Sub £250 3D printer

I am doing a school project to design and make a sub £250 3D printer, as part of my research for this I have created a questionnaire, I would be grateful if you could answer it and get as many other people to answer it as possible.
[www.surveymonkey.com]

Also if anyone has advice for me, especially advice about where to not try to make the cost cheaper, but also more generic advice or tips this is very welcome.
The printer would be similar in concept to most exsiting RepRaps with an x,y,z gantry system.

James

Good project. Best of luck.

The Electronics will be the most expensive part. The Printrboard from the Printrbot might be a good low cost choice. Alternatively, you could home fab a Gen7, but it might not work out cheaper.

After that, the motors, linear bearings, and hot end are all expensive. It's probably worth paying for linear bearings, but if you can't afford them (try ebay), then try felt bearings, as optionally used in Prusa Mendel v2.

Belts and pulleys aren't cheap, but you may save a fair bit if you (get someone to) print the pulleys. Alternatively, you could use Spectra fishing line, as in the Tantilus printer.

Drop the heat bed: print PLA on blue painter's tape. This saves the cost of the Kapton tape, the bed, and the extra PSU for the bed.

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Leo

leo@RepRapKit.com
[RepRapKit.com]

I am very much a beginner, would you mind having a discussion with me about developing a new 3D printer design from scratch on Skype for example.

Sub £250 is quite a challenge. The cheapest printer kits I know of are at least $500.

It depends a lot on whether you are creating a one-off, or creating a design capable of low volume production, it appears you are thinking of the latter. In the first case, you can scrounge and reuse parts. In the second, you need to price in every nult and bolt. Also there is a big difference between production cost and selling price.

There are several ways to reduce cost, engineered reductions: cheaper materials, fewer materials, reduced requirements, reduced labour, mass production technologies (e.g. injection moulding) and business reductions: economies of scale, offshore labour.

There is limited scope for engineered reductions, using cheaper materials and construction can only go so far before compromising quality, arguably the prntrbot has gone too far in this direction. Alternative designs with threaded rod + plastic, cut wood, laser cut wood, laser cut acrylic, metal frame, etc have reduced costs somewhat but still hit a base cost which is difficult to reduce.

seemecnc use injection moulded plastic parts which are significantly cheaper. However, that still leaves metal parts, electronics, motors and extruder which are probably already near the lowest design cost.

I wouldn't say there is no room for improvement on existing RepRap designs, but they are already designed to be low cost machines, so it is more difficult than if redesigning a $10,000 commercial system.