Getting into 3d Printing

Fortunately for you, I also wanted to do exactly the same 3 years ago, and I'm also in Europe. After that much time I can give you the following tips:

-In my experience a Delta printer is the way to go.

-Use fishing rod line instead of timing belts, (Dyneema or spectra filament), got some for like 5 eur on ebay.

-If you can, order A4983 stepper drivers from the internet, I got mine from some dud in Finland over ebay, at 5 or 4 eur each.

-For the pieces, I found out that the cheapest way to make them (by far) is to do the following:

     -buy some epoxy resin (like 0.5 kg), and get rests of glass (or carbon) fibres if you can... you are sure to get some for free if you ask enough or just buy some from the internet, under 5 eur...

     -now this is the crucial part: use Paper/wood/whateveryouhave to create a simple mould for the piece, and most importantly USE CALLIPERS TO MEASURE and then  hold the function defining parts in place, for example:

                         -For the linear bearing carriages, I just found something that was cylindrical and used paper to make it exactly 15mm, tape around it and put it in the mould

                         -Include hollow tubes, tubes, screws, nuts...etc... get creative inside the part to accomplish the functions, hell, you could just put the linear bearings directly into the piece.

     -Use, for example: plastic sheeting (the type used to keep food fresh) to make everything leak proof, or just some hot glue

     -Fill the mould with the fibres, and pour the epoxy, this works way better if you happen to have a large syringe laying around

If you happen to go for the Delta printer design, it is possible to make your own "spherical" bearings using a lot of bushings and the mould approach I just described, and, since you are using a Calliper to measure the defining lengths , the end result can achieve  great precision (well that depends on you...), or you can just buy spherical bearings from igus:

igus Articulaciones: Cabezas articuladas igubal CL    the cheapest ones that can bend 40° will do, it'll be about 35 eur...

For the Extruder:

Since your motors won't be that big, you might want to make a bowden extruder  (extruder is fixed and just pushes the filament through a tube to the hot end which is attached to the end effector)

The stepper motors have threads to attach them to something using screws. If you can, just buy a piece of aluminium (2007 alloy for example, which is better to drill and cut ) and drill some holes in it, a small bolt, the right ball bearing (1 eur from ebay) and a spring in the right places will do the rest. Alternatively you can also mould it with some metal pieces inside and make holes later... I'm sure you can figure it out with what I just said...

You might want to invest a little to get a MK8 gear to actually push the filament, the normally cost like 10-12 eur, but I once found a guy in ebay making them for 5 eur.

The hot end is nothing more than a bolt of the right material with the right holes in them,   while drilling a 0.5mm hole can prove difficult, it is not impossible, and the drill bits for that are widely available on the internet.

here is where glass fibre strips might be useful to isolate the bolt and wrap it with the Ni-Cr that will heat it.  Then cover everything with another layer of glass fibres and then use "Kapton" tape, which is also widely available on the internet .

          Tip: Try to use enough glass fibres and Kapton tape to isolate and contain the heat , if done right, you might be able to get rid of the fan...

Use a 12V power supply for the whole thing, simply because you can buy a 8 amp 12V power supply for like 15 eur on the internet, since those are mass produced for LED strips and other similar devices.

My conclusion was, It will be very very difficult to keep the costs under 100€, If you can team up with somebody, you should. Even If you both make a printer for each of you, it'll still reduce the costs considerably.

You'll need some extra drill bits, cable, a breadboard... etc etc etc, + shipping costs

also consider, that the hardened steel smooth rods (that you absolutely need) are like 11 €/meter and you need you need 6 of them of at least 400mm (you can actually get away with 3 smooth steel rods, and 3 of aluminium, If you rotate the axis carriages by 90°  just search delta printer on google and you'll know what I mean by that)

Note that we hadn't had the moulding idea before we made this preliminary design (which was the only photo I had in this PC):

But still, if you ignore the Chinese industrial stepper motors and drivers, which are like 10 times more powerful than what is actually needed, you'll notice that the whole thing is very very cheap:

Also, If you feel like you can make it work, just modify a cheap soldering iron to be the hot end... I've heard from people that made that one work...

Also, If you feel like you can make it work, just modify a cheap soldering iron to be the hot end... I've heard from people that made that one work...