The most costly part I've seen is the heated bed. I'll be making it from home etched PCB with a soldermask bonded to tempered glass that luckily a friend had kicking about. It's the PCB or the 6 meters of Ni-chrome that I've had for 10 years. Yes I know, my biggest problem is not researching others but diving in. It's half the fun, right?
Ok, I gave in to buying an extruder that is half the project cost as the part cost equals the final cost of £33. The individual parts cost £30 minus machining and a stepper, plus the true and tested design.
This is a bit of a rant I know. But the prices and markup of even the modern kickstarter printers are silly, well silly for someone who enjoys making mechanical devices.
For the stepper motors I may steal some from the CNC mill as I found that the ones that I thought could be used were too high a voltage for my drivers (134Ohm). They'll probably work but I want some reliability on not slipping steps. I found a nice Japan Servo Co.LTD 0.9 degree from some old medical equipment (a pump from a dialysis machine) that's 7.6 Ohm, but only the one, this maybe able to be compensated in firmware? This £80 Project may become £116 If I need 4 motors. 3 I'm sure will suffice with only one on the Z-axis with a timing belt to the opposite thread screw.
I find making a quick sketchup of the device will allow me to obtain materials at random and not necessarily in order. Example ordering 4x8*880 long stainless bar and calculating that the Y + X length * 2 = 878mm.
