New prusa mendel v2 build akl.

Gidday!
Until a few weeks ago I just assumed that buying or building a 3d printer was way out of my league.
Then I found this forum.
So I've done it, I ordered all the bits, I must admit that when I placed the first order I had had a few bottles of liquid inspiration.
I'm feeling a lot better now, even a simple builder can do it!
Currently I've gone as far as I can go with the framing bit of the build, until my motors turn up.
So I thought I would share my parts sources and problems so far.

-Parts-
Printed plastic parts- "digiknow" on trade me, good trader

Bolts, bearings,straight/threaded rod, belts, power supply - makershop.co.nz , good trader, also on trademe under that name but prices are higher than the store

Ramps controllers, hot end - fabster3d on ebay, amazing trader, 2.5 days from china to my house.

Stepper motors - Aliexpress - still waiting 2 weeks and counting but 5 nema17 motors were only 45 bux

- my parts -

I just bought a pre cut rod/ bearing kit and bolt kitfrom makershop a bit more expensive than doing it yourself, but I don't have time to run round after all the random bits.
I bought the ramps mega kit off ebay, it comes with everything, hot bed incl.! Also bought the budaschnozzel 1.2 hot end from the same person.
When I bought all my printed parts I also got him to print me a wades style hinged extruder.

problems

So far nothing major,
Minor things:

-1 linear bearing short in the kit when building prusa mendel 2

- had to cut down the x axis smooth rod 20ish mm so the x Axis motors lined up with the couplings on the threaded rod.

- had to slightly trim the buda hotend with a dremmil to get it to fit the xcarage

- the bolts supplied to fix the heat bed appear to be m4 50 mm Philips countersunk bolts. My heat bed has 3 mm holes, so had to dremmil holes in heat bed bigger, very carefully with a diamond cylinder bit . I also cut the supplied springs in half to save space. I hope it works but I see no reason it won't. The bolts should be m3 I recon.

That's all for now, until the motors arrive.

Words for people thinking of trying this, it's easy! 2 weeks ago I knew nothing about any of this. When i did learn a bit, i was scared to try. now A lot of reading/ YouTube/ beers later and I'm half way through and very confident I will get It working smoothly. When I tell people that I'm building a 3d printer, most can't really grasp what I mean. They Assume I'm a closet rocket scientist... No. Anyone can build one.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/26/2013 08:37AM by Ben g.

Hey great post, looking at doing the same myself. What total cost are you running for all parts?

Looking fore to more of your posts from you. Keep as up to date, with your prusa mendel v2 build

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/28/2013 06:35AM by magic.

Yes the X axis smooth rods do need to be 20mm shorter for the V2. I used to make kits when I had time and just bought all my bolts from Blacks fastenings and threaded rod and my smooth rod from Tata steel in 6m lengths. The motors from Aliexpress will take a min 3-3.5 weeks to arrive though. I'm also a simple builder but I managed to make quite a few from scratch easy enough

---

__________________________________________________________________________
Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

Quote:
Stepper motors - Aliexpress - still waiting 2 weeks and counting but 5 nema17 motors were only 45 bux

Can you tell me where you got these and what spec they are?

here search for nema17 here lots to choose from and they have the specs too, I always went for free shipping as time wasn't so important for me
-------------------------------------------------------
> Quote:
> Stepper motors - Aliexpress - still waiting 2
> weeks and counting but 5 nema17 motors were only
> 45 bux
>
> Can you tell me where you got these and what spec
> they are?

---

__________________________________________________________________________
Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

Yeah, I already have an account with AlieXpress but couldn't find those motors for $45. Maybe he didn't include the shipping cost?

Well once you chuck your toe in the water you are hooked. It's not that hard as there is a heap of information out there and plenty of people around to assist. The numbers of built printers are growing pretty fast in New Zealand as well. So just keep on once those first little plastic parts come out you will just want to improve. (they are not always that flash at first but it doesn't take long to work out the corrections you need to make them great).

Total cost so far is roughly around 700. Could be cheaper if you got all the nuts and bolts your self, if you have time. I fully recommend the makershop bolt/bearing/ rod kit.
comes with lots of extra bolts for when it comes time to modify it.
Yay my stepper motors finally arrived, declared as "personal use aluminium block, 10$ value"
On a side note, Aliexpress is the most mind bogglingy huge market I have ever seen.
Some progress photos!
[pho.to]

Also if anyone is interested in checking it out before attempting your own, feel free to contact me and come have yarn and look.
Software time now :s

Ok, so I take back what I said about this being easy :p
This weekend I was hooking up the ramps board the stepper motors and end stops and getting all the software loaded and working.
Most of my instructions for building the prusa 2 have come from the video series on the wiki page, and so far they have been amazing.
issues

- the wiki videos recommend to use sprinter for the firmware, which was ok but did not support the LCD screen that I got in my kit.
It turns out that I should have been using marlin , which has support for the SD card and LCD.
Marlin also has a DEFINE_MOTHERBOARD option that exactly matches my ramps board = 34= (arduino mega 2560 with ramps1.4 and support for duel extruder s)
(Sprinter only has =33= (arduino mega 2560,ramps1.4 single extruder )

- the end stops were a pain in the ass to get right, I'm surprised I haven't broken anything yet! Lots of scary grinding sounds! But after some re, re, re soldering, and re- removing some end stops to the other, correct end of the axis, things are working great.
The y axis was the main sticking point, being the opposite of what I thought was logical.

-the z stepper motors were a pain also. I had them both wired in series as shown on the wiki, and connected through the same plug to the ramps 1.4.
No matter what I tried I couldn't get them to run smoothly and in sync. Checked wiring, checked trim pots, checked firmware, re setup,checked and oiled the x smooth rods and z threaded rods, thinking they were binding - nothing fixed it.
It seemed to me like they weren't getting enough power sharing the one stepper driver.(a4988) My motor draws 1.8A
So I undid the wires And hooked up the 2nd z stepper to the spare extruder stepper driver on the ramps1.4, and after changing the setting in marlin to allow the second z stepper to use the spare "E1" pins every thing seems to be running sweet

Ben g Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> -the z stepper motors were a pain also. I had them
> both wired in series as shown on the wiki, and
> connected through the same plug to the ramps 1.4.
> No matter what I tried I couldn't get them to run
> smoothly and in sync. Checked wiring, checked trim
> pots, checked firmware, re setup,checked and oiled
> the x smooth rods and z threaded rods, thinking
> they were binding - nothing fixed it.
> It seemed to me like they weren't getting enough
> power sharing the one stepper driver.(a4988) My
> motor draws 1.8A

Hi Ben, Are you sure you had them wired in series? Most of the wiki documentation shows them wired in parallel. That's fine for a motor that draws less than 1 amp but for the 1.8A motors you want to wire them in series. The voltage required to push rated current is only about 2-3v so wiring them in series still works fine with 12V supply.

---

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
[www.makershop.co.nz]
Makershop - Reprap parts, adding new stock almost daily.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Ben g Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> - had to cut down the x axis smooth rod 20ish mm
> so the x Axis motors lined up with the couplings
> on the threaded rod.
The other way to do this is to put an extra nut and washer on one end than then the distance between the Z-axis motors can be adjusted to match the x-axis rod length. You might find you now have less than 200mm x-axis travel.

> - the bolts supplied to fix the heat bed appear to
> be m4 50 mm Philips countersunk bolts. My heat bed
> has 3 mm holes, so had to dremmil holes in heat
> bed bigger, very carefully with a diamond cylinder
> bit . I also cut the supplied springs in half to
> save space. I hope it works but I see no reason it
> won't. The bolts should be m3 I recon.

Thats valuable feedback. I had the M4 countersunk bolts in there for the Aluminium build plate. I need to add some M3 bolts for people using the PCB build plate.
Please let me know if there's anything else that you think should be in there.

---

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
[www.makershop.co.nz]
Makershop - Reprap parts, adding new stock almost daily.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++