New RepRap

Hi guys, I'm new to the forum here.

Well I've had a 3d printer for a while and I like design and tinkering, so this led me here. To be honest the idea of a reprap seemed silly and I thought there are just better ways to manufacture a 3d printer, but eventually the idea grew on me and I wanted to design one myself.

Off the bat, the printer I'm wanting to design is NOT going to be a super accurate or high quality machine that everyone's gonna want to use. It will be slow, small and not extremely accurate (great pitch, eigh?). It'll be designed to be built on the cheap (I'm thinking under $25, optimistic, I know, but I have a few ideas) and be easy (or at least have good instructions) to build. The point of this is to make a cheap 3d printer kit that any kid can buy with their allowance, or one that's cheap enough so schools can buy a set of kits for an electronics class without breaking the bank. So I guess it's a proof of concept of how low can you go and still call it a '3d printer'. I want to avoid the hotend to make it a bit safer and cheaper, so it'll probably extrude something like an epoxy resin or maybe thickened pva glue? Still deciding.

I'm looking for a little help with the project, mostly on the software side, as the design I have in mind is a bit unconventional and I don't know if it fits with current firmware. Essentially I need two pins for each axis and the extruder (positive and negative direction along the axis), these will have a high and low state and that's it. I'm not sure what marlin outputs to stepper drivers but I don't think it's quite that plain.

TLDR;

Designing a cheap, simple 3d printer. Not meant to be high quality or high speed, it may not even extrude plastics, just very cheap and accessible so it can be put in schools, where they can supply an entire class with kits to help them learn about electronics and mechanics. Looking for anyone wanting to join in.

It'll of course be open source and if all goes well it'll only a small handful of non printed parts.
I have plans for a 100% printed 3d printer which is purely mechanical and operates off punch card sort of things (you could even 3d print its gcode!) for 'gcode' but that'll be more of a pet project for later as it wont be any practical use ha ha. Educational maybe? I'll keep posted on here about this project and I'll probably start work on it in a couple of weeks to a month once my university exams are over.

Looking forward to contributing to the community, probably wont be making any great 3d printers, the challenge of building a bare bones and cheap printer appeals to my creative side and my wallet.

Your best bet is a SCARA robot arm, some servos and a controller. You probably looking more into the 70 to 100 dollar range.

Scavenge all the things. Motors, encoders, linear guides, wood and screws, power supply.

I'm trying to avoid scavenging since that's not an option if I want to supply a class of students with this.

A few updates are that I'm planning to use a delta design rather than cartesian since z can be a bit simpler (moving a whole bed or extruder assembly can require a more complex mechanical assembly or more parts on a Cartesian system). Personally I've never been the biggest fan of deltas but in terms of simple construction and cheapness they seem a good option.

Originally I was planning to use one motor spin a gear and have all the axis and extruder engage and disengage from this gear (with a forward and reverse gearing). This saves on the cost of motors but I'm wondering if its really worth it. If nothing else it'll be interesting.

Quote
Trakyan
Originally I was planning to use one motor spin a gear and have all the axis and extruder engage and disengage from this gear (with a forward and reverse gearing). This saves on the cost of motors but I'm wondering if its really worth it. If nothing else it'll be interesting.

I wouldn't think that'd work cause you need to move individual motors simultaneously different amounts. Nema 17 motors may be the most cost effective, you can get them really cheap.

I had an idea of a wood frame, that you can also use as linear motion with cheap smooth idlers. You could get a bunch of them cnc'd from a 4x8 sheet of MDF. I'll see if I can draw it up real quick.

Edit: Something like this whereas the verticals are wide and fasten in multiple spots as well as plastic brackets (not pictured). Effector could be printed or wood. Carriages too. Arms could be wood dowels. Here's my idea for a linear motion. Say the verticals are made from 8mm wood. That would be perfect to use some cheapy aluminum GT2 Smooth idlers along the edge of the wood. Use fishing line for the movement. See pics.




Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2016 05:42PM by FA-MAS.