The morgan project (Picture heavy)

So, 3D printers. The are awesome.
FACT.
Unfortunately, I don't own one (Well I did buy one...but 2 years later I still haven't received it...meh...Ever heard of Buccaneer 3D?...yeah) so the next best thing is to build one.

I'm planning on building a FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) 3d printer...in essence it's a glorified glue-gun strapped to a CNC. There are other methods of 3D printing such as SLA, DLP, SLS, SLM, EBM and LOM but all are either over complicated or over priced for a mere peasant such as myself to even think to build (let alone buy).
There are many ways FDM printers work, most popularly is the Cartesian system that printers such as the Ultimaker 2 use.

These printers uses basic Cartesian coordinates (X,Y,Z) to create the printed objects.

 The next, more niche type of FDM printers are Delta printers. The print head is suspended from 3 arms that are controlled along vertical supports, while the print bed is completely stationary.

The printer I am building is none of these. It's a Scara printer. I'm building a RepRap Morgan.

It uses scara arms to move the printing head int the x-y plane,m making it a very interesting alternative 3D printer. I mean look at this thing move:

If you are interested in building your own: link

Any how, lets get building.

First step is to get all the parts 3d printed, with 3D printer...that I don't have...damn.

So after some searching, pleading and bribing I found a friend who would be willing to help out with printing some of the parts I needed. He printed the 2 arms and the extruder. 

Blurry photo is blurry...tad hard to take the pic and hold it with the other hand

Decided to use a geared Greg/Wade extruder

I then legged it to my local maker space and used a tiny 3D printer to print the pvc pipe supports.

Next challenge was trying to find the correct pvc pipes...that took about a week, but finally found it.

Didn't have access to a laser cutter, so out came the jigsaw.

The wood is mdf...which is brown...not ideal...so I painted it black with some acrylic paint.

Now what colour would look epic with black? Green...nope. Red...nope. ORANGE!!! Damn straight.

This is Rust-Oleum Ultra Cover spray paint, my weapon of choice. Usually lasts me a project or two.

I wanted to do something about the power supply (I will be using a PC ATX power supply) and some form of able management. So I decided on making a "basement" layer of sorts. 80 mm (8cm), ie the height of the standard ATX PSU

Decided to go with a PC ATX power supply as I had one, and is much cheaper relative to its LED PSU counter part.

I snipped and modified the wires according to this RepRap "tut" thing link

Note: THIS WILL VOID ANY WARRANTY OF THE PSU IF YOU OPEN/MODIFY IT

PSU is mounted to the MDF via the fan skrew holes...was hard to keep the fan still inside a closed up PSU.

Starting with the PVC pipe mounting. This went nice and quick. Zero issues here.

Phone camera at night time does weird things with colours.

"Final" structure

After that I started with the wiring...Sooooo many wires xD

After "Doing what I can" with what I had, I had to move to a larger 3d printer as the tiny volume of the maker space printer just wasn't going to cut it.

So...I asked around, and I got access to my varsity's 3d printer (In return, I had to do basic maintenance and upgrades to the printer...win!!!)

Look at that smug face

Final bits (with the "new" wheel designs)

 

A small hiccup...when I started a print something (in ABS)...and then left for the day...below is what i was greeted to the next day...welp.

Straight out of a horror movie

After cleaning up, hitting reprint (this time in PLA) I started on the Z gantry.

After some wiggling and tweaking, finally got everything in place.

Now for the z axis, Usually one would use a lead screw...but I saw there was a thread-less ball screw concept...I didn't even think twice about any complications that it would bring. I mean. Just look at it. 

It is a smooth rod yet it can carry the print bed and print with no backlash...pretty dang epic in my opinion.

Printer progress (excl arms)

I added the arms and started wiring up the heated bed.

First "final" phase. Now I was ready for testing.

The build is now 6 month in...I'm done. Or so I thought. This is what happened when trying to home the printer.

To be honest. I freaked. I thought I broke something. Luckily everything was in one piece (in an unbroken state). I re flashed the firmware, double checked the parameters, etc, etc....to no avail.

Finally disassembled the whole thing, and restarted all the electronics from the start.

Turns out, the Ramps board that I bought never came with micro step bridges....

I grabbed a few, and it solved the majority of the movement issues.

"Finished" state. Sexy looking am I right?

How ever...my struggles didn't end there. Calibrating this was a pain in the rear end.

I spent 2 month on just attempting to calibrate this. And this was The best result I could produce. 

Now thats one ugly test cube. In case anyone asks. The nozzle is the correct temp and unclogged.

I mean come on. But to prove, that thing was actually working....where is a vid.

After all this, I've decided to can this build. It's just not reliable enough. The Hall effect sensors used to home the arms just didn't produce a reliable result.
The printer design looks epic, that is why I started this project. However I could not get it to reliably print something, thus deciding to stop.

I have learned a ton while building this. So I will not be giving up on building my own printer. I'm just going to start off with a simple mechanism (Standard Cartesian system).

TLDR:
IF you are planning to build your own first 3d printer...avoid the morgan/scara design. Start with something simpler and attempt this when you have a larger knowledge about printers (or you hate your free time)