Father Son Project

I have almost no idea what I'm doing.

People on Reddit lead me here.

Son wants to build a 3D Printer. I'm a welder, dabble in computer hardware and maker stuff, I'm using dabble generously.


We have a Vudoo, and have this board ordered.
[doku.radds.org]

I was told it would be better to order the individual parts I need. And directed to get help here.

I want about a 1' cube work area and want it to be fairly fast...

So as an ignorant old guy trying to do something for his son, can anybody direct me any further on procuring motors and equipment?

Hello there's no shame in just buying a kit. Maybe a Prusa 3 kit of some sort. There's usually youtube vids to help the assembly process.

Just watched the video...

As a welder, I can build over half that frame...
I mostly just need the components for the axis drives, motors and other components. I'm trying to do this for as cheap as possible... so if I can make it, there's no sense in buying it

Cheap and fast will make it shit, remember the triangle, you can only pick two

Cost, Speed, accuracy / repeatability

I would suggest looking at all the designs out there and seeing what you like most, the reprap wiki has most Link: [reprap.org]

Once you know what you want to build, the documentation should tell you all the parts you need

Before you listen to any other comments.... What's your budget? I built my printer from extrusion and it cost £500 (ishly), although the number is growing as I add upgrades etc, but you can certainly get a decent printer for 'low' cost. If you think low cost means £200 then you have to choose between speed/accuracy/cost.

If you want fast, don't make a Prusa. Prusa style printers are limited to around 30mm/s due to the weight of the bed. I use a 218mm^2 bed and it weighs around 1kg. It's made from 5mm tooling plate, and a 3mm aluminium bed support with 3 leveling screws. Before I used glass and it weighed more then 1.3kg. A 300mm^2 bed may weigh more then 2kg easily. For fast printers look towards Deltas and CoreXY. They have a very lightweight gantry allowing for speeds up to 100mm/s, depending on design. They both have their pros and cons for the type of size you want.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/17/2017 06:17PM by Origamib.

been there..........

buy a real Prusa I3 as a kit and build it, spend your time designing and printing, not working threw firmware code and other issues.

What are you guys are talking about? "Buy a kit"? "Don't spend your time?" Where's reprapiness in that? Where is the fun in buying ready-made thing? Kits are just like IKEA furniture – you can assemble a table, but that does not make you a carpenter. I am pretty sure dude's son will appreciate the adventures of "let's design a robot out of car shocks and soda cans and that will run on toothpaste, do beep boop sounds and might explode at any point :-D " than "let's assemble a GÖDMÖRGÖN table together, son :-/ ".
Kid will learn a lot. Figuring out how to overcome all the challenges of YOUR OWN machine is a lot of fun. It is exactly why this forum is still alive. It would turn into an amazon review channel really quick if all of us would just sit here and reflect on how good\bad the thing we bought is.
It can be as cheap as you like. You can even make something out of cabinet drawers and hot glue and sequentially upgrade it to infinity and beyond. It's a hobby. You cannot buy a hobby, it does not come as a kit (do not listen to corpo BS that would tell you otherwise).

Yeah and kid might also have to learn about the slow boat from china...you'll have to keep him interested while waiting for the next parts.

I agree with toxuin, people got too entrenched in the ready made comfort. I shouldn't say this but that usually is also something that limits development.

But to the subject.
I started building a printer from absolute scratch as well, thinking of a 250mm^3 build volume. Safe to say mechanical parts came along rather nice and rather cheap (mind you after alot of tweaking, tinkering and improvising).
But what i learned is that you will have an absolute minimum of expense, wich is the electronics, especially if you go for something easier to build . For example i started and built my first itteration with arduino mega + 4 motor drivers + mosfet for heater + self-made resistor-thermistor circuit etc, it was cheap, but a pain to build and you can imagine the wire entanglement coming in and out of it to connect all those separate pieces of electronics, and the pain of stripping firmwares to fit em on arduino uno (i ended up using Teacup), but i must admit it gave me a good ideea about electronics wich go into a cnc, so the learning experience was well worth it.
Now, on this itteration i went for arduino mega + ramps , a bit more expensive, bu, removes a whole ton of wirest and headaches and is as simple as "puting one module on top of another", also makes firmware configuring much easier, since its a standardised system basically.

So there is your absolute minimum cost.

Now since you can weld, the frame is a no brainer for you, wich makes linear motion your next priority. That means linear guides. Two main options for that wich are cheap: Steel bars wich you can salvage from old printers / scanners, or, i went for drawer slides. Drawer slides need to be tweaked alot , to remove the play they have, but its manageable. You can also use aluminum profiles and bearings, but note bearings can "slip", but i guess you'll find your way arround that xD

Next part would be transfoorming motor circular motion to linear motion. At first i wanted to go for threaded rod, for all axes, but seeing thats a bit slow and not too precise if using say M5 threaded rod, and also not too easy to mount, i think im opting for timing belts, wich, of course, i salvaged from printers complete with pulleys and the likes ... so that was free for me xD

Now another money drain and by far the biggest one will be motors ... but you can get away with china thingies there as well

I'd say build one, your kid will learn alot , so will you and it will probably spark something in your child that may stay with him , develop into a hobby and later into a career. So all the cost is worth for that at least.

Have fun , i know i am