Building a RepRap

I’ve long considered building a reprap and, in many ways, this currently the perfect set of conditions for doing so: I’m gainfully funemployed, well funded (thanks, Adrian and Tim!), and no longer have access to a printer. Furthermore, I’m gradually getting more and more annoyed with MakerBots’ somewhat inelegant and error-prone design (@#!@%^ stepstruders!) - otherwise, I’d just buy a Thingomatic.

Right now, I’m looking at a MendelMax with standard RAMPS 1.4 electronics,
Wade’s geared extruder, and a hot-end loosely modeled on the Budaschnozzle. As sourcing Pololu stepper drivers is somewhat hard right now - at least without paying an exorbitant markup - and I can solder QFN somewhat decently, I plan on using StepSticks.

Development will be tracked on GitHub - I’m using a little script to generate BOMs and cost estimates from emacs table-mode tables. Unfortunately, github doesn’t build the markdown correctly, but Pandoc does.

All of the BOMs and design notes:

• Electronics - stepper drivers, RAMPS, and opto-endstops.