Building the Prusa Mendel i3

Hello, I am looking to build the Prusa Mendel, and am very confused at the array of choices needed to be made. Specifically the parts needed (excluding the printed ones). When I order the necessary equipment, I want to know everything is there. So could someone lead me in the right direction to good vendors with the specific object's page. I don't want to overdo on how much I spend, the minimum would be nice.

You might try the Prusa Mendel area here on the forum. There's a lot of information there and several active threads going over many of the details of this and that kit. One variable is where you happen to need it shipped to.

I am a newbie for prusa i3, i finished my i3 building in last week, and the commission looks OK. I think i can share something to you.
actually i had not spent too much time on searching for kits, cause i buy all the kits from the same vendor, it turns out that there days there are lots of suppliers for i3 kits. they can package all for you.I chose a vendor who supplied all the kits at the price of $600. but compare to the original design of prusa i3 it have some changes. they use organic glass rather than aluminium to make the frame, so it both saved the cost and the weight. and the 8mm thick glass also can promise the stability. another change is the control board, my i3 use MELZI to insteed of RAMPS plus MEG2560, this change as a newbie i think is very necessary, MELZI can be easily connected by bolting other than soldering, so this make the wiring job much more easy.
this is my email:[email protected]. i can send you some mine i3 pics through email

I have found no problems at all with a Ramps setup. Everything plugs in or attaches with screw mounts. The only soldering involved would be if you needed to extend a wire or bought a kit of un-assembled parts.

I used the wiki's vitamin lists when I built my Prusa.
I also bought a kit which came with some different parts (bearings and pulleys which weren't standard). I just looked through the build instructions and worked out what I had on my buy list and what I needed to add.

I built a Prusa i3. I went through the list of parts needed, put together a BOM spreadsheet, then found that I could get a complete kit from MakerFarm for about the same price. I'm quite happy with the results. The laser-cut plywood frame seems to work fairly well - my biggest problems have been with the z-axis threaded rods, and of course the Magma all-metal hot end.

Of course there have been a few enhancements I've added since but I did get a complete i3 built for $500 plus the power supply I needed to get to make it work.

So far the Magma has been doing ok for me. I've even got it printing Amazon / Jet PLA.

Printing PLA with the Magma is still a problem for me. I haven't had the time to go back to experimenting with it but would love to be able to print PLA. I have a spool I need to dry out (it seems to have absorbed moisture so swells more quickly causing extruder jams).

Are you using slic3r and if so what special settings are you using for PLA? Good to hear it's working for somebody with a Magma!!! I've tried reducing the amount of reversal but haven't gotten anything to work satisfactorily yet.

Thanks!

I was printing it with Slic3r. The settings were nothing remarkable. I probably printed it a bit hotter (210-220) than most people do. The filament was new, but not anything fancy.