CHEAP threded rod and fasteners for Mendel

A place near my house can get me all the 8mm zinc rod, and all the fasteners in 100 count boxes for $94 including tax. Is that a good deal?

I priced it, I could build 2 Mendels for $72 each for all the fasteners and rod. I still have to find the smooth rod though.

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repraplogphase.blogspot.com

Good but not amazing. All nuts and bolts came to £30 inc delivery plus about £16 for the threaded rod.
I could have gotten the threaded rod a little cheaper.

Although thats UK, so not sure if thats a helpful comparison..

Metric is much more expensive in the US.

They usually only sell to large corporations, but when I brought my Makerbot in with me and let them play for an hour, suddenly I have the same discount as the military.

score!

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repraplogphase.blogspot.com

It is worth looking at local fastener stores and global industrial and fastener suppliers. Chorus: This should be on the wiki.

As I'm in North America/Canada/Ontario/Ottawa/Old Ottawa South, I think that my further contributions to RepRap will be in imperial units, but I will make sure that people are welcome to do up the RBS-M (metric) stuff while I concentrate on RBS-I (Imperial).

Anyone know what spacing and hole size people make metric pegboard in.

I'm new to all of this reprap/mendel/electronics building but I do want to build one.

I'm in the US and went to Lowes, Home Depot and Tractor Supply yesterday. They did not have metric but I could have bought 5/16" bar stock & threaded stock plus bought the nuts and washers for $1.99 a pound.

As I'm still trying to navigate all of the Wiki material and forums, has any built one using 5/16" material?

Also - I'm not sure what to do about the electronics since MakerBot has obsoleted the Stepper Motor Drivers v2.3 board and the extruder controller PCB out of stock

As I'm still trying to navigate all of the Wiki material and forums, has any built one using 5/16" material?

I went with 5/16" for my Darwin. It should be find for Mendel. Email the Mendel guys and tell them to add it the parts list or to the FAQ ' No, 5/16" does not work ' depending on their response.

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Also - I'm not sure what to do about the electronics since MakerBot has obsoleted the Stepper Motor Drivers v2.3 board and the extruder controller PCB out of stock

I bought from these guys:

[dev.forums.reprap.org]

should get them in a couple of days - will let you know how it works out.

I live in the central US, a region dominated by agriculture as the main industry. Consequently there are a lot of farms here. There are special stores here that accommodate a farmer's needs. We have stores here called "Bomgaars". Locations can be found at this url

[www.bomgaars.com]

They sell bolts, nuts, & washers by the pound which can lead to big time savings compared to the likes of lowes or home depot. They also sell threaded and unthreaded steel rods. Of course I'm talking about imperial dimensions, not metric.

I hope this does someone some good. :-)