[REPRAPGURU] DIY RepRap Prusa I3 3D Printer Kit With Molded Plastic Parts USA Company

I didn't buy this on Amazon, but I did buy it from the same company, and it's the exact same printer being sold here.

This printer has turned out to be a great buy!

When I got the printer, it was missing a couple of parts, but no worries at all! A quick email to them, and the parts were in my mailbox within a couple days.

I also had some technical issues during the build, but RepRapGuru support has been responsive and very helpful with getting the issues resolved!

I had considered giving a 4 star review because of the issues, but their great customer support more than made up for it. So 5 stars all the way!

I will say this. If you are not at all mechanically inclined, I'd suggest you buy a pre-built printer. It may cost more, but it'll save you a lot of time and possible frustration. But if you're up to the task of building it, I highly recommend doing so. You will learn a lot about how 3D printers work which will lead to a better understanding, and better prints.

Here are a few tips to hopefully help with the build.

1. Be patient! Definitely don't rush through the build or calibration processes. The old adage that good things come to those that wait has never been more true. Not including the delays due to the missing parts I talked about above, it took me around 2 full days to get everything built and calibrated.

2. Be careful tightening the endstop brackets. The first one I did was the X axis. I overtightened it and it snapped. Just get them tight enough to hold in place. But not so tight that you can't move them with a little force. This is much less of an issue with the Y axis because it's mounted on a threaded rod which keeps it from sliding anyway. But on the smooth rods, keep this in mind. The nice thing is, I was still able to use the broken bracket by just tightening it down a little more so the broken piece would sandwich the rod. It does work, but isn't ideal, so I'll be printing a new bracket. (That's one really nice thing about having a 3D printer; Need a new part? Print it!)

3. Make sure the Y axis frame is squared up. After I finished my build, I started to level the bed and noticed that when I ran the Y carriage all the way to the back, the front left corner of the frame would lift a few millimeters off the table it was resting on. This is obviously no good for a machine that needs to operate with sub millimeter tolerances. So I pulled the Y frame back out, and re-adjusted everything, and it's perfect now. FYI, even though it's not the exact model printer, I found the instructions very helpful at www dot dragonflydiy dot com/2013/10/building-prusa-i3-printer-y-axis.html (Hoping the link wont get hidden. Remove the spaces and change dot to .).

4. When it comes time to calibrate everything, be careful when following other guides you find online. I had gotten to the point of calibrating the extruder's feed rate (setting the E Steps), and tried following a guide I found online. The first thing I noticed was that the feed rate seemed really slow, and several of the guides showed examples where the base-line esteps were set to 900, whereas the RepRapGuru Marlin firmware has it set to 90. I tried changing that value to 900, and the rate definitely increased. But it was very wrong! The 90 value is absolutely correct for this type of extruder. I'm not saying you shouldn't fine-tune things, but trust the values they've pre-configured for you. They are correct.

5. When I configured Slic3r to use the values from the configuration guide, I had saved all my settings under a descriptive name. But, in RepeteirHost, on the Slic3r tab, I hadn't selected my custom settings in the dropdowns. As a result, it was using the Slic3r defaults and was getting terrible prints. Once I realized this, and made the change, the prints started coming out like they're meant to.

I hope anyone who buys and builds this will enjoy it as much as I do. There's something really satisfying about watching this thing come to life and the ballet of movements it makes during a print! And then, to have something go from a 3D view on your screen to a physical object you can hold is beyond cool!

Happy printing!

This was a pretty decent setup. I have been through 3 printers on Amazon and this was the last one I had decieded on. I was having some second thoughts and I pulled the trigger after calling their sales line for parts questions. They were prompt and happy to help over the phone. With that in mind it tool me two evenings to put this together, but you have some technical understanding. Here are some things you have to consider if you purchase this printer!

1. BRING YOUR OWN CABLE MANAGEMENT! - Aside for some basic zip ties included with the build you have zero items to work with.

2. MUST HAVE MULTIMETER (and know how to use it..) If you do not have this, you will miss out on a crucial step in the setup process. you will need this if you want the stepper driver/motors to work correctly.

3. LOCKTIGHT.... If you like messing with nuts coming loose on the all thread, you may become frustrated easily when you are putting the bed together. A little lