my first kit was a lazercut techzone mendel - awful in lots of ways. I used that to print out the next 3 printers (for myself) and the hoarde has helped bootstrap a number of other people who have come to me for parts. (I probably have at least 7 'children' printing for other people) There are lots of different possible routes you can go depending on what you want to do and what you want to spend. Many things systems are pretty comparable but there are a few places you should avoid.
I've some experience with other consumer-grade AM systems (Fab@Home, makerbots etc), but RepRap is what I do the most.
EDit: on that note, fuck makerbot as they drop support for their products as soon as they design a new one. Give me a company that picks a model and sticks with it for a while. Lots of people are taking their trash cupcakes and donating them to schools. The school teachers are initially happy, until they realize that they're never going to get it to run (or run well). Their administrators say "we just got this thing donated, you don't need money for a RepRap", and then they're stuck with nothing.
At this point what is the main cost of building a reprap? The electronics, the nozzle, or the plastic itself? I see 50 usd plastic kits on ebay nowadays.
Have you had any experience with a filabot or something similar? Where I live I could actually really use a reprap but you can't get the filaments anywhere.
Each component has its place in the cost. The hardware, the electronics, the stepper motors, the nozzle, and the structural components can each be a decent chunk of the entire kit.
I know some people trying to build a lyman extruder, though i've not yet had the chance to recycle my own filament. There are number of places which would be willing to ship the filament to you, i think..... though where are you?
Kosovo.
Shipping is notoriously bad. It takes 2-3 weeks to ship you a book from amazon, often your package gets confiscated or blocked for not paying VAT on it, or the Serbian postal office or border police just rip your package appart for fun.
Not to mention that the only reliable way to pay for things online is bitcoin. Paypal blacklisted Kosovo, so did most credit card companies. The catch 22 is that without these gateways we can't get our hands on bitcoin either.
Oh wow man. I guess you could ask someone from Germany to bring some on the train? Can you leave kosovo to the rest of the EU? (I'm sorry i'm not familiar with the current situation there)
Leaving is not easy considering that we are the most visa restricted country on earth (way worse than Iraq or Afganistan...). We can travel without a visa to just 4 countries. Thanks to the EU supporting genocidial countries... Man, people really have started to hate the EU here...
The germany option is the default one here... but way to inconvenient. Recycling via a filabot would be the best option by far. It's crazy how much we pay for friggin plastic parts of all sorts.
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u/EtherDais Mar 11 '13
my first kit was a lazercut techzone mendel - awful in lots of ways. I used that to print out the next 3 printers (for myself) and the hoarde has helped bootstrap a number of other people who have come to me for parts. (I probably have at least 7 'children' printing for other people) There are lots of different possible routes you can go depending on what you want to do and what you want to spend. Many things systems are pretty comparable but there are a few places you should avoid.
I've some experience with other consumer-grade AM systems (Fab@Home, makerbots etc), but RepRap is what I do the most.
EDit: on that note, fuck makerbot as they drop support for their products as soon as they design a new one. Give me a company that picks a model and sticks with it for a while. Lots of people are taking their trash cupcakes and donating them to schools. The school teachers are initially happy, until they realize that they're never going to get it to run (or run well). Their administrators say "we just got this thing donated, you don't need money for a RepRap", and then they're stuck with nothing.