Scavenger List

So like everyone who gets a reprap online all my friends say “Cool!” until they find out how much I spent on the darn thing ( about 1k trail kit + error parts ) . So my question is actually repstrap related. Anyone have a good list of stuff to scavenge 3d printer parts off of so far I have gotten

1. Stepper motor ( Ink jet printer )
2. Smooth rods ( ink jet printer )
Just wondering if there is a list out there I can say “Well if you cant afford new stuff try to find this at the thrift store”

edit for spelling... yea its that early and only 2 cups of coffee into a 5 cup day.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/2014 11:31AM by Doug1.

Almost everything can be scavenged from old equipment. It's just a tradeoff between cost, effort, quality, and speed of what the end printer will be.

When I first started my printer, I went to several computer shops that had used equipment, as well as 5 thrift stores. I even looked around at copiers or other office equipment that might work. Nothing had smooth rods. What little used equipment could find were just sheet metal (or possibly extrusion) where there was a plastic clip or fastener of some sorts that ran along a guide. They might have been able to be used as a guide for a printer, but it would have taken a lot of work to make them work. Same way with steppers.

Most modern equipment use steppers that are just big enough to barely do what they were designed to do. So forget about NEMA17 or larger motors. Belts, pulleys, and switches probably could be found without too much difficulty, but then you might have a hodgepodge of different standards (if they are even a identifiable standard) that makes setting things up...fun.

The other thing is that, unless you have a computer scrapyard that has a lot of the same equipment, it's a crapshot if they would have something suitable more than once. If you got an old printer that worked today for one friend, a different friend going back tomorrow likely wouldn't find something similar that would be suitable for them in the same way.

Carboard and duct tape.
You know what? That sounds like a fun and interesting project. I think I'm going to venture down that road and make one with those as main materials.

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Realizer- One who realizes dreams by making them a reality either by possibility or by completion. Also creating or renewing hopes of dreams.
"keep in mind, even the best printer can not print with the best filament if the user is the problem." -Ohmarinus

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MrDoctorDIV
Carboard and duct tape.

It's been done.

Doesn't look all that functional to me. But I have a different goal: not to print replacement, better parts, but to make a fully functional, final version printer from those cheap, basic materials.

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Realizer- One who realizes dreams by making them a reality either by possibility or by completion. Also creating or renewing hopes of dreams.
"keep in mind, even the best printer can not print with the best filament if the user is the problem." -Ohmarinus

You need to find older scanners and printers.. mid 80's. I know a little hard to find, but i happened to have a few laying around. That is where i got my rods and steppers to build my rapstrap. Used plywood and wood blocks to build the x axis, and other various methods to get my printer going.. i did buy an extruder, though i was going to build the plywood one. And bought a hot end (ohio plasics, wish he would have mentioned something about it not printing PLA, fought that for a month before buying a good one). And bought the ramps setup. All told, maybe a little over 200 to get to a printing state.( that does not include the cost of what i had already in the shop..wood,tiestraps,screws,ect.) But i have upgraded enough that i could have bought a kit..
The learning experience was priceless however.

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cat.farmer
You need to find older scanners and printers.. mid 80's.

I assume you say this because most of the newer printers don't have stepper motors. There is a guy making great progress on a low-cost solution that uses DC motors + encoders scavenged from newer model inkjet printers: Further progress on framing my repscrap. No steppers needed.

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MattMoses

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cat.farmer
You need to find older scanners and printers.. mid 80's.

I assume you say this because most of the newer printers don't have stepper motors. There is a guy making great progress on a low-cost solution that uses DC motors + encoders scavenged from newer model inkjet printers: Further progress on framing my repscrap. No steppers needed.

Yes they had steppers,belts,pulleys, and chrome rods. and if you want to scavenge electronics, there are the driver chips too. the ones I had were HP scanjet 5, and a scanjet 3??also had an old copy machine, and 4 or 5 inkjet printers and ribbon printers. so I ended up with a whole lot of good parts.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/22/2014 12:06AM by cat.farmer.

Mid 90's scanners can have smooth rods too, i have an old umax (i think), that isn't usable on modern OSes. Two 8mm rods plus bushings in that one. The stepper might be usable too, but not sure. Samsung ML-1600 series has an allegro 4984, but it might not be worth the effort to desolder, those chips aren't very expensive, and you'd still need to make you own pcb etc. (I dismantled it for the laser scanner assembly).

/Andreas