Good question Eric. It's a very common issue with DIY home 3D printing,

3D Printing
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Good question Eric.

It’s a very common issue with DIY home 3D printing, the community is setup and works with and for people who are often more interested in the act of 3D printing development than making a product to sell or document.

It is very possible to build up a ‘common’ reprap style 3D printer by sourcing your own parts, following some tutorials and discovering out things via google, blogs and forums like RepRap or here on G+

But where to start?

The quick answer to your question to me is - No, I don’t have a one-stop solution for a kit 3D printer you can just buy and assemble.

I do have open-source 3D printer designs you can use along with many others that have been developed by people, most of these are aimed at users who already have a 3D printer so they can print new parts to make another or experiment etc.

Plenty of places do sell full 3D printer kits, I could direct you to them, but if I start naming a few I’ll miss out many more good ones, so Google search 3D printer kit and that’s a fine starting point.

Look at what is offered in the kit, what people think of it, what the support from the company is like and also how much they charge.

Here in the UK if you pay between £350 and £600 for a RepRap 3D printer kit that’s a good guide point. If you pay much lower, then don’t expect all that great support and if you pay closer to £1000 it should be for a ready-built and tested printer.

Building your first 3D printer from a kit is a great place to start, I would always recommend doing that. All 3D printers will have some points of failure, learning, calibration and general messing about, so get comfortable with what they can and can’t do before you invest in this pass time.

Good luck and do let us know how you get on.

Original question from @Eric_I - below -

Hey Richard, I’m posting this here as I can’t really find anywhere else to ask you questions :wink:
I was asking over in the questions section about which printer would be good for my first one, and “Jeremy G” directed me here, but I can’t seem to find any laid-out designs around here where I can just go to some website, put some stuff in my cart, and then follow some dirrections once they arrive. Do you offer and cut-and-dried designs like that for a beginner looking for a straight-up build? And if so, where?

Thanks ;D
http://www.reprap.org

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One of the problems with building printers WITHOUT a kit, is the sheer number of odd bits and pieces that are a)not expensive and b)unavailable locally.

Shipping and handling on linear berings, fishing line, thermistors, kapton tape, hobbed bolts, R/C swivel joints…that’s the hidden killer cost.

I really wanted ferrules when reinstalling my e3d so that it was equally heat resistant as it was before I had to take it apart.

Ever try to find ferrules? A part that’s literally 10 for a penny, and I can’t find 'em in Denver. Ended up soldering and hoping the temps stay down.

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I just built the Mendel90 @nop_head Kit and it was a blast! It includes nearly everything you need. The only additional things needed are oil, grease, tape and some common workshop tools.

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While I hope to one day build a 3d printer, I’ve decided to go the pre-assembled route for my first time, and ordered the Da Vinci printer for $570 (including shipping markup and the USA’s huge tax). It looked like a better value than I’ve be able to get from any mail-order kit, and frankly as unpredictable as my life is I was a little concerned that if I tried to build-one I may get too busy and wind up with a half-built printer I never remember to get back too. Least now I should be able to see how much I even like 3D printing before I put a ton of man-hours into it :wink: