Total newb - few questions

Hello everyone.

I am a complete newb to 3d printing. There is a ton of information to filter through. I know I want a 3d printer, with a bed large enough to print drones with decent lifting capacity. ( i understand that is a large variable)
I need it to be as cross platform and open source as possible. I want to be able to print another machine within reason. Sourcing the metal parts and printing the plastic. I want to be able to print from any os including mobile oses.
I have children 11 and 13 so I would like a complete kit in the sense that all of the parts are aquired before building but difficulty assembling should not be an issue for us. . I have some arduino and raspberry pi experience and am not opposed to it being driven by these boards or similar generic boards but the easier the better. I have the ability to make wooden frames also.

I am leaning towards a prusa mendel.

I would like input and advice, thank you. There are so many interchangeable and rapidly changing parts it is a bit overwhelming trying to get a good footing.

Thank you

gpgp

Edited for grammar

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2017 05:28PM by gpgp.

Not many printers have support for printing from a mobile phone, at least not off the bat. Most that do are the higher end ones that don't come as a kit and probably aren't super open source. And the ability of a printer to 'print another machine within reason' depends less on the printer you are using and more on the printer you are printing. Most 3d printed parts for a printer are pretty small, so these shouldn't be the limiting factor for the size of your machine. I think people need more information in order to give you good advice.

So far we know you want a "big" print bed and to be able to print from all OSes. The prusa mendel has a pretty standard print area in my opinion, so I don't know what you mean by "big", and like I said, printing from mobile isn't a very common feature. You might be able to add this functionality with a raspi pi or a wifi capable control board.

Repetier gives you the ability to print from any platform ( Web based interface ), but you need to use a Raspberry PI or so to run the Repetier server.
The printer firmware is opensource, the Server and host application are not open source. I use Repetier and I like it, the free version works good, and
then you have a pro version that have some nice to have features.

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P3steel DXL, with Due/RADDS/Raps128 dual Wade's extruder

Any printer using Duet controller electronics can be controlled from a mobile phone. But I don't think you will find any Prusa i3 clone kits using Duet electronics, because they always use the absolute cheapest electronics available.

To do more than just print a pre-sliced model from a mobile phone, you need a way of running a slicer. That could either be a slicer app that runs on the phone (but I don't know of any), or a cloud-based slicing service.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].