Building a 3D Printer

This week did some research into how 3D printing works, what kinds of material are used and how to build 3D models in the special software (like Sketchup or SolidWorks). But the fun part was actually getting our hands dirty and starting to build the frame for our future 3D printer.  Aluminum profiles are easy to saw (like knife through butter!), light yet durable enough, which makes them perfect for the frame we need to build.  This is going to be the frame: 4x350 mm, 4x340 mm, 4x303 mm, 2x285 mm and 2x135 mm pieces.  Some more parts came in: various screws and nuts, the power supply, the heatbed, steel and aluminum rods, etc. If you look to the lower left corner, you can even find the printing head.  This corners look like nothing much, but are in fact very tricky.  This is the bottom part of our frame - or the top part, depends on how you look at it.

Hello and welcome! We are a small group (Angela, Kate and Bill) and we are designing and building a 3D printer as a summer project (part of a STEM project here at Bergen Community College in Paramus, NJ).  We'll provide updates at least once a week on our progress.  Our goal is to have a successfully working 3D printer by the end of June.  If that goes well, we hope to build a second (and possibly a third printer by the end of our second summer session at the College - August 11, 2017). Here's what we have so far: The idea for this came from Robert Persing (thanks Bob!) who conducted a workshop on 3D printing at the Florida (NY) Public Library back in April 2017.  He kindly referred us to the following web site for ideas on how to get started with this project:  http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1752766.