First build doing some research.

I have been interested in building a 3d printer for about a year now. I have been seriously looking at options for about 4 months. I have looked at buying 3d printers like the Ultimaker, and others at various price points. I have looked at kits, and designs. I really like the Prusa i3 design. What are the disavantages and advantages of sourcing the parts from various places to purchasing a kit from like makerfarm?

I have about 13 years of experience in technical work in matininance, calabration, programing for robots, lead screw steppers, ect. In the past I have help build cnc routers and casting telescope mirrors.

thanks

kbpipes,

I´ve a similar background than you have and just can tell you what I did in the absolute same situation some month ago:

I was thinking about a BOM for a Prusa i3 or buying the complete kit, but finally i decided to use the kit as a general guideline. For me it was the right way to buy a complete kit and then replace some parts after the printer was basically running. Finally this solved a lot of problems and was the best way to gather some experience in 3D printing. I find out that 3d printing is quite different from working with CNC routers and recognized that I would have had several issues in my build because I had the wrong assumptions.
Now my printer is working for some month and I changed or upgraded many parts such as the nozzle, the stepper motors, the endstops, the printer bed aso. Sure, my printer cost now a bit more money but without having personal experience I had bought the wrong parts anyway. Upgrading the printer was somehow calculated from the beginning, I never thought that a 3d Printer would be something thats works from the beginning.
Another advantage of this build was that I know now everything about each part of my printer and do not have any problems with identifying an upcoming issue or repair my printer.

I built mine from scratch so that I could tweak the design to suit me personally. As long as you draft everything beforehand so that you can alter things as you go along. I found that it was a great way of really getting behind the skin of the internal workings and much cheaper than buying a kit. But that might be partly because I made some alterations to suit myself. I don't think I ever follow instructions. ;)

I found that the most important thing is to make sure it's structurally sound. It makes the calibration so much easier.

I have just recently built a Prusa i3. I saw maplin were doing the Velleman K8200 on sale at £499. At this price point I was interested. So I started researching. The one thing it had to be was a kit. I love kits, and I thing it's essential to know how a machine like this works from the ground up. After a lot of research the i3 seemed to be the best option.

What it has in it's favour are: easy to obtain parts, standardised electronics, cheap to build and maintain, a huge knowledge base out on the net, and plenty of varied how-to's and build blogs, so you can find what you need to know. PLUS - you get to choose all the expensive components, so if you decide to upgrade, you have the key parts already, and you get to use the best (and most well-known about) components in your build.

Kbpipes - with your experience you will find the build easy. As will anyone who is prepared to buy a £10 digital caliper and take their time making sure everything is square and tight.

I built mine after downloading several different build guides from different web sources. I bought a RAMPS 1.4 board that came with all the other electrics - Arduino, motors, switches, LCD, cables, Card reader, heated bed. The lot. I then bought the frame and all the hardware (screws, bolts rods, belts, pullies) from an ebay seller. And finally I bought the plastic parts from another ebay seller. So 3 sellers in total.

Advantages:

- Cheap £350 all in (already had a power supply but that's £10 if not)
- RAMPS 1.4 with arduino - well documented. Kit came with 6 stepper drivers so I have one spare, and 6 microswitches so 3 spare.
- I understand how it works - I built it.
- J-Head Mk v - well documented again.
- Fast and accurate!

I built it in a few days - I took my time. The very 1st print actually worked! I was rather surprised. I'm about 10 prints down now, and I've printed parts in PLA and ABS that are of the same quality as the ones I bought off professional reprap sellers.

The only thing I was missing was a thermistor for the heated bed. That delayed my 2 days, but in that time I got to get the steppers dialed in, and got to play with the software and test print on a cold bed.

I constantly see people with ready made, or expensive kits mention that they have upgraded lots of bits to get them working well. With self builds - you choose the bits from the start.

After I'd built mine, and after reading other forums, one thing is acutely obvious, most 3D printers are exactly the same - 3 moving axis, a hot end, an extruder, and a print bed. How good yours will be depends on how well it's made, and the components used - not what brand it is.

If you are in any way technically minded, I'd recommend building your own. If you are not in any way technically minded 3D printing will be a real challenge regardless :-)