What's the cheapest way...

I found the reprap project last night, and am extremely interested. Just out of curiosity, what ends up being cheaper, buying and then modifying the circuit board, or buying the bare board and then adding the components? Thanks in advance!

From what I've heard, the MakerBot preassembled electronics compete quite well with trying to do it yourself.

I suspect that if you were to get copper clad board and did everything yourself (including making the boards), you would probably beat their price. You might also be able to about match it if you sourced the boards. The big question would then ask, how much do you place on cost/time for the effort it takes to assemble the electronics?

Thanks, if it does turn out to be that insignificant, I would probobly be better off just buying the board instead of continuing to cram my schedule.

I'm doing my own electronics due to lack of availability of the 'official' modules.

All you need is 4 stepper controllers, 3 capable of 1A current and microstepping, the 4th capable of 2A or so and microstepping for the extruder, a high current switch like a mosfet for the heater, a temperature sensor capable of measuring up to 350c, 3 end-stops, and a microcontroller capable of talking to all of these and interpreting gcode at the same time, or some host software turning gcode into something it can interpret.

It's probably advantageous if your electronics use the same signals as official reprap stuff in case you want to mix and match at some point in the future

wooden-mendel.blogspot.com

I went over the cost breakdown here. Basically for $20 dollars Makerbot saves you 10 hours worth of soldering.

[repraplogphase.blogspot.com]

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repraplogphase.blogspot.com

spacexula Wrote:
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> I went over the cost breakdown here. Basically
> for $20 dollars Makerbot saves you 10 hours worth
> of soldering.
>
> [repraplogphase.blogspot.com]
> g-down-cost-of-reprap-firmware.html

That sounds like a damned good deal to me.

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Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas A. Edison

Buying the kit of electronics when they sold them was cheaper if in the UK.
So if you are not in the USA or not involved in electronics buy a built version Surface mount boards are a challenge. If in electronics there are cheaper solutions by using other stepper controllers like [www.pololu.com]

Here is the answer to the question you didn't ask on total cost to build dyslexic reading or a bee in my bonnet caused me to miss read your question..


The final cost is reduced by half if you build Repstrap Mendel instead of Cupcake.

The amount of engineering work involved in building Mendel is significantly more.

Difference between the two Mendel bigger print area better & extra satisfaction from creating the whole build from the ground up.

Cupcake is like building a model kit every thing is done for you except putting the screws in and following the step by step instructions.
It looks like all the other cupcakes its more expensive as it provides instant gratification.. it is exactly what some people want just, a small 3D printer.

A Repstrap Mendel requires a lot more effort and time it will costs around 1/2 the price of a Cupcake.
Half the price if you live in the USA else as Cupcake will cost at least 25-30% more with import tax and delivery charges to where you live.
Thus a DIY version outside of the USA will be even cheaper at about a third of the price of a Cupcake.

You could also build your own Cupcake from scratch all the details are available on on Thingyverse, Its sister site.
I think this will be a lot cheaper than a kit. Laser cutting parts is not cheap hence the significant price difference between a kit of pre cut bits and a DIY version.

Edited due to dyslexic reading or a bee in my bonnet.

Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 01/30/2010 05:52AM by BodgeIt.

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Bodge It [reprap.org]
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BIQ Sanguinololu SD LCD board	BIQ Stepcon	BIQ Opto Endstop
BIQ Heater Block PCB	BIQ Extruder Peek clamp replacement	BIQ Huxley Seedling
BIQ Sanguinololu mounting	BIQ standalone Sanguinololu or Ramps mounting	Print It Stick It Cut it

My rep strap: [repstrapbertha.blogspot.com]

Buy the bits from B&Q pipestrap [diyrepstrap.blogspot.com]
How to Build a Darwin without any Rep Rap Parts [repstrapdarwin.blogspot.com]
Web Site [www.takeaway3dtech.com]

Well, thankyou everyone for the posts. I plan to make a mendel, partialy for personal educational purposes, and partialy because of budget. I may end up doing all of the soldering as well simply so that I can learn how. I don't think its a bad deal, crash course in electronics and end up with a 3d printer! But once again, thankyou for all of the suggestions.

Hey NRS, where are you situated? I'm starting up a webshop to supply electronics kits (do-it-yourself soldering or semi and fully assembled) for europe. I'm based in belgium.

Well... if you want to call a couple thousand miles close proximity, I guess I'm close enough. Actually, I'm on the East coast in the United States.

I probobly won't start buying any parts until the summer anyway, I'm in the throws of battle with calculus two riight now!

I'd love to put together a Mendel, but when it comes to the electronic parts, I'm really at a loss. I want to buy parts at Makerbot, but they seem to be completely out of the GEN3 parts. Is there any alternative shops for this stuff?

here's my solution

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Wooden Mendel
Teacup Firmware

If you can live with full and half stepping, there were blank v1.2 stepper controllers when I last looked. Jameco had the LM297/298 driver pairs. most of the rest of the parts can be had at Fry's electronics.

I was also in the last two weeks able to get one of the Gen 3 (v1.2) motherboards. Granted I have a decade of experience with SMT and most of the components at hand.

It would be nice if someone else had kit packages to keep the supply chain filled. Makerbot has really set a high standard, for what they have in stock. The few parts I did find there came, quickly with some really nice professional looking packaging.

There is nothing special about the electronics. In these cases Mouser and Digikey along with Jameco are good places to source the components.

The PC boards are a different story. Most of the designs here are created for volume production. There is a service I have used for a decade, called expressPCB. The weakness is that you have to design with there software. For many of my prototypes, I have found their three board service to be effective. This is size limited Which would involve some scaling.

Using expressPCB would take some time to re draw the boards. Perhaps someone has already done an Arduino expressPCB layout which could be used by that service. If not perhaps this is something I can provide should others want a small volume quick turn provider,

-julie