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Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!

Posted by L4nce0 
Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 07, 2010 05:10PM
I've been drooling over the idea of making one of these beasts. Though when it comes down to it, I'm a poor college student. I'm working summers, I'm thinking of taking out a credit line and buying one. I may even make most of my cash back, as my CS friends want to rent usage time.

So I'm looking, the Mendel is listed as an approximate price of about 400. I can totally afford that! So okay, I try to go buy one. There's all these kits.. which are 300 dollars HIGHER then what reprap says it should be. That pretty much twice the estimated cost, what the heck.. Maybe they have extra features, like a laser cutter?..... probably not 300 dollars worth of extras..... I feel over whelmed trying to find the parts for this and getting an exact estimate. I cannot pay 300 dollars more for a convince.

At the same time you see makerbot kits for 700 - 900. (aside from overpriced plastic and a weird USB that is required and only in the delux kit... and not anywhere else on google..)

Is a mendel better or worse then a maker bot, 900 dollar kit? Any sources carry all the parts at a FAIR price? I tried looking on amazon for the components on the list. nada. I'll look more heavily later on the other listed sites...

Maker bot scares me in that it is charging 10 bucks per per LB. Online I see the rate is closer to 3 dollars per LB, making them extremely untrustworthy if they dare price gouge plastic that much..

Any help with this would be great!
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 07, 2010 05:55PM
I'd love to see and answer to this question, I'm in the exact same position!
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 07, 2010 06:34PM
L4nce0,

Welcome to the world of RepRap. If it makes you feel any better, a lot of us have been, or still are in your position. The information listed on the website can be outdated, mixed, or just plain confusing. There's a lot of it, and I can see why you've come to some of the conclusions you have.

Right now, the biggest hurdle to overcome when building a Mendel RepRap is getting Reprapped Parts (RP). Printing isn't quite to the point of plug-and-play yet, so the demand is high and the supply is still low. Realistically, putting together a Mendel is somewhere between $600-$800, depending on where you get your RP parts, who you order your vitamins from (Vitamins are the non-printed, non-electronics, such as fasteners, threaded rod, bearings, etc.) and what electronics you use. As of this writing, an RP set runs about $250-$350 on ebay. That's where most of the selling is happening. There are also alternatives to the RP set. There are people here who are Mendel structures made from laser-cut wood, open-poured molds, and CNC'd material. Even with those alternatives, building a Mendel is not a quick and easy process. Once you have the machine together, getting it to print is not an easy process. The software just isn't there yet. We're still very much in the development phase.

Makerbot is a good company. Their prices actually are reasonable, and they maintain a good reputation. A lot of the commercial availability of RepRap electronics comes directly from them. Their plastic prices tend to be on par with what others are selling it at. You may want to make sure the plastic you're looking at matches what a Makerbot or Mendel can use right now.

Ultimachine
RepRapSource
Makergear

The USB cable their motherboard requires (A USB to TTL cable) is not a specialized cable, and can be bought from a lot of different companies, also there is more than one option to connect to that. The method of communication the Makerbot motherboard is using is not proprietary or uncommon. (Actually, it's just plain serial communication.) You can find them at the following places:

Adafruit Industries
Digikey
There are a few more places that carry them. $20 is about standard.

I hope that helps a bit. As for finding a place that sells a whole kit, a lot of us our working on it. A lot of the folks here just want to print and learn and extend. For some, a makerbot is the way to get started. For others, they want a Mendel and it's a bit more work to get it.

I recommend you continue to browse and read the RepRap boards here. I also highly recommend you jump onto the RepRap IRC channel, as there are a number of people there who will be more than willing to clarify things for you. We're on #reprap on freenode.net Lots of friendly folks here.
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 07, 2010 07:52PM
Pricing

You can buy "almost-Mendel" kits that include all the parts but using laser-cut wooden parts in place of the original RP (rapid prototyped, i.e. plastic, usually ABS or PLA) parts for around US$800 plus shipping. The Mendel_Buyers_Guide page of the wiki is perhaps in need of an update, it doesn't yet mention sources like botmill.com and techzonecom.com and flemingcnc.com for these "almost-Mendel" approaches. I am calling them "almost-Mendel" in the sense that a "true" Mendel would have rapid prototyped parts, not wooden lasercut or CNCed parts). There may be other design differences, read up on each variant and what has been changed in it. Overall, the cost difference between that kind of Mendel kit and a Makerbot kit is not huge at all.

