Personal Fabrication

I’m really enthusiastic about the reprap project. The whole Idea of having a printer that can print functioning parts, just on your desktop is .. well.. cool. The reprap is a machine that can replicate part of its own parts. However, to build one from scratch you get a certain ‘bootstrap’ problem.. Hence you have to start out with a ‘repstrap’. Or simpler said, build a 3d extruder/printer/milling machine from scratch so you can make the parts for a reprap machine or any other design.

This is the first post on this subject, the X-axis of the machine is more-or-less finished. Parts used are:

• M5 threaded rod
• stepper motor and bearings from 5 1/4” diskdrive
• MDF and screws
• two slider-bearings from a kitchen drawer

Normal ball-srews have a larger pitch, so the cart can travel faster. This cheap solution using normal screw end is probably going to be rather slow… Oh well.. you have to start somewhere.. I made this part in one evening in the lab with the Spullenmannen, after a toko on OpenFrameworks and ComputerVision.