$
> > for the set or most of it.
> >
> [thingfarm.org]
>
> > ct=21
>
>
> I used that vitamins kit for my Prusa and again,
> you get what you pay for. It pretty much works,
> but here are the issues I had:
> 1. The smooth rods are 5/16" and zinc-plated, so
> they're actually not very smooth and you need SAE
> bushings. Because of the rods' roughness, you
> cannot use PLA or bronze bushings. You can use
> LM8UUs if you're okay with oiling the rod every
> few days.
> 2. Short M3 screws instead of real set screws for
> your printed gears. Real screws didn't fit, so I
> had to go out and buy some set screws.
> 3. Very expensive shipping if you're not in
> Canada. For US customers, expect to pay 20-40.
> This is especially true if you get the motors from
> that site. The price is good, but you get killed
> on the shipping. In addition, the motors come with
> very short 300mm leads so you'll need to lengthen
> them (UGH).

Thanks for the heads up- I'll find some set screws while I'm waiting for Canada Post to deliver the rest of the hardware. I ordered the fasteners, 608ZZ bearings, linear bearings, and extruder hardware from thingfarm, but I ordered 8 mm smooth rods from ultimachine because I found the concept of using 8 mm linear bearings on 5/16 rods slightly offensive ;-)

My first printer was SAE and I wanted to keep the firmware settings consistent for the new printer so I got the 5/16 threaded rods (and SAE nuts) from the local home depot and an XL belt from makerfarm. Soon I'll have two prusas that are metric/SAE mashups. But all self-sourced printers are some sort of mashup.

This the first I have heard about using an Arduino Uno for the reprap electronics. This is quite interesting to me.

What other electronics were necessary? Did you develop a shield using Pololo's or something else along that line?