Creating kits and supporting kit builders takes time and money. Most of the folks selling kits and parts are doing it because they enjoy doing that, it is one way they contribute to this community. As far as I know, no one has (yet??) become a millionaire from selling Mendel or Makerbot kits smiling smiley There are other commercial derivatives such as ShaperCube, but these tend to be priced higher still, perhaps because of their method of construction (plenty of custom aluminium parts).

Cost for a Mendel is only significantly lower that around US$800 if you have a friend who can print you a set of the RP parts on their own 3D printer and give them away, or sell them to you for only their cost of production. That is the ideal -- remember the "rep" in "RepRap" stands for Replicating smiling smiley If you have such a friend, and carefully source parts individually, you might be able to buy all the rest for US$400 to US$500, which is what the Bill Of Materials for Mendel tries to show. (There are some fledgling schemes to "loan" sets of RP parts for low or no cost, but these are just beginning to appear and are not yet at all widespread).

Choosing between Mendel and Makerbot (one person's opinions only)

Makerbot "cupcake" kits may be a little easier to put together. Makerbots have a substantially smaller build volume, so the size of the largest single part (or set of parts printed at one time) is smaller than you can do with a Mendel. That may not matter much for hobby use, but for production runs it might. Mendel is an open platform which is the current "state of the art" and is being improved and modified as the project goes forward, and for which experiments with new extruder and electronics designs (for example) are almost always going on within this community. There are a plethora of "alternative" firmware implementations for the common Mendel electronics boards out there, for the adventurous few who use them, too. A Makerbot is a commercial product, and is unlikely to change as rapidly, for valid commercial reasons.

There are apparently people who buy a Makerbot cupcake in order to print a set of RP parts for a Mendel, and then build that. Then they can (at least in theory) sell the Makerbot on ebay to reduce their total project cost -- but I suspect some or many who try this approach will end up keeping the Makerbot as a second 3D printer smiling smiley

Things to think about before spending scarce time and money on building a 3D printer

You're looking at at least 50 hours to build a Mendel, probably at least 40 for a Makerbot. Then you have the fun of calibration and adjusting settings so it works consistently and with acceptable print quality. If you expect to rent your machine out, ensure you set expectations of those renting it appropriately. It takes considerable time, willingness to learn, and some level of understanding of how it all works, to successfully build and use a Reprap, or a Reprap-derived, 3D printer at the moment. Things are rather easier now than they were a couple of years ago... but that doesn't mean it is now "easy" to successfully build and operate a 3D printer.

Summary

Welcome to the RepRap community. There are many helpful folks here in these forums (and in IRC on #reprap) who will do what they can to help you when you get stuck, if you do decide to go ahead and build yourself a Mendel or some variant of one. Without access to a source of free or almost-free RP parts, you will spend around US$800 or more to do so.

My personal opinion is that if you do not have the needed few hundred dollars up front, and so will need to get a loan for that, and then you hope to pay it off by renting out your 3D printer, that's a very high risk project indeed! You might want to consider being more patient, and saving (say) $50/month for ten months, while becoming part of a local RUG (RepRap User Group), and then build your Mendel when you have the $500 and some local Reprappers around you who can probably offer you RP parts at low cost. Your chances of a successfully completed project (a working 3D printer) that way are, in my view, much better (and worst case if you give up and destroy all your parts, at least you are not in debt!).



Jonathan
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 07, 2010 10:21PM
If you're a good wood-worker, there is also

[reprap.org]

But I agree with Jonathan that your local RUG is the best bet. Once you're up and running, you can sell / check in the bought /borrowed parts back to the ebay/RUG.


-Sebastien, RepRap.org library gnome.

Remember, you're all RepRap developers (once you've joined the super-secret developer mailing list), and the wiki, RepRap.org, [reprap.org] is for everyone and everything! grinning smiley
The way the free market works is if someone is actually engaged in price gouging then you undercut them and correct the monopoly. If it was easy as you think: you would be willing to do it yourself, or someone else already would have.

Plastic parts are not always just plastic parts. My impression is that makerbot is subcontracting out their lasercutting so you're paying a middleman right there. Acrylic is not cheap. Neither is running a business. What people normally think of as plastic parts are made using production volume injection molding machines.

