Building a 3D printer out of Hp G85 Office jet printers

Springs could be used on the bed for tension, the steppers can be used to drive the axis' and the belt could be used in conjunction to move them.

Very nice idea on the subject of recycling electronics, good luck!

thats what i was thinking with the steppers... although one is larger than the other as one was use to move the print head and ink carts... while the other was only used to move the scan bar....im not sure about using springs on the bed because im going to have the bed move along the x axis and let the hot end take care of y and z

Thanks for the reply Josh i appreciate the advice!

Ink-jet printers are great source material for 3D printers. With the parts you list, I might also look at a Delta-format printer (Rostock, Kossel, 3DR, etc). That way, you only need four steppers (three for the composite axis traverse, one for the extruder). So long as you match the three, control should be fairly simple and you can use the rails and belts together with a framework support of any type (many parts of printers can be used here). They are also fun to watch print, since they are so "busy" with all three steppers moving for any planar traverse, and have the advantage of much higher speed Z-axis traverse than Cartesian format printers. Good luck with this, though!

Kirk

thank you Kalani!

i have access to a plastics fabrication shop and lots of plastic so i will most likely be building the entire thing out of pvc or Centra material...

as for other information what could i use to drive the steppers?

i was thinking about using a arduino dev board and a Ramps Sheild poped on top

like here:

http://youtu.be/z0h2Uf6XGLs?t=3m15s

other than that i still need to find out about the hot end and the Z axis... (the screw mostly)

i want to use 2 steppers to drive the Z axis... just to keep things clean

one for the y one for the x

X axis moves the hot end

y axis moves the print bed...

That sounds like a Cartesian-format layout (take a look at the Mendel or Prusa i3) and definitely the Arduino MEGA + RAMPS is a good way to go. Most of the other common boards (RAMBO, etc) are just combined variations of the Arduino+RAMPS functionality. You should be about to source the Arduino MEGA for around $35-40 USD and the RAMPS as a kit around $35 USD on EBay, You would also need the stepper motor drivers (I like the Pololu A4988 or something like it, due to the ability to handle higher current than some off-brands), 1 controller per stepper or a higher current-carrying version if you want to slave dual Z-steppers from the same controller. That will require some interesting management to split off the drivers (split the driver output before the controller, you just need +1 controller and careful balancing of both motors pushing the screw). There are a wide range of options in terms of extruders and hot ends (I have never had a J-head fail at the start, but many like to fabricate their own).

Make sure to let others follow your path through the various challenges you will encounter in this build!

Kirk

Like Kirk stated, the arduino + ramps combo just can't be beat.  I use that combo on all my printers and have purchased them on ebay or through http://www.lulzbot.com/.  The j-head is a great hotend but I have also used the budaschnozzle from lulzbot with great success.

Nate

So which arduino and RAMPS combo should I use... Like I said in my original post I have no experience with arduinos... So I know Nothing about which I should use

Here is a extremely basic 2d drawing of what i plan to build

A comment is that the two steppers on one belt was listed as a major design fault in the Prusa Mendel.

It may be easier to use a single stepper with a tension belt system to avoid the pains in alignment, maintenance and the case of where you need to manually move the Z axis (for example, if it jams)

I would say just from looking at the RepRap wiki you will probably want to get your hands on an Arduino Mega and a RAMPS board.