E-recycler here, hoping to sell you motors.

This is more of a plea for technical details than an actual offer of merchandise at this time.

I represent an e-recycling effort established by a non-profit, and I'm looking for ways to reuse some of the materials we're extracting from printers and other machines. Reuse is always better than recycling the stuff as scrap.

We see a lot of stepper and other motors, and being passingly familiar with RepRap and other open-source 3D printer projects, I hoped we could strike up a relationship with you folks.

I have photos of some of the more common motors we recover, but I may as well save some time and ask you what you're looking for. I'm afraid I know little about electronics, so specific motor models, speeds, voltage information, reference photos etc. would be very helpful.

If machined travel rods, CCD sensors, gearboxes, power supplies, scanner heads/lamps, ink-jet components or anything else recoverable from printers/fax machines/copiers/PCs might also contribute to your builds, do let me know.

I think all the kind of stuff you listed could be used in some little quantities by developers / hackers/ repstrapers.


The item that we may need in larger packs - all reprap machines need some - are the steppers and the travel rods.

The currently popular models use 4 or 5 (similar is better) NEMA 17 motors - see the minimum specs on that wiki page. EDIT that page is slightly outdated, sorry. The double shaft is no longer needed, and I think we mostly dropped using NEMA 14 because of overheating.

I think - to be verified - the travel rods in specifications are 8 mm diameter nowadays - but we can probably do with something different.



You should post a list of the steppers and other materials you have with all the references you can gather. Maybe start with the steppers and rods specs (maker and model number for the motors, diameter and length for the rods should be enough). Maybe use the "for sale" forum, or set up some ebay page or whatever you prefer.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/21/2011 08:35AM by DeuxVis.

Another idea, you might want to go to this ebay seller page for :

- Getting an idea of what motors reprapers buy and what is a fair bargain on those.
- Or maybe just contact him and sell your whole batch of steppers to that guy so he handles the tedious testing and detailed sale ?

Hi Nerfsmith, and welcome. Where are you based?

Thanks DeuxVis, I'll look into this info and try to figure out what I have that may be appropriate.

Thanks Droftarts; I'm based out of Dayton Ohio.

DeuxVis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> I think - to be verified - the travel rods in
> specifications are 8 mm diameter nowadays - but we
> can probably do with something different.
>

Correcting myself there : it's not only 8 mm Ø (Darwin, Mendel, Prusa) but also 6 mm Ø (Huxley) travel rods that are used in reprap builds.

So, another advice : don't trust a single person, search other information sources