Thursday, March 15, 2012

Reprap Selection

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I began searching through all the reprap models. The website isnt exactly the best but it wasnt too hard to follow. RepRap is completely open source, it has all of its plans online (unlike the others where you had to buy a kit) and all of the software is free. Not to mention the RepRap forums which are full of other users comments, questions, and suggestions! I was thinking this is definitely for me. It looked like Prusa was going to be the perfect model for me. The size and price were fairly reasonable (if sourcing out all the parts instead of buying kits it can be near $600). So began my search for things on the Bill of Materials!

I quickly discovered that parts of the BOM were hard to find parts for,  or they werent very clear what they were. McMasterCarr was a great resource for pricing out the Vitamins (nuts, bolts, and any hardware necessary). One problem... buy 100 nuts if I only needed 20? I could sell the leftovers but how likely is that? I turned to ebay for built units and kits. Ebay ended up being a disaster of over bidders and high shipping costs. Thats when I decided MakerFarm would be my choice.

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