Electronics Arrived

Posted on October 31, 2016

The last couple weeks have been exciting. The controller hardware and hot-end arrived in the mail and we received more donations. I’ve also managed to get my system running from a power supply, but that will be coming in a future post.

The hot-end and controller are the only two required purchases planned for the whole assembly. The electronics are a RAMPS 1.4 kit from sainsmart.com shipped for $33. The hot-end is a J-head style V6 hot-end fitted for 1.75 mm filament and includes a Bowden tube for $13.74. I did use Amazon prime to get free shipping, but other free shipping options are available. That puts the entire cost of this printer at $46.74 + incidentals.

I want to send a big thank you out to everyone who has donated to this project on Freecycle! You make this possible. I think we are finally done looking for parts.

We have been given particle board in the form of old bookshelves. There should be plenty of material to build the printer frame and bed. Also, one of our previous donors also gave us 3 computers to salvage electronics from. Thank you! Thank you!

We’ve extracted the power supplies from all of them along with the two motherboards with extra 12v connectors. Additionally, we pulled as much connector cable as we could. Be sure to recover any cable with DuPont connectors as they fit the 2.54 mm header pins on the RAMPS board. Use a pin to gently lift the plastic tooth on the connector so you can slip the wire out.