Built, Printing and Fried!

Okay, long time no blog post.  I built my reprap prusa.  The overall process wasn't too difficult.  I think the part that frustrated me the most was using my needle nose pliers to bend my molex connectors  or soldering my optos endstops.  Here are a few quick picks:

My printing area, I exhaust out the window and built a spool holder right on the wall.

 Wires that still need to be cleaned up.

And sadly my best print to date.  It was a fluke.  Most of my prints are not this nice.  For hours I kept tweeking my skeinforge setting until I got this print.  I shutdown and went to bed, I didn't save my settings and the next day I was back to big mushy pile. 

Today I was ready for my first prints on a MK1 heated bed I just wired up and heated to 108C.  Unfortunately my PC power supply couldn't handle the amps that the extruder and the heatbed heating up at the same time and it fried the power supply.

So now another PC power supply is in the mail and I am anxiously waiting for the day to rewire another PC power supply, double check my firmware calibration and restart working on my skienforge settings.  

While all this is going on I am slowly acquiring all the parts to build my second Reprap Prusa.  My second Prusa is going to by a Prusa Aire.  

Reprap Prusa Mendel Complete Hardware Set Received

Well after 1.5 weeks my mixshop order was received.  Mixshop is in Canada am I am not so I had a few surprises from the delivery process.  First was shipping cost (I knew this at my checkout) was $59.51.  But the second was the UPS man had me pay by check at my front door $42.86 for an import fee?  (<<-- I definitely did not realize that at checkout.)  I was not allowed to pay by cash or credit card and after searching my house for five minutes while the UPS guy was asking if he should try to deliver it tomorrow, I finally found my checkbook that I haven't used in 2 years.  So in total, $295.40 of product from Mixshop in Canada cost me an additional $102.37 in shipping costs.  That is a lot of money for the order.  Because of this somewhat hidden cost, when I build another one I will not be using mixshop.  Don't get me wrong though, if I lived in Canada I would recommend them as my order was complete and as promised.

The box didn't have any padding inside and the corner was damaged but hardware is tough.

Everything was placed neatly in plastic bags with very little grouping. 

I wanted to get started very quickly. 

 And after an hour I discovered I had no glue and decided to call it a night.

Mixshop in the last week actually added a new kit that puts everything together including Ramps electronics, although I have my mind set on Gen6 unless someone more experienced in Reprap tells my the error in my ways.  More pictures to come.

Printed Pieces (True Reprap) Received

My name is Russel and I am using this blog to build my first 3 Repraps.  While my experience in this is zero I have messed around with programing and arduinos so I believe I should be able to work out most of my own kinks.  You might be wondering why I am going to build 3?  Well the main purpose is for my business to be able to rapidly prototype our products before we send them off for mass production.    Strangely enough, for a very small number of employees we are currently located in several states.  The first Reprap is going to be bought from several venders online and is going to be my personal one.  The second Reprap is going to be built for location two and we are going to set it up so I can print to it remotely to verify our designs .  The 3rd will be for location 3 although I expect I will make some upgrade/updates to it and keep it for myself and send the 1st one off to location 3.  At this point I believe all 3 will be Prusa's due to their build times and the fact some of our prototypes would be too large for a Huxley.

Sounds confusing?  Well then it probably is.

Here is my first post.  I ordered these pieces on ebay for $80 and they came two days later. 

Overall quality is good although some of the green pieces are warped and most of the pieces will require some work to clean up.

 Gears look good.

My experience with ebay is typically good and this is no exception.  I ordered my kit from Mixshop and while they were one of the cheaper options around shipping from Canada is SLOW.  Total price with the Complete Kit (not actually complete because is had to addon the Printed Plate) with Printed Plate is $125.67 before shipping.  I will post photos of that kit when it comes.