Hello from a new repraper

Hello everyone,

I have seen the project kicking around on makezine and hackaday over the past months, but have decided last night after quite a bit of reading on this site that I will build a reprap.

I cant wait to email an actual physical pair of sunglasses I designed to a friend across the country, or something cool like that.

I was interested and confused (much as Joshua was in the post below) in the whole lineage/progression from repSTrap to reprap. after thinking about it for a while, i ended up with a similar plan as joshua.

Build repstrap
McWire built dead-nuts to plan as per Mcwire V1.2 plans on this site with
Arduino electronics, (I am very familiar with parallax BS2, hope this helps)
build my own first extruder from raw materials (just like Joshua below)

From the repstrap I will build the repraps entire parts kit. using these repSTraped parts I will build a REPRAP, which i will then employ to build another reprap, and then exponentially grow my army of REPRAPS as they each create new forms of themselves for generations and generations infinatly, helping other folks to build their reprap machines from parts I build myself.
I will Probably buy the 100 dollar plexiglass kit from RRRS to save FRUSTRATION and time when i build my McWIRE.

^Good idea?^

I am also very interested in the posibility to use the reprap as a circuit board printer in the future, as I think this would add greatly to the SELF REPLICATION FACTOR of the project (currently at 60 percent). are there any blogs on the reprap site I should check out about people doing circuit board prototyping? even laying down resist on copper boards with a marker would be a great start in the right direction (eventually get on to more complex milling)

I am A 2nd year electronics engineering student from New York, USA. I hope to be a positive contributor to the reprap community in the future. I look foreward to the day I send off A part (or a set) of a reprap which I repraped myself to a fellow reprapper beginner like myself. I envision an exponential explosion of these things being built by previous generations. Thanks for the time reading my post, more of an intro than a quesion, have a good day!

Welcome, I wish you good luck. I think your plan seems like it could work. Don't underestimate the time it would take to make an army of RepRaps by yourself, though. I'm still fidling with mine and it is just about really for a long time now... (changed electronics from gen1 to gen2, changed the extruder design and changed from HDPE to ABS plastic). Looking at hydraraptor's results, I guess the reward of this fidling will be greatly rewarded, but you have to be a person that enjoys some debugging.

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Regards,

Erik de Bruijn
[Ultimaker.com] - [blog.erikdebruijn.nl]

Hi!

I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I really think that rep-rap should get two Ps when used as a verb... reprapper, reprapped, etc. Rep-raping seems somewhat inappropriate

Extruded parts will cease to be a production bottleneck for everyone at some point, which then leaves the expensive (if easier to obtain) mechanical and electronic parts. I'm not really a poor guy (I have a real job and everything!) but adding up the cost of the v2 electronics alone is a little distressing. Not to mention an handful of steppers And then there's the need to lathe the extruder drive screw...

The circuit boards aren't too bad in price and facilities to create them are widespread, so for me the ability to fabricate complete boards is much less important than anything else. Making simpler or cheaper board designs would be of greater benefit, certainly. I looked into the workings of H-bridge motor controllers, and I can safely say I won't be trying to formulate stepper controller from discrete components any time soon

Good luck with the McWire. Reports of people actually using them seem to be few and far between... plenty of peole (myself included) seem to be going to the route of rolling their own cartesian bot instead.

The McWire should be able to do circuit board isolation milling.. I recall the design on which it was based could do engraving. It isn't quite self-replication, but it would be a bit of a labour saver.

Ru Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I
> really think that rep-rap should get two Ps when
> used as a verb... reprapper, reprapped, etc.
> Rep-raping seems somewhat inappropriate
>
Reprapping...

Ru Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'd like to take this opportunity to say that I
> really think that rep-rap should get two Ps when
> used as a verb... reprapper, reprapped, etc.
> Rep-raping seems somewhat inappropriate

The RepRap will be RepRaping the commercial rapid prototypers when it is fully operational. Muhaha.