I've been convinced I can get a production 3d printer out the door for a lower price for several months now and it hasn't happened. Maybe it takes a little bit of coin to motivate results?

I dare you to do better, because I genuinely hope you do, but I wouldn't stake the farm on the proposition either.
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 08, 2010 05:25AM
Welcome to the forum!

I find it difficult to recommend one printer over the other, because I feel rather biased towards the choice I made, so I'll try to illustrate it.

Some people like to buy their computers pre-built. They want a computer solely to use. They often don't care much about the details of what's inside the computer case, as long as someone has put together software and hardware that works. They like the warranty they get, so if something goes wrong, someone else fix it for them.

Then there are other people, who like to build their computers themselves. They gladly spend a lot of time reading hardware reviews and comparing individual parts to find something that fits together and works well. They truly enjoy building the machine and tinkering with the hardware and software. If some parts doesn't fit together, too bad, they bought it themselves, and have to fix their own error. If something goes wrong, they have to know how to search for the error and fix it.

The price of the two machines doesn't necessary end up very different, though the performance of the latter often is higher. The difference lay in ease of use compared to future scalability and the users knowledge of the hardware.

Did this make any sense?


I find Mendel to be in the second category, as it requires a fair amount of commitment to research, reading and parts sourcing to understand, build and maintain. Then again, there will be a few bumps in the road, but the result and feeling of accomplishment is really rewarding.

The Makerbot is kind of inbetween. Perhaps more like a build-your-own-computer kit with pre-selected hardware? You know what you get will work, but the performance and scalability is a bit poorer in itself.


Anyway, personally I prefer to build my own computers. I also like case modding and generally building stuff, which often takes me to the hardware store where I love to wander around looking for stuff I can use. So I chose the RepRap Mendel because it's well, a RepRap. It self replicates and can print it's own spare parts and future upgrades, and it has a large build area. I enjoy 3D modelling as well, and have several ideas and plans for building a faster and larger RepRap. But I need to finish building one first smiling smiley

If there is no local user group, perhaps you can get your friends together and split the cost of the first plastic set among you, and then you help each other to print out more sets?

You can also do like several others, and build a Mendel from wood. I've spent about $700 in parts, (as well as $300 in new tools and PLA). http://reprap.org/wiki/Adesina_-_A_Wooden_Mendel_RepStrap


> Maker bot scares me in that it is charging 10 bucks per per LB. Online I see the rate is closer to 3 dollars per LB, making them extremely untrustworthy if they dare price gouge plastic that much..

Nothing to worry about at all! Makerbot are nice guys, and I think their prices are reasonable for high quality ABS filament which you know will work. Also, it's not like they are the only supplier, and they neither will nor can stop anyone else from selling it for a lower price. Then again, I haven't looked much at ABS prices or information, as I intend to use PLA with my RepRap.
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 08, 2010 06:57AM
L4nce0,
Where have you seen ABS filament for $3/lb? Are you sure that is not the price for granules? The filament we use is a lot more expensive than the raw granules because you have to pay a company to extrude it into filament. That is quite a niche market because until RepRap the only use for 3mm filament was for welding rod.

MakerBot have pretty good prices for ABS and it is good quality in terms of being round and constant diameter.


[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 09, 2010 04:19AM
I've added botmill.com and techzonecom.com and flemingcnc.com as "almost-Mendel" items to the Mendel_Buyers_Guide page of the wiki because it's easy. I'm not saying I have any knowledge of any of them or their product/s, but it was easier to edit the wiki that it was to write this email. ( both were trivial).
:-)
Buzz.
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 11, 2010 11:34AM
I'm sorry for typos. I've more or less lost my glasses of late..

oh hey I was reading your blog the other day hydraraptor. I was wondering why your prints looked so much, shinier then the others I've seen?

Well I'm trying to see if my university will help me print these out. Given the snooty engineering department I'm going to guess no. They have a rep for not helping any non mech engineer.

I looked into it more, it is filament.. but that's if you buy 500 dollars worth and ship it from china. Maybe if I do a whole production line.. but I'll worry about that later.

Sadly fro me, I'm getting a credit card. so I may just get my self is wtf debt and order a 800 dollar kit. After I talk to my university. Maybe try to get a price quote from one of you guys for the special parts. Seems that the plastic bits are the hard to get items. The circuit boards can be ordered on maker bot. Just a search from there. Roughly, what do the non printed out parts cost me? I mean the extruders, the bolts circuit boards, etc.

