Newbie to 3D Printers Starting to Build One, Need Mentors/Advice

Hey all,

I'm new to building a 3D printer but I'm a software engineering student (1A) and I have access to a hackerspace and my university has plenty of resources. I would like some help from the Tantillus community in building a Tantillus, I have the budget for it (~$400 CDN), I just need some advice and guidance through the process.

I was thinking of purchasing the following electronics kit to get most of the electronics except for maybe the extruder head:

Link to Amazon.ca Page

It includes the following:
1 X Sainsmart RAMPS 1.4
1 X Sainsmart Mega 2560 R3
5 X Sainsmart A4988 driver
1 X SainSmart 2004 Smart Yellow LCD Controller With Adapter
1 X Sainsmart SD card breakout For ramps
1 X Sainsmart Cooler Fan for 3D ramps
6 X Sainsmart Mechanical Endstop with cable
1 X Sainsmart RAMPS 1.4 wiring cable
1 X SainSmart Heatbed MK2a
5 X NEMA 17 Stepper Motors Minebea Mill Robot RepRap Makerbot Prusa 3D Printer
1 X USB Cable

Would this be a good kit to purchase? If not, what do you recommend? Any/all thoughts/advice is appreciated!

The LCD will be too large to fit in the opening in the original case but others have modified the case to fit a 20x04 LCD.

You do not need the heated bed and it will not fit in Tantillus.

Yo only need one endstop not 6 and it can not have the pcb attached

You only need 4 motors not 5

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FFF Settings Calculator	Gcode post processors	Geometric Object Deposition Tool Blog
Tantillus.org	Mini Printable Lathe	How NOT to install a Pololu driver

What/where would you recommend I order instead? I'm looking to make one single order for all the electronics I need.

I do not know of anyone that sells a compatible kit all in one. I have always purchased the parts separately. For the Ramps kit I would go to RepRapDiscount and get a kit with a Taurino Power so you can up the voltage to as high as 35v. For the rest have a search through the forum for my previous recommendations as well as other peoples.

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FFF Settings Calculator	Gcode post processors	Geometric Object Deposition Tool Blog
Tantillus.org	Mini Printable Lathe	How NOT to install a Pololu driver

I don't feel comfortable building my own list of parts from scraps of posts from other people, it's a lot of money and I want to be sure I buy the right parts and be sure those parts are compatible with eachother. If anyone with experience could kindly put together such a list it would be enormously appreciated, preferably from reasonably cheap sources but I don't mind paying extra for quality.

At the risk of getting ostracized, are you sure you want to start with a Tantilus? There are other printers that are more noob friendly and you can find complete kits.

If you do go with a Tantilus then make sure you line up the printed parts from a verifiable source. I don't reccomend ebay. I went that way and it didn't go well. The best way to go is to get someone from the community to print some for you .

If it's just about the parts, my university has a professional level 3D printer that I can commission to make them, it's far more precise then any reprap. I know the guy that runs the 3D printing shop in my university too, so that helps. I chose the tantalus because it seems the simplest/easiest to build.

Wow. Having access to printed parts is a big plus. I can't comment on how easy the tantilus is to build compared to other printers other than to say that I found the cable tensioning phase a bit tedious. If I where building from scratch now, I would take a hard look at the variant by Goopyplastic.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/24/2013 08:50PM by wingnut.

SainSmart clones open source hobbyist electronics and doesn't add anything new to the community aside from lowering the total cost of a printer. I don't think their full kit will be more "compatible" than buying from recommended vendors here. I'm also dubious of their A4988 driver boards as the photos appear to show a 0 ohm shunt instead of the precision sense resistor they should have instead.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/2013 01:10PM by pokey9000.

daniel.holmes Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I don't feel comfortable building my own list of
> parts from scraps of posts from other people, it's
> a lot of money and I want to be sure I buy the
> right parts and be sure those parts are compatible
> with eachother. If anyone with experience could
> kindly put together such a list it would be
> enormously appreciated, preferably from reasonably
> cheap sources but I don't mind paying extra for
> quality.

Here's an itemized BOM including the suppliers I ended up using to build mine:

[docs.google.com]

Some of the links may be dead at this point, but it's pretty comprehensive and I tried to use as few vendors as possible. Just as a warning though, I've yet to finish putting mine together so there may be issues I'm unaware of at this point, but I think the likelihood is pretty small.

Robert

Hello Everyone,

After staring at the forum for days.. I finally started purchasing all the part to build the Tantillus. My only concern at this point are the 3-D printed parts as I do not have access to a 3-D printer to print them. From what I have read the ebay versions on sale by wardtech dont seem to be good enough. As wingnut suggested is their anyone in the community that shall print part for me?

Thank you
Sid

I'm still tuning my printer but I'd be happy to try and print you some parts. I'll kick of a run tonight and see how it goes. I can post pictures here and maybe some more experienced users can chime on whether they're good enough to use.

Thank you so much. I appreciate the help.

Siddharth

If you still need someone to print some parts, I'd be willing to also help out if need be.

Hi guys

Im an architecture student and i love 3dprint. I very usefull for organic architecture modeling, but its too slow with only one printer. I like tantillus because its litlle and it can replicate itselft, thats great for me beacuse im from Peru (south america) and my printer its too expensive for me, i cant buy another here (im talking of 2500 dolars). So i decided i have to buy a kit or better make me a tantillus, so i like to make me 2 of this. I visited tantillus.org but i couldnt find a kit or items should i buy for make me one. i like to fabricated but i dont know how to star or where to buy the components and what components to buy. i really appreciate help and instructions. Thanks you