Anyone in the area that can help me?

I am a newcomer to these forums.For 3-D printing, I'm a longtime dreamer, but a recent serious thinker. I live in north Fort Worth, Texas, and I dont have the cash or income reliability to buy a kit on ebay. Is there anyone in my area that could print me the parts? I might be able to get the electronics on my own, if I knew a better place than google to look. Any advice in that direction would help as well.

A bit too far east for me to help. In NZ

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Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

Oh well, thanks for the thought at least. The main reason I want my own 3D printer is because I come up with some amazing gift ideas for my family, but can never manage to actually produce a physical object.

Anyone, he asks hopefully?

I'm UK-based, but take a look at the world reprap map [maps.google.com] There seem to be a couple of people around Dallas, though I'm not sure how you go about contacting them. They may have the same name on the google maps as their username here. Don't be surprised by the deafening silence if you are asking for free parts.

However, the printed parts are really not the most expensive part - the electronics and the motors can easily make up half of the cost. You can scavenge motors and gears from old inkjet or laser printers. As an alternative to scrounging plastic parts, you can make the frame to support the axes in lots of different ways; look at the various repstraps on the wiki [www.reprap.org] many of which are made of cheap materials; something like this [www.thingiverse.com] would be cheap as it's just ply and can be built with simple tools. But the electronics are still going to cost. Look at the wiki [reprap.org]
If you're aiming to keep the cost down, you can home etch RAMPS 1.2, but you still need to buy the components to populate the board.

Hope that helps!

Have a look on Deal xtreme or Alibaba websites for motors too

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Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

This guy on ebay always has lots of stepper motors at reasonable prices, and is US-based: [shop.ebay.com]

Yes, those help a lot! thanks, guys! now I just need a good, legal way to get ~75 bucks...

How about [www.123donate.com] ?! They have a facility in Dallas...

I'm in waco, if I get my hunk o' junk doing anything worth saving in the near future I'll hook you up, keep in mind though, its a hunk of crap so don't get your hopes too high.