Making Progress, But Not Really

I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news but I haven't achieved my first deliverable yet. By now I was hoping to have all the mechanical parts for my 3-D printer but unfortunately that has yet to happen. I am planning on ordering parts in the next couple days, as well as going to the hardware store to get the threaded rods, nuts, bolts, and a few other things.

The frame I am going to use.

I have still been working on my project. I spent the past few days contacting the sellers of the various parts about compatibility and the best type of frame. I have decided to purchase this frame from eBay. I chose this one over the other do to cost and stability. After speaking with the seller I decided I am going to purchase this set of printed parts as the seller of my frame. I still need to research the bearings and couplings that I need. If everything goes to plan I should have all my parts together by the new year.

The inspiration for my table

Side Project: Table

As I was researching the printer I saw many people complain about the instability of a single plate frame. That's one of the reasons I chose the melamine frame above. A common tip of the people who build these is to have a stable place to build and operate there printer on. Stability is key for good prints and proper calibration. Since I don't have a large table that I can build my printer on I decided to build one. As I was browsing the internet I saw a table like what I was planning on building.

The table that I have pictured is built out of old pallets, you know the things forklifts pickup at Costco. This is a big plus for me as it puts my cost at zero because many businesses throw them out. Im planning to get mine from a copier store.

My table will be different from the one pictured. I'm planning on making it about 5 feet by 3 feet. This should get me plenty of space to build it. I think I am going to lay the slats on top of a piece of particle board, glue them down, than sand, stain and seal. I'm probably going to make the legs out of the 2x4s the pallets come sitting on top of. I might also route out a lip on the top edge so that I have somewhere to put parts without it rolling away. I'll be sure to update my progress, Hopefully next time I'll have made some progress on the printer.

Another Reason Why America Isn't So Great After All!

The parts list for nuts and bolts. Notice they are all metric

 As I was reading the parts list on the 3-d printer's website I noticed another challenge to add to my project, everything is metric. Since these printers are built all around the world, it only makes sense to use this system, after all there are only 3 countries who don't (The United States, Myanmar, and Liberia in case you were wondering. This also adds more difficulty in finding parts locally. The rods that are used in the printer are metric, M10 to be specific. These rods are harder to find, I have only seen them at Ace Hardware.

Everything I own is standard

Since I was raised here in the United States, all the things I have built, the wood I have bought, or the things I have put together have been in standard measurement. All of the tools I own count in fractions of inches, which is 1/12th of a foot, which is 1/3rd of a yard and so on. Although this system is completely irrational it is what makes sense to me. The printer however uses a rational system with base 10. Since the printer needs to be put to together with great precision I have two options, convert every measurement to standard and end up with ridiculous fractions, or buy metric measurement devices.

I will most likely go with the latter, but I don't no where to get a metric tape measure or meter-stick. They might have them at Home Depot or Lowes. If not I will have to take advantage of my free 2-day shipping from Amazon.

The other parts In the build like the nuts and bolts will not be as much of a problem as the measuring, cutting, temperature and so on. I know you can get most of the hardware at big box stores and most standard wrenches are close enough to work. Hopefully this will be about as dull as my blog posts get, I haven't made groundbreaking progress yet.