Sourcing the Parts

Reprap.org has a Parts Lister that did a good job of laying out what will be needed to build my repstrap. Somewhere on the page, they say that a repstrap should be buildable for about $250US. That amount seems laughable small, but perhaps it is possible if you did everything yourself and sourced parts carefully. As for me, I work a fulltime+ plus job and am planning a wedding for this summer, so I really don't have a ton of spare time to do all that work myself. Also, I'm not sure that my skills are really up to it. So, I am specifically choosing to substitute money for time where some of these parts are concerned. To that end, I've ordered parts as follows:

Laser cut cartesian Robot parts from store.rrrf.org
The parts are really nice looking. Mine are an opaque green, rather than the clear acrylic you can see in all the pretty pictures from instructables and reprap. I also paid the extra $20 to get the holes countersunk.

Electronics kits from store.rrrf.org:
3 ea. Stepper Motor Driver v2.3 Raw PCB
1 ea. Arduino Breakout Shield v1.4 PCB
2 ea. Skate Bearings
1 ea. Temperature Sensor v1.1 Kit
1 ea. PWM Driver v1.1 Kit
3 ea. Opto Endstop v2.1 Kit
1 ea. GM3 Noise Suppressor v1.0 Kit

They were out of the stepper motor kits, so I had to source those out on my own. Luckily, the parts lister makes that super easy. So these electronics pieces and the laser cut parts were about $200.


Pre-Cut Aluminum pieces from www.speedymetals.com
So easy! The shipping was a little high, but I have a suspicion it's because I ordered my threaded rod from them as well (not precut) and shipping 3 foot long rods are probably more expensive. At any rate, the total for this was about $46.00 (with $14 of that being shipping)

As you can see, I'm already hitting the $250 mark and I haven't bought any of the hardware or the remaining electronics components. (Not that I really care about the price at this point. $250 seemed pretty optimistic from the get-go. I was thinking that it might end up around $500 with all the stuff I'm getting other people to do for me.

Machined thermal Extruder parts
There is a fellow on the reprap.org For Sale forum who is machining and selling thermal extruder parts for about $41 including shipping. You get:

1 brass nozzle with a 0.4mm orifice
1 brass heater barrel
1 PTFE thermal break
1 steel drive screw
2 brass half-bearings for the drive screw
2 nuts for the steel drive screw

Find it here: http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?94,20261

Electronic components
The electronic components for the 3 Stepper Motor drivers were purchased mainly from mouser.com. Great website. Such an easy cut and paste process from the parts lister. When I got the final list on Mouser's site, I noticed a few things that were out of stock and a few that had outrageous minimum orders. So I purchased them from Jameco and Digikey. Wow, things move fast. I just went back to the parts lister and someone has updated it with things that are in stock. Crazy internet! I also saved about $30 going through the list and comparison shopping the most expensive items.

At any rate, for those of you keeping track, and by "those of you" I mean me, I spent

Digikey: $10

• Trimpots
  It was $2.50 for the parts, $7.50 for shipping. I didn't order these because they were out of stock on mouser and I didn't have the confidence to find exact matches from another manufacturer on their site. So I ended up getting beaten up on the shipping. Also, now there is another trim pot listed on the parts list which are available.
  

Jameco: $40.00

• Drivers
• Controllers
• Breakaway headers (which aren't on the parts list anymore.)

McMaster: $33.90
I ended up ordering the teflon strips and the silicon tubing from McMaster's because I thoguht finding them would be hard, but then I added a few other things to the list that I wasn't persistent enough to find around here.

• Teflon Strips
  
• u-clamps:
  If the parts list had been a little more clear, I probably could have sourced these locally too. Instead, I bought a box of 50 from McMasters.
• 1/2" machine screws
  should have gone to a better hardware store
  
• dSilicon tubing:
  Does this really need to be silicon?
  
• M5 screws and accessories.
  Could have gotten these locally too, but I forgot to put them on my list when I went shopping.
  

The rest of the stuff I got and Home Depot or OSH.

One thing that caused me some trouble was the Flange for the vertical base. The only ones I could find for 3/4" pipe were too small. The lasercut piece is drilled and counter-sunk for 1/2" screws and the pre drilled holes were too close together. However, the 1" pipe flange was perfect. I suspect that the McWire plans originally used 1" pipe. At any rate, I bought the flange for the 1" pipe and a little coverter geegaw to downsize the hole from one inch to three quarters.

Also, 1/2" machine screws are not avaible at either Home Depot or Osh. I imagine that I could have found them at some place smaller, with less emphasis on the most generic items possible, but instead I just ordered them from McMaster.

I spent about $50 on various parts of the structure at Home Depot and another $30 at OSH.

So I think I'm around $500 in on this project. I still need the Stepper Motors and maybe a couple things for the extruder. But I'm about where I thought I would be.