3D Printer DIY "Printrbot Simple 2014" Part 2

3D Printer "Do it Yourself"

Back again with the second installment of this series.  I would say going into this part of the project I am 10% complete with prep work, sanding, and painting completed.  On a scale of 1-10 with my wife's frustration level were sitting at around a 2-3 with this project because its being done on the kitchen table at night after dinner.

PrintrBot

After three coats of yellow spray paint and sanding in between to ensure smoothness all the wood pieces have been brought into the house and allowed to sit for the night.  This gave the paint a chance to seal and harden before moving onto the next part.  Right now everything looks like heavy duty plastic which is a little nicer than wood, at-least to me anyways.

Everything is nicely painted.

I found the instructions from the printrbot website to be helpful but the best part is that people have uploaded comments that help out immensely when I get stuck on something.  I flew thru the first 22 steps of the instructions at this point that you see the printer below.

It actually looks professional.

Moving onto the printer bed base showed me something that I already want to change.  The kit comes with a string and sand paper pulley system.  Now I am sure that this will work fine for basic printing to start but I know I will be fine tuning this printer as much as possible.  Not to mention that the tension on the string is not easy to work with because I have fingers the shape of sausages.  So I ordered up a GT2 belt drive system from eBay to replace it.

Almost there.

This actual build I would say is almost 50% complete to this point.  Not to bad for a quick nights work, and I had to remind myself that I need to take my time and read each instruction to clearly understand what I am doing.  No skipping ahead on this one.

Total time spent on this project : 3.5 hours

Cost  to date: $386.43