Edit
jmarsden I see answered that. Though that's pretty crazy! 300 dollars for the plastic bits? I mean I can see 100 + 50 for getting all the parts together / shipping...

Nudel
Yeah I'm in the extreme custom side of computers.. honestly the main reason I'm making this so that I can make parts for my custom computer cases. Have you ever tried to buy a HDD bezel?? Or better yet a custom one? I'm sick of trying ot make rom racks out of glue that often fall apart and look sub par.

Heres my custom case I made..
[viewmorepics.myspace.com]

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/2010 11:44AM by L4nce0.
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 13, 2010 05:28PM
jmarsden I see answered that. Though that's pretty crazy! 300 dollars for the plastic bits? I mean I can see 100 + 50 for getting all the parts together / shipping...

That is how much people are willing to pay and how much people are willing to sell them at. Adrian sells the very occasional set at 60USD but that is something of a lottery.

You'll have to decide for yourself how much to sell sets for when you are up and running.


-Sebastien, RepRap.org library gnome.

Remember, you're all RepRap developers (once you've joined the super-secret developer mailing list), and the wiki, RepRap.org, [reprap.org] is for everyone and everything! grinning smiley
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 13, 2010 08:48PM
Edit
jmarsden I see answered that. Though that's pretty crazy! 300 dollars for the plastic bits? I mean I can see 100 + 50 for getting all the parts together / shipping...

Cake takes 30 minutes to bake. The plastic is about the same price as cake ingredients, the machine takes about as long to heat up as an oven. 120 cakes (60 hours worth of baking) for 300 dollars would be pretty cheap. Try to buy a pound cake for 2.25.

Now you had a good change of breaking your oven any time you cooked the cake, and it required the skills of a CNC operator (who makes $10-20 an hour), the cake would be EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE.

Try to buy 99 pieces made on a CNC or Laithe for $300. All of us that sell parts do it for love of the hobby, we don't make a "profit".


repraplogphase.blogspot.com
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 13, 2010 11:25PM
Quote
L4ance0
jmarsden I see answered that. Though that's pretty crazy! 300 dollars for the plastic bits? I mean I can see 100 + 50 for getting all the parts together / shipping...

Quote
Sebastien Ballard
That is how much people are willing to pay and how much people are willing to sell them at. Adrian sells the very occasional set at 60USD but that is something of a lottery.

As an aside, the latest parts sold by reprap-ltd on eBay went for $745 US + shipping.

Shipping for them to anywhere but the UK or EU is $USD 76.

All up, OUCH!
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 14, 2010 12:25PM
I'm contacting my local universities asking to use their 3d printers. However I can't seem to locate the exact items to be printed... I mean we have the list of things, but those aren't autocad files?
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 14, 2010 03:42PM
Quote
L4nce0
... we have the list of things, but those aren't autocad files?

AutoCAD files? Are you sure that your local universities have 3D printers that accept AutoCAD 3D DXF files as input? Which commercial 3D printers do that?

The baseline standard file format most FDM machines use for printable object files is STL . (For printing multiple parts at once, we have RFO files, too, but that is much less common/standard). Reprap.org has plenty of STLs, and a set of RFO files. Look around under mendel/mechanics/ . For example, look at http://reprap.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/reprap/trunk/mendel/mechanics/solid-models/cartesian-robot-m4/printed-parts/ .

I think you would benefit from getting the RepRap Host software installed, loading and viewing some STL files, and generally becoming more familiar with the overall RepRap technology and approach, before asking universities for help constructing or printing anything. Building a RepRap is not a quick or simple project; rushing into this is probably not advisable. There is a lot to learn. If there is a RUG (RepRap User Group) near you, do join it, and attend its meetings, and you'll learn a lot from your local fellow Reprappers, too. Then, when you are building your RepRap, you'll have a local set of people to ask for help when you get stuck.



