New to 3D Printing Please Help

Hi I have been reading about 3D printing and I have decided to build me a machine for myself I have a great Idea and I think It will help a lot of people. The problem is im completely overwhelmed lol I do not know where to start.
There is no way I can afford a kit or all the parts at once. I want to start off with about 50 dollars worth of parts at a time and just buy about 50 dollars worth of parts every few weeks and build it a little bit at a time till I have a completed printer. Im so excited lolol
Any advice on which set of parts to start off with would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance

Ah, the Johnny Cash method of building a RepRap: [www.youtube.com]

The message of that song is still pretty relevant. Things change so quickly, you'd be far happier putting that money in savings and then buying all the parts at the same time. It'll be what, a year before you can build it? There's a real risk that no one would be making parts a year from now that fit today's printers.

I am gonna buy more than one piece at a time im going to start out with maybe 100 dollars just wondering what are the most important parts that I should start out with.
Thanks for reply

Thaistikadon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am gonna buy more than one piece at a time im
> going to start out with maybe 100 dollars just
> wondering what are the most important parts that
> I should start out with.
> Thanks for reply


The most important parts are electronics, motors, hotend, extruder, frame, linear system, then hardware. These are my personal order of importance. In theory you can make most of these things yourself but reality is the average person does not have the skills or understanding to do so unless they take the time to learn.

When I built my first printer, it was from scraps and junk except for the most important/hard to get things (electronics, motors, rods). if you are more wealthy in free time than money, you can invest time to lean and research how to make improvised parts. I've improvised so much during my first printer that I used duct tape for couplings, toilet paper for linear bearings, and other improvisions that I only spent less than $250USD. I can attest that you don't need to have any plastic printed parts to make a decent functional printer. The secret is having a rigid frame and decent functioning extruder & linear system. Then, when you save up more money, you can upgrade to a nice J-head hotend or MKII heat bed or other parts.

Here is what my first printer looks like:

Notice there are no printed parts. I've also seen people carve parts out of wood too. If you want to see a sample pic of what my machine was able to do, go here.

Purchasing a complete printer when I was first interested in 3d printing years ago was not an issue, however I wanted to experience the joy of starting with a repstap. I am glad that I did as it gave me insightful perspective of the inner workings and the ability to help others like you. I am not trying to persuade you to take my route but rather inform you that you have a cheaper option as funds is an issue for you. Rather, turn your disadvantage of funds into an advantage by challenging yourself to build a repstrep (a printer made from scraps) and gain inner working knowledge.

However, if you are also not wealthy on free time to learn and research, macegr gave you excellent advice to just save and buy a complete kit or source all parts at once. If you start buying things slowly, what happens if you decide to built another incompatible system later on?

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/11/2013 04:19AM by akenvim.

Its not a bad way to do it. I have built several 3D printers but My favorite is My current build. I got printed Printrbot parts for super cheep on eBay which came with a Wade's extruder. Then I took apart several printer's and scanners to get parts like: polished smooth rods, end stop switches, bushings, and many more useful parts. The printrbot platform is nice cause it let's you extend all 3 axis pretty easily. It's also a build that you can learn all the fundamentals of printing without killing your pocket book. If you look on ebay and your patient you can find killer deals. Check out my build notes on my printrbot build by clicking on my link.

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