SAE Prusa Mendel printer parts?

I guess I'll start off saying that I am completely new to 3D printing. I found the instructions to build a Mendel 3D printer on wiki. I the list of all the parts I needed which are all in metric. I'm fine with that, I actually like that better, but finding metric parts here is becoming a challenge. I also know that metric M8 and SAE 5/16 are almost the same, will the normal mendel printed parts kit work if I'm using SAE hardware? Has any one else on here used SAE parts, if so anything I should watch out for?

P.S.

I should add that I'm trying to build the I2.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2014 12:47PM by pyrojaymez.

I have built several i2's using mainly SAE hardware. But some metric hardware is necessary, such as for attaching the stepper motors. Normal printed parts will work with 5/16" threaded rods and nuts, but will not work with the smaller SAE sizes (for example: 4-40 nuts are significantly larger in diameter than M3 nuts). Plus, I have found that cheaper SAE hardware in smaller sizes tends to have poor tolerances on thread fit, and as such anything smaller than 6-32 (and even 6-32 often does) tends to strip out very easily.

In the end it may just be easier to order the metric hardware you need online somewhere like McMaster or BoltDepot or mr. metric.

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I recently built my first printer, a Prusa Mendel I2, out of all SAE hardware. All of the printed parts were just the metric ones from the Prusa GitHub page. The 5/16" rods worked great, but the #6-32 nuts did not fit in any of the M3 nut traps for the printed parts, although that didn't turn out to be much of a problem for me. You may need to check or modify your extruder design, though, to make sure the nuts can fit for the idler, if you are using a Greg's style. You may also want to consider getting M8 rods for the Z-axis leadscrew, because my 5/16"-18 rods on my Z-axis have a thread pitch with a repeating decimal, causing it to error over certain heights if your layer heights aren't properly set in the slicer software. I used the Prusa Calculator to help with this problem. Other than those two things, I don't think that you really should have any problems with the SAE hardware. I hope that helps, and have fun building!