Quote Originally Posted by Mathew Saunders View Post
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what should I research over the next month? As for the cad program I plan to watch video lessons to learn SolidWorks, let me know if there's anything else you would recommend. As for learning, I've seen stuff about open source.... I don't know code but I could maybe learn..? What would I need to learn?
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As for a printer... What would be the best match between printing area and quality and speed for under or close to $1000...? Just curious as to what you guys think.
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Opinions are going to vary. But my opinion is, Pretty much, unless you have a good reason to deviate, the 'right' kit for a beginner to build right now would be a Prusa i3 variant. There are a lot of them but they all start with the same basic setup. And all of the plastic parts of the Prusa i3 are designed with Open_SCAD. You can get it here: http://www.openscad.org/ Because the Prusa i3 is Open Source, the source code for any part you want to change for what ever reason is available.

Open_SCAD is free and very powerful. I would suggest you start with that for software and if you have a need to use something else, then consider moving on.

You can see what parts (and kits) are available on eBay for the Prusa i3 by just clicking here:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_saca...rusa+i3&_sop=3

The most expensive, and nicest kit is $739 and includes a lot of nice stuff I don't have on my printer. You don't need something this nice, but you can use it as stake in the sand and to help you figure out what you care about. You certainly would not go wrong building this printer:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/RepRap-Prusa...item19eaab0687