I've been hearing tons about 3D Printing for a long time. Well, it's about time I joined in on the fun! First parts have arrived today for a RepRapPro Mendel Mono!
What I'll be doing, is describing the progress in making the printer -- I assume it's gonna take a long time.
The online guide to building it can be found on RepRapPro Wiki. You can buy a DIY kit from the company itself, or just source the parts on your own from whatever vendor is local to you. I opted for the second option, to add an extra flair of DIY to it. Unfortunately there's no BOM (ie a list of things you need), so I'll list what I got, and from where (in case other Greeks wanna try this as well).
First thing I got was relatively easy - 7 meters of M8 threaded rod. The relatively part comes into play because it translates to something entirely different in Greek hardware stores ( ντίζα Μ8 ). Once the translation was in place though, it was simple enough. Along came 100 M8 nuts ( παξιμάδια ), 100 Μ8 lock washers ( γκρόβερ ), and 100 plain M8 washers ( ροδέλες ). I'm certain these are more than required, but better safe than sorry. Total up to now - 8.00EUR.
The hardest part was locating someone to source the printed parts from -- in my case, I found a guy in Austria from emakershop.com ( think eBay for 3D printers, though with only a fraction of the people ) -- say hello to 3D Andy. Parts arrived in 10 days, and look wonderful!
Now I need to cut the threaded rod to smaller pieces, and find the missing parts for the frame. I need to find some M3 screws / nuts, and apparently most hardware stores here only stock M4+ . Oh well. I'll let you know about it :)