New to RepRap and initial suggestion

Hi. I am glad to join the ranks with the arrival of my shipment of PCBs. Thanks Zach!
Now, I am not sure to what level of help I may be in the overall scope of this project, but I might prove something of a test case. I had a couple of years of college with good grades, but I couldn't afford to continue. Since then I have had a variety of jobs and learned lots of skills. I also have the benefit (compared to many parts of the world) of being fairly techno savvy just by being a relatively aware human living in America, Atlanta specifically (i.e. I can get around on a computer but have almost no programming skills). If I can build one of these RepRaps then at least we will know that the design is simple enough for a college drop-out

So, I am going to make some suggestions along the way, as I work on my RepRap, to "dumb down" any procedures that seem complicated or harder to understand than maybe they could be. Any suggestion is not meant to insult anyone but to make sure the rest of the class can play too

My first suggestion has to do with the bill of materials section. I have these boards and I am ready to populate them with components. Ahhhhh Ok, it's not that bad. So I just need to put a shopping list together and go hit Fry's Electronics. When I started looking at the bill of materials I started getting confused. I don't know what any of these numbers and letters mean. Ok,so not really that bad but what would be helpful would be a thumbnail of each component next to the description. Then I could just hit print on the page and wander off to the store to get my bits. Alternatively, if there was a link to an online store parts page that I could just click and add to a shopping cart, but I don't really like that as much. So, if anyone could put up pics of the components I would appreciate it, as well as people who may come behind me.

Like I said, I know it is dumbing down, but if I had a page with a number description and a picture I would feel much more confident running to the electronics store and grabbing parts that match both the description and pic.

I used to work at a Motorola plant building cell phone batteries. The documentation they used (part of the ISO certification stuff) made it so that pretty much any meatbag with enough consciousness to look up and see the pictures in front of them could figure out what to do at that station or stage. So, that might explain the level of documentation that I will try to help with. RepRaps for everyone!

Welcome to the project. Suggestions for improvements are always good to have. We're not easily offended around here.

You should definitely check out the bill-of-materials generator at [parts.reprap.org] . That takes you to a web page where you can select which boards you want to build and how many of each, then it generates a shopping list. If you want to order online, it will give you a part list that you can cut & paste into Mouser's online ordering system. It makes ordering all the electronic components a five-minute job. Zach has put a lot of work into it, and it keeps getting better each time I drop by.

Next to each part on the list there are links to a short description and an octoparts web page that usually has a picture of the part. I spot-checked a few and they looked pretty good, but at least one of them had the wrong picture, so don't fret if your part looks a bit different than what they show.

The documentation is already the best I've seen for this kind of project, but you also don't have to look that hard to find things that could be improved, partly because it's a moving target. I'm sure any help with that would be most welcome.

hmmm...Ok, that is what I was looking for. So, I have spent a month or so looking over the site and all connected sites trying to read everything before I got started and had not seen that page before. There is also no link to that page off of the "how to build a darwin" page, unless I have overlooked it somewhere. So maybe a better "sign post" for those unfamiliar with the trail is all that is needed.

But, for now there is ordering to be done

hey glow guy,

yeah that parts list site is a fairly recent development. i've been meaning to link it into the wiki, but havent gotten the chance yet. i'm hoping to get some free time to clean up the documentation. we have alot of things that need doing. if only i had more time!!

~Zach