Building a RepRap Snappy 3D printer

A few months ago, I decided it would be fun to build a 3D printer.  Things are coming together.

I settled on pans for the RepRap Snappy. This design consists mostly of 3D printed parts, and my friend, Peter, volunteered to print them for me.  This model of printer is designed to print with PLA, a plastic made mainly of corn starch, and compostable (in an industrial composter).

I quickly discovered that the estimated cost would grow a bit beyond that in the plans.  The bill of materials did not include things like connectors, and a bigger power supply if you want to be able to power a heated bed.  You will probably also want several different gauges of wires, as well.  Some of this stuff I had lying around.  Most of it I had to order.

So far, I have programmed the firmware on the Arduino Mega Board with the Marlin firmware, snapped all the parts together, and am currently working on wiring.

For my first attempt, I decided to build without a heated print bed, though I have the parts.  When I get the rest of the printer working, I will try to integrate the heated print bed.

Link to gallery: https://goo.gl/photos/VFUTKzRPU44TthLw6

There are a lot of cool things you can add to these DIY printers.  You can add a display for print head position and temperatures, and buttons for stuff, because we all like buttons.  You can also build a little computer running Octoprint to control the whole thing and set up a web cam to record time lapse video of your prints.

I will update this page with progress.