About a week ago I gave myself a birthday gift, a 3D printer kit. The kit is based on a standard open source design The organization is Rep Rap and the idea is that the 3D printers can reproduce themselves (with some human assistance of course). The heart of the kit I bought is the design of the Prusa I3 and the particular kit is sold by RepRapGuru.
Kit Assembly
Mechanicals
The mechanical assembly wasn’t especially challenging, but it requires a fair amount of familiarity with the “language” of how machines are built. If you aren’t you’ll need extra time or might have more trouble. As it was I had some trouble just because the pictures were often unclear.
Think ahead if you get this and make sure to read the instructions through completely first. They mostly stick to a logical plan, but it always helps to know why you are doing things.
Electricals
The wiring portion of the electricals is pretty easy, but those less familiar with wiring have to be careful to heed the warning about the limit switch connectors. The only troubles I found putting together the electricals had to do with the following:
- Seating problems: The stepper driver boards on the RAMPs module required an uncomfortable amount of force to move into the socket strips. On one I had to make a tool out of a sewing pin to stretch each socket individually or it wouldn’t go in at all.
- Adjustment problems: I simply couldn’t get a voltage reading on the potentiometer screw as they said I should. Everything is working, but I’m concerned now about whether I might have problems with overheating on a motor.
How it Works
It is hard to make this very user unfriendly thing work without understanding too many things. A bunch of things operate to make it work and each serves a purpose:
- The hardware: The physical rods, belts, gears, motors, switches and such actually cause plastic to be deposited in the right place at the right time
- The arduino board: This small multipurpose controller board hosts a software program called sketch that is customized for the hardware that is connected via the interface board (RAMPS). The arduino board communicates and decodes instructions from the USB port connected to the computer and turns them into motions and extrusions.
- The RAMPs board presents a uniform hardware interface on the actual driver electronics
On the computer:
A slicer cuts the 3D model into layers and plans a path to render each layer
A render takes that plan and combines it with information about the printer and filament and sends commands to the arduino to run.
My First Experiences
The first few things were globby stringy messes. Then they started getting better. Nothing good will happen if the filament is at the wrong temperature and isn’t bonding to the baseplate.
I thought starting with small models would be easier – wrong. Small is harder to keep attached it turns out. Once a model breaks free it quickly turns into trash. Pick medium sized models.
It looks like my first really solid model is a spool holder for the printer. A practical model that I actually need.
My Gifted Life 