I'm also new to 3D printing. I've been like the kid standing outside the toy store with his nose pressed to the glass for the last few years. I scrounged the parts for a post-kit Hadron that I'll be assembling this weekend, and I just placed an order for a second Hadron kit at Automation Technologies.
http://www.automationtechnologiesinc.co ... controllerI want to do stand alone printing so I'm adding an SD card, 4X20 LCD and rotary encoder with push button to operate the LCD user interface (later versions of Marlin firmware required). After I debug that, I should be able to provide some support to anyone who wants that feature. It seems to be getting popular, based on the fact that a lot of the Arduino/RAMPS auctions on eBay now suddenly include the SDRAMPS card reader.
I made a quick & dirty video of the modifications to a PC power supply to make a tidy 12VDC supply for 3D printing.
I just went away for awhile and did some video editing. The first video segment where I showed the power supply rat's nest of wires and explained each signal according to their color code was a bit confusing and there was some less than 100% correct info in that segment so I omitted it. There's probably still some useful info in the latter video segments and I annotated the missing info in the YouTube description. I uploaded the video.
Modifying A PC Power Supply For Use In A 3D Printer
http://youtu.be/CViScoX_1Nk(6 minute video)
For those who want a good text based web page instead of a video, I got a lot of the power supply info here:
http://reprap.org/wiki/PCPowerSupplyI'm also making notes for a more complete bill of materials. Bart's BOM for the mechanical part was great (the PDFs of the custom part prints are particularly nice), but there are a lot of options for the other stuff needed to build a 3D printer, and having just suffered through the scavenger hunt, I can appreciate how useful having a lot more of the info in one place would be. I plan on putting together a Hadron BOM by sections. I'll list possible sources and current prices. Where there are options, I'll list all options I can find, making it clear that, for example, only one controller is needed and you can choose the Arduino/RAMPS, or Sanguino, or ORDuino, or Azteeg. It might be good to include notes describing the tradeoffs with the various options if possible. I'd probably post the big BOM as an ODS spreadsheet file so others could update it if they liked and keep it up-to-date.
Even at this late stage in my 3D printing quest, I keep stumbling upon new and very useful sources of information... and I've been reading obsessively for what seems like a month. For those new to 3D printing, I think it would be useful to have a top down document, with a brief introduction to 3D printing, followed by descriptions of the individual subsystems, with links to as much specific information as possible. It could be organized like a wiki, so everyone could add info. There could be a nested table of contents near the top of the document to make it quick and easy to go to any subsection, or sub-subsection.
I think part of the problem is, builders build. The open source community is a very powerful thing, but as good as it is, it still skews in the direction of not having enough documenting because everyone is too busy building and creating. Globally, we could all build a lot faster if we were supported by more organized information, so we all spent less time rummaging around searching for the info we need. When rank newbies develop an interest, they often don't know what to ask because they don't know what they don't know. They wander around the internet, inefficiently collecting little isolated facts while slowly putting together the big picture.
SpacedCowboy wrote:Oh yeah, and I've just pre-ordered the parts for the 2.x laser as well...
I haven't ordered the parts yet, but I've been reading and researching that as well. A laser is in my future.
SpacedCowboy wrote:I went whole-hog and got the $129 version (dual QU-BD extruders)
I guess I went whole hog, some side vegetables and dessert, because I bought TWO dual extruders from QU-BD.