Where do I start???ARRRRRGGGGHHH!!

Ok, Hi all this is my first post and have only know about reprap for ........hmmmmmm 7 1/2 minutes.
As you can tell I am impressed and have joined up, ready to go.....So now what?

My background is in Aviation engineering, IT and a bit of R&D chemistry. For kicks I invent things that solve a problem and you can see me here >[www.youtube.com] operating a robot arm with my mind. I also have a bit of experience in turning out parts using resins and composites, and have some skills in electronics, robotics, neural interfaces....and . Well that's probably enough for now. you get the idea, Mad scientist.
I actually started building a 3d printer about ten years ago using an old epson stylus, but it is now gathering dust somewhere in the project vault (A big Workshop where unfinished old crud goes to die)

Anyhooo.................... I want a reprap asap so I can start turning out.....well er..repraps etc. And In the spirit of the idea, I don't want to pay squat for it apart from return like for like to the person that helps + a bit more.

So here is my proposal:
1) Someone supplies me a working reprap machine.
2) I will use my time and skill to reproduce the machine, maybe tweek a few things.
3) I will send the copy or original back to the person that sent it
4) I will also send a full set of moulded reinforced resin parts to the sender or a set of whatever else I can make

Alternative is that people send parts and I send them back +1 then I source the electronics and other bits.

My intention is to try sorting the problem of making a replacement for the stepper motors and the other parts that have to be sourced, to push the idea to 100% self replication.

If you are thinking 'Scam!' which you probably should be if you have any sense, Hold of on the flame wars and look here first > [www.emotiv.com] As you will see, I am not a lover of Intelectual property and have actively given away my own inventions for the greater good. Which has the downside off costing me a fortune for nothing but a warm fuzzy feeling. Thus the lack of funds for buying one of these fine machines

By the way I am not very impressed with the price of parts I have seen for sale! Not very altruistic is it?

If you are interested in helping in the spirit of freedom of information and right to make what you want, then drop me a line.
If reading the above makes you want to shout and hurl abuse, try buddism and look at the bigger picture instead.

'Give and ye shall receive'
Peace.
A

P.S I am the long lost half uncle, brother's friend in law of Mr abunnnjio robbinggabi who recently died leaving $8899029388474747578584909302308094804927 and 4 cents....................

So here is my proposal:
1) Someone supplies me a working reprap machine.
2) I will use my time and skill to reproduce the machine, maybe tweek a few things.
3) I will send the copy or original back to the person that sent it
4) I will also send a full set of moulded reinforced resin parts to the sender or a set of whatever else I can make

Ah. We're still trying to jumpstart the RepRap Loaner Program.

In the meantime, What_Tooling_Do_You_Have?

You may want to ping the UK RepRap User Group; if folk are too busy to do up a set of loaner parts, which is quite likely, I'd suggest using a tablesaw to do a WolfStrap or ebay ...

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-Sebastien, RepRap.org library gnome.

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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!

Thanks for the reply Sebastien. I had braced myself for a torrent of abuse. So thanks for reaffirming my view of humanity

Tooling:
Drill press
end mill
Lathe
Table saw
Scrollsaw
Power hacksaw

Just about every hand and power tool know to man.

Also have moulding equipment like RTV silicone, Vinamould, Latex, plaster and polyester resins, Epoxy, some composites and fillers etc.

I will check the uk group, thanks I couldn't find it.

A

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2010 09:22PM by ablainey.

I just had a look at the loaner program and it looks like the very thing that should be incouraged. So I will add that when I get up and running I will be donating the first few machines to the program for other people to get off the ground. (Obviously after paying back the person that helps me)

A

Where are you located Ablainey? We have folks all around the world, and most of us are pretty helpful.

BTW rude is about the last thing this community is, as long as your nice

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repraplogphase.blogspot.com

lol - yes, The reprap group is extremely nice and in fact extremely tolerant...

scammers generally just get ignored and for interest - here is the closest I have ever seen to a flame war on this forum.

fwiw - I am located in York and am muddling along with my machine. -still struggling to get the electronics to work. There is an active RUG (Reprap Users Group) in Sheffield - AKA47 seems to be the driver of that and I think they have an operating machine. Where are you located?

Cheers

Wow that doesn't rank very high on the flamometer you really are a nice bunch.

I am located in Dorset.

I am still trying to get to grips with finding my way around the forum and wiki. Its a big old convuluted place isnt it! Loads to read.

A

hey ablainey

i'm in sydney australia at the moment i'm printing a mendel, which is going to print a prusa mendel, which i'm going to mold and cast and sell for cheap as possible.

i've had good luck reproducing parts in resin pretty exactly i think, have been moldmaking for a while now (i am a stop-motion animator)

at the moment i'm selling a resin cast extruder kit which is all you would need if you had a CNC machine already:
[edit] - also a hot end for the extruder, and some extra electronics probably

[forums.reprap.org]

i made my CNC out of junk, resin and film:

[forums.reprap.org]

it's not the best, but it will print parts good enough to make a mendel + all the gears i had printed at shapeways.com and a local engineering firm and have cast in resin. i'm going to document it soon...

i'm interested in your milk bottle shredder, in the past when i couldn't afford resin i have experimented with chopping up milk bottles, heating and pushing into high temp silicone molds, it kinda worked but air would get trapped at the bottom of the mold because i think my chips were too big. i was thinking of getting a heavy guillotine to help me but am scared of operating it for so long cutting tiny chips...

but i really want to be able to recycle milk bottles plastic and eventually PET clear bottle plastic from my neighborhood, i feel guilty for using so much plastic and silicone so far in my short life. It would be great to be able to sell really cheap prusa mendel and huxley kits made from recycled plastic. only downside is you're then wasting electricity in the casting process to heat the plastic... maybe i can do it using the power of the sun, (totally untapped AND growing energy source!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/12/2010 01:41AM by mlagana.

