Introduction

Hello,
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Welcome Jim,
plug in hybrids sound cool? as for the parts you can buy the printed circuit boards from the reprap foundation www.rrrf.com. As for the electronic parts you can buy from Digikey I personaly order from them at work. We have been using Mouser for the project just to make it easy and so we were all on the same page. It would not matter the list of parts that is on the reprap web site is made to be ordered through Mouser making it easy to order.. I personally have not used the order feature from the reprap parts lister. others have though.

Bruce Wattendorf

While we are doing introductions I guess I will add mine. I've been here for about a week now and have already started the process of creating my reprap.

My name is David and I have a background in electronics. It is a basic background from a trade school which I have to admit that I don't remember half the stuff that I learned. I want to get back into electronics and really start to understand the engineering side of things. Sure I can put parts on a PCB but designing a PCB or at least understanding why a PCB was designed a certain way is what I hope to gain by participating in this project.

I want my kids to learn about electronics as they grow up and I figured I could teach them as they want to learn. My 3 year old son was already questioning me about the oscilloscope on my workbench.

The RepRap seems like a fun and exciting project to build. I always have needs for building plastic parts and have never had the means of creating them. Usually I just tossed those ideas aside and moved on to something else.

I want to build Darwin and later use Darwin to come up with more sophisticated designs. I really think the Tripod RepRap is engineering at its best and would like to build something like it also.

So far I have all the software installed that I think I will need. For Christmas I asked for the PCBs and a few Arduinos. Now I just need the brakets and other parts to put darwin together.

I plan to dive deep into the Java Program and the Firmware to really try and understand how RepRaps work. Hopefully that will inspire me to come up with creative ideas of my own.

You all seem like a great group of guys to work with and I look forward to a long journey ahead. I hope you don't mind my million questions and useless suggestions which will be coming.

I believe I will echo Squintz and add my introduction. It seems we might be able to form a newcomer support group. I ordered my boards and extruder kit a week ago, and look forward to getting them.

I also have a background in electronics. My father is an electronics/software engineer, and passed the bug on to me when I was pretty young. I now work for a start-up company in Indiana. Our primary business is wireless vehicle diagnostic communications (we connect to the little diagnostic port in trucks and busses.) Since I am the only employee with three bosses, I have been introduced to quite a bit: circuit design, schematic capture, microprocessor firmware, and computer software.

Jim, we have ordered through both Mouser and Digi-Key, but shipping through Mouser might be a little cheaper for you (and faster), as they have a distribution center in Texas.

Squintz, if you would like to create PCBs, there are two free software packages I have used that have very good tutorials, and links to quite a few good articles for design considerations. The first is PCB123 from Sunstone Circuits (www.pcb123.com). It was the first package I worked with, and their tutorials and support are great. The other is PCB Artist from Advanced Circuits (www.advancedcircuits.com). I haven't had quite as much time on it, but it has decent tutorials and much better ordering options if you ever would like to get your own boards made.

Hey Jim, welcome.

I'm here in Canyon Lake Texas and I think you and I made contact via pmail.

I think I have most of my parts now, with the rest shipping now.

I used Mouser, no problems.

hey guys!

its amazing to see this new surge of interest in our project. you have all certainly joined at a very exciting time. right now its easier than ever to get involved and build your own reprap. we have molded darwin parts available, the mcwire design is well suited to be made into a kit, and is easy to assemble at home, and our new electronics are going to be ridiculously easy to use.

here are some good links to get started:

the wiki is the biggest source of documentation for the project. some of it is old, but we generally try and keep the current ones up to date as best as possible. its also our main site: [www.reprap.org]

we have a parts lister site that will break down the parts for each module, will help you generate part lists and will generally help you find where to get the parts you need to build stuff. it helps to know the names of the modules of the system, and this site has helpful links to all sort of stuff: [parts.reprap.org]

finally, the forums here are are a great source of info. its hard for me to keep up on all of it, but i'll try and answer the questions as much as possible.

good luck, and welcome to RepRap! 2008 will be a fantastic year =)

To go a step farther what I did when I first got into the project was to print for the most part the Wiki (before Ed had Darwin finished this was not to long ago in Feb of this year) and took it on a camping trip with my son it was a big help to figure everything out.

Bruce

Thanks everyone. I now know I am building a Repstrap (McWire) and not a Reprap as I had thought. I will like being able to use a Dremmel for carving. I got the electronic parts from Mouser, they are all right and they are all here. I have to go to Home depot to buy by plumbing supplies, but I have time as I don't think I will get the boards before the 15th. Now plumbing and the rails seem easy. It's the bearings and other little parts that seem hard. Where can I find more detail on them?

Thanks again.

I have not seen the PCBs yet and I don't know if the parts are numbered on the boards themselves. Either way, we should figure out a way to automatically put Reprap part numbers on the parts list so when you need to look for a part you can just read it off the board, and look on the bag for the right part.
For example here is the last PCB I purchased and put parts on. The parts house had our part numbers on all the parts.
[www.eaa-phev.org]

Cheap! Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> I have not seen the PCBs yet and I don't know if
> the parts are numbered on the boards themselves.
> Either way, we should figure out a way to
> automatically put Reprap part numbers on the parts
> list so when you need to look for a part you can
> just read it off the board, and look on the bag
> for the right part.
> For example here is the last PCB I purchased and
> put parts on. The parts house had our part
> numbers on all the parts.
> [www.eaa-phev.org]
> -ControlBd_layout.png


The PCB's are just like the ones on the Wiki assembly photos.

What i did was just rerun the parts lister I used to place the order, this time doing one board at a time instead of th eentire Darwin assembly. Then I used the Mouser part numbers and started pulling out all of what I needed from the clearly labeled Mouser bags.

Stephen Gutknecht

hey,

since i started getting heavily involved in RepRap, one of the major things i've accomplished is taking our electronics designs and getting them into production. when i started, i had basically 0 experience, and to date, i think i've taken 10 or so designs to production. i've learned alot of things along the way, but i think that this latest round of boards will be the easiest boards to build yet! here are some of the things i've added to make life easier for you:

* each board has full silkscreen with part outlines, names, and values (except when i goofed on one order... but its fixed now (yay build scripts!))
* each board has a URL on the board itself you can enter to take you to the info page for that board version. example: [make.rrrf.org]
* each of those pages has very detailed build instructions including part lists, a picture of all the components, and step-by-step pictures along with instructions. check out the link above for an example. its not 100% finished, but it will show you the type of documentation we're trying to put out.

hope this helps.

once i get the electronics documentation stuff finished, i'd like to move onto the extruder and then from there on to the mcwire design. i might put up a preliminary mcwire doc to tide people over, but i'm not selling kits for that yet, so it doesnt feel as urgent. in the meantime, hopefully you can get enough info from my mcwire flickr set: [flickr.com]