Jonathan
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 14, 2010 03:47PM
We host the reprap information on SourceForge

http://sourceforge.net/projects/reprap/files/

download the most recent version. It contains several versions of the appropriate files you need.
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 14, 2010 04:13PM
I'll look into the user groups. So far my university says no, but I'm sure either Mines or CU boulder will have one. If mines doesn't they don't deserve their reputation. Thanks for the links!

hah yeah but one can only read material for so long! I'm a learn by doing sort of guy. I've been drooling over this for like 8 months now. I'm more or less waiting for my credit card to come in...
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 14, 2010 04:58PM
OK. You can do plenty of highly relevant and helpful "learning by doing" without any reprap-specific hardware, just a PC... learn the Reprap host software; learn the Arduino IDE and programming language/libraries, if you want to do firmware changes, learn (multiple) 3D CAD programs (FreeCAD, OpenSCAD, HeeksCAD) and mesh modellers (AoI, Blender, ...) , etc. You can do all that with just a PC and an Internet connection. And some time smiling smiley



Jonathan
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 14, 2010 05:25PM
Yeah, Sadly CU essentially said, were not going to share our toys unless your one of us. I'd like to shave as much off as I can... too bad the part's aren't just mounting brackets. I could then just drill into polycarbonate from my local plastic store. I have a lot of experience with that material. I emailed about 4 other universities. I don't think any except for CSM has one. Course CSM is more snotty then CU. Why are engineers so uptight? seriously lol, I'll pay >_>. Though the thought occurred to me... there must be ONLINE sources to order custom print jobs. I know a metal shop that would make a whole computer case out of metal for like 150 dollars, if I gave them the blue prints.

However part of me is just getting a bit frustrated. Maybe I'll just pay the high premium and save me a week of begging people to print these parts so I can save 100 to 200.

Just wondering.... what language is the software written in? Please say java or c/c++ winking smiley
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 14, 2010 09:49PM
The reprap.org host software is in Java.

The firmware for Arduino is in "sort-of-mostly" C++ (Arduino uses an IDE that wraps C++ up in a bunch of non-standard libraries and a default main() function, and sort of tries to hide that, so it looks "easy" for beginners).

The less official host software ... Skeinforge is in Python. Repsnapper is in a mix of C and C++ from what I have seen (and seems to me to have licencing issues, and is probably not really ready for prime time at this point). ReplicatorG is in Java, though I have not looked at it or used it.

BTW, I think you could have answered this question for yourself with a little reading of the wiki and/or Googling... if you want to "figure RepRap and its choices out", please try doing that before asking on the forums when practical.



Jonathan
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 14, 2010 10:03PM
If your campus has a laser cutter hidden somewhere, you can build one of these,
[reprap.org]
It may help to suggest a "group build" with whoever operates the laser cutter, and make two.

Also, it is not too surprising that you can't get any time on the engineering department's 3D printers, as they pay ~USD10/cubic inch for their plastic. (RepRap are a bit cheaper to operate, once you have one.)

But it may be easiest to build a "WolfStrap" or a wooden mendel, perhaps?
[reprap.org]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/14/2010 10:34PM by SebastienBailard.


-Sebastien, RepRap.org library gnome.

Remember, you're all RepRap developers (once you've joined the super-secret developer mailing list), and the wiki, RepRap.org, [reprap.org] is for everyone and everything! grinning smiley
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 15, 2010 04:47AM
Until plastic part prices drop, a WolfStrap is probably the best way to go. Just yesterdays I bought all the materials, the bill was € 61.09 (about $70,-), including glue, excluding the threaded rods and nuts. No further vitamins needed.

You can re-use all the electronics, motors and of course the software for your Mendel, if you want.


Generation 7 Electronics Teacup Firmware RepRap DIY
     
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 15, 2010 01:54PM
Java is my strongest language. Over at CSU, that,s more or less the only thing they teach you until 300+ level courses. Even then it's mostly java. I've taken some C courses that were extra non needed credits, and I start c++ this fall. Cool, maybe I can contribute some fun stuff. I'll just put that idea after mastering android phones. (got hello world working!)


ooo, I'm positive they have a laser cutter. If they wont share, I would easily find a shop that would make these cuts. So my understanding is I can build the wood version, but to upgrade to plastic parts I have to upgrade bigger blocks at a time, correct? Why do I want the parts made out of plastic? I could see some fun things with a wood frame I could do.

I know, the questions never end! thanks for helping me guys!
Re: Help me figure reprap and it's choices out!
June 25, 2010 01:16AM
Why do I want the parts made out of plastic?
Mostly because that way you can use all the wooden bits to make another RepStrap. smileys with beer
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