Hi everybody!

I'll begin by introducing myself. I'm Andreas Desmedt, a 15 year old student from Belgium. I do engineering at school. I love technologie, CAD designing and windsurfing :p . I had a Velleman Vertex K8400 as first printer, wich I assembled myself.

I began this project about a month ago. I knew a little bit about 3D printing already and I knew how they worked, so research was done fast. Then I began desiging my own reprap : The Drebot!

The Dbot (coming from my back name) is actually a combination of some of printers. I tried taking the best aspects and combine these. My main goals where making it cheap, keeping it compact and make it good looking. After a week or 2 designing I fully CAD'ed my design. I began searching some parts on aliexpress and ebay finding cheap but "OK" quality parts. I had to keep the costs low, and my goal was set on 300 dollars so I had to compare everything and make sure I found the best price/quality components.

The base of the printer is a 3030 aluminium extrusion, everything is mounted on this extrusion, wich means everything is tight and compact, making it easy to carry or put away. The Z axis is made out off 2 12mm rods with a carriage attached to it using 4 LM12UU bearings. In this carriage, there are 2 8mm rods mounted, wich are for the X axis. The carriage for the X axis is mounted using 3 LM8UU bearings, two on the bottom and one on the top. For the Y axis, I also use 2 8mm rods. The wooden plate for the heatbed is attached to the rods using 3 LM8UU bearings. Both X and Y axis are driven by NEMA17 motors using GT2 belts. The Z axis is driven by a M8 threaded rod. The Dbot is controlled by a Ramps 1.4 motherboard, and powered by a 360W LED PSU, wich are both also mounted onto the 3030 aluminium extrusion. The extruder is a fully self designed extruder, wich is also printable. This is done to keep the costs low. Both the extruder motor and the motor that powers the X axis are located on the opposite site and used as a counterweight for the X axis rods and carriage. The ramps board is located in a casing with a fan, for proper cooling. The bed itself is a MK3 heatbed. The printers volume is 200(X)x190(Y)x185(Z), wich is almost the whole heatbed capacity. I invented my own heatbed nut mounts, so you only have to turn the screw to level the bed and don't think about the nuts.

Allot of thanks to Cliff Mellangård, helping me with the software.

I hope you like him! If there is enough interest, I will make a wiki page for it and share all the files.



Printer in action:
[www.youtube.com]

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/10/2015 11:51AM by Andreas15.

Very nice. Great job!! It is more than worthy of a wiki page.

Looks to require a minimal number of 'vitamins', and a small number of plastic parts - good job!

I also commend you for using the extrusion - the 'bought accuracy' of a precut piece is something that few people understand how to use properly.

Quote
Ezrec
Looks to require a minimal number of 'vitamins', and a small number of plastic parts - good job!

I also commend you for using the extrusion - the 'bought accuracy' of a precut piece is something that few people understand how to use properly.

Thanks! What do you actually mean with your last sentence?

I like it. Post some more info and pictures.

Nice you like it! I will post some more pictures. What else would you like to know? I think my first post explains allot already?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/11/2015 08:28AM by Andreas15.

Build Pics?

I do not have any, because it was a pretty quick build. But on my next build I will take some pics.

By 'bought accuracy', I mean that often purchasing a square piece of material is often more square than one you cut yourself.

The same goes for flatness (which is why sheet glass is such a popular DIY build platform, and my choice of melanine covered MDF for large projects), diameters (ie pipes and rods) and other 'precision properties' of objects.

By using a pre-cut extrusion, and basing your precision around it's from-the-factory precision, you can save yourself a lot of calibration time.

It is a precut one, just like the rods

I'm interested