Right. Now I have finished a few other projects I have a spare bit of time on my hands, not much but enough to dip my toe into building a reprap of some description and contributing to the whole movement a bit.
I have looked on ebay at the price of parts and WTF!? they are still very high. I can understand that people are trying to get back their investment, but it seems the high start up cost is causing a bit of stagnation. I am really surprised the chinese havn't started turning out kits yet.

Anyway. So I am thinking about my original idea of moulded parts such as reinforced resin cast etc.

What need is one good plastic part from a kind donor. With this I will make up a high quality mould and turn out a handful of parts in various resins etc to test for shrinkage, strength, hardness etc. These new parts will be sent back to the donor along with the original part for them to test in their machine.
Then we can take it from there. With the end goal being making a full set of parts, building a machine and seing how good it is compared to others.

Anyone interested ??

Molded parts have been done. Search for clonedel. Perhaps you can contact some of those people and get molded parts to get you started. One of the disadvantages with the molded parts is that you'll have to drill the holes. To do this accurately, you should probably use a drill press.

Also, read this blog: [repraplogphase.blogspot.com]

Thanks. After reading about the clonedel parts and looking at the quality. I am pretty convinced I can do better. For starters why no holes? Yes shrinkage is an issue, but easily allowed for in moulding. And the parts being sold are rough and still need finishing.

Now I am thinking that getting a full mendel kit and turing out better cast parts is a strong contender.
Can I get better than this kit from mendelparts ?

I used to be in Kent but moved to NZ 10 years ago otherwise I would have helped you

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__________________________________________________________________________
Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

I got the Mendel parts kit so I can tell you a bit about it.

The kit is really quite good. You get everything. The biggest downside id its all in PLA. PLA is fine for most of the parts but the x carriage, extruder and the Y carriage mounts for the heated bed really need to be in ABS or you can warp them with the heat easily. Use sprinter firmware or teacup withe gen6 board. Gen6 is easy to use and fast to get started with. There a thread about avoiding pauses in the Mendel section covering this.

I know you might think the plastic parts are expensive but I am just getting round to printing some to sell and it's taken me two months to get this far fixing problem, redesigning parts, rebuilding parts, replacing parts with ABS ones and I did do some development too admittedly. But the point is there is a lot of time and effort gone in to printing good parts. As well as a lot of printer time which need power, plastic and maintenance.

To give you an idea of print time I'm looking at maybe making 1 set of plastics a week. That's without running my machine overnight or having any disasters which are not uncommon. If I ran 24/7 then maybe 2 a week.

But once you get the bug you really can't stop. My printer has been going nearly every day since it started printing.

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Make your Mendel twice as accurate.
[www.thingiverse.com]

Thanks for the replies.
Thinking about comments on the timeframe needed to get up and running, tweaking, things breaking etc. If you could do it all over again would you buy a fully built machine? (I know they are expensive)
That is from the standpoint of all the time you have invested in building and getting it running (equated to money for your time) vs out of the box up and running + the extra cost to buy.

Is the extra expense worth it in the long run? I am thinking that I might be in a better position to learn to build a machine if I already have one set up and running which I can to refer to. So any lessons I would have gained by starting from scratch will still be learnt in building the second machine. But I would have the advantage of printing straight out of the box which would also allow me to see the operating problems and where improvements could be made from day one. This would remove all those 'have I done it right?' build questions and time chasing my tail reinventing the wheel.

???

No fully assembled printer, as far as I have seen, has been able to print straight out of the box. The shipping itself would knock things out of alignment, apart from many of them being badly put together.

I've spent a year (on and off) building my mendel, and I wouldn't change it for anything. We've been through a lot, but I know the location of every nut and bolt on her, and how to fix things when they break. I'd say build it yourself, the experience you get is invaluable, and you'd have to learn it at some point anyway.

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-Nudel
Blog with RepRap Comic

I spent a weekend or two building my cupcake and learned a lot about basic architecture and skeinforge settings. I was up and printing way faster than I would have been had I gone the self source route initially. I am now building a Prusa Mendel and a lot of what I learned has transferred over. I have also been able to use the makerbot to test my motors and wiring. This helps a lot when you are in troubleshooting mode. My only regret is that I didn't know ahead of time that the price of the cupcake was going to drop a few months later . I would say if you have the money, it is a great way to get a jump start on the hobby. You'll learn a lot, be printing much faster, and be that much farther ahead when you build your scratch machine.

If you build a Mendel then get ABS parts. 50% of my problems came from key parts being PLA.

If you want to print straight out of the box then you will need to get something like an UP. These printers come with there own fancy software making it much simpler I would imagine, but they have a large price tag too.

If you read a lot of the troubleshooting threads in the forum then you will be able to solve most of the problems beforehand. But you will still meed huge amounts of patience and lots of time to get it set up as its all trial and error.

This is really addictive, and if you like the idea this much, you will certainly be hooked and spend lots more time than you think you will working on it.

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Make your Mendel twice as accurate.
[www.thingiverse.com]

Oh well I have taken the plunge, no going back now. Just ordered a RapMan 3.1 from Bitefrombytes.
Costly little blighter so shhhhhhhh dont tell the misses!
Anyone using the RapMan?