The Really Easy Part - Buying Stuff

I always say I hate shopping, but I guess it just depends what I'm shopping for. I had already decided I was going to build a Prusa Mendel and after seeing a number of posts claiming that SAE was easier to get hardware for than metric on this side of the pond, I searched ebay for a suitable set of printed parts. There weren't a whole lot of choices at the time, but this one particular seller seemed to know his stuff and the parts in the pictures looked really good. Fortunately for me, they were.

And even though they were pictured on rafts, they didn't arrive that way. In fact, they really needed only a little cleanup and removal of support material.

At the same time, I ordered the assembled RAMPS board from Ultimachine, an Arduino Mega from Makerbot (also assembled), and Pololu stepper drivers straight from the source. Stock seems to change on an almost daily basis at many places. I later ordered the five stepper motors from Ultimachine after doing some research. They seemed to be on the high end for torque but still a very reasonable price. I've since realized this particular motor is probably overkill for a Wade's extruder setup, but I haven't seen a downside. I couldn't find stepper drivers that included the heat sinks at the time, and couldn't find heat sinks that looked anything like the ones you normally see on the drivers. Finally, in some forum I found a reference to video card mosfet heat sinks as a potential solution which I was able to order from newegg.com. They're really tall, but I was confident they would do the job.

While the electronics were on their way, I raided the hardware drawers at work for nuts, bolts, and washers. They had almost enough of everything I needed, and I didn't even have to steal them. I ordered the threaded and smooth rods, belt, bronze bushings, and nylock nuts per the vitamins list on reprap.org. If you get plastic parts with fully printed bushings you won't need the bronze ones. I went with bronze for durability.

I was planning on getting opto endstops when they became available somewhere, but a coworker gave me 3 really nice magnetic reed switches from Parker Automation. While I was trying to think of a clever way to mount them and the magnets, I remembered that I had some mechanical switches in my pile of junk that I save for just such occasions. Found three small ones that work great.

That concluded the big shopping spree. Turns out it can be enjoyable. Then it was down to the waiting. Definitely my least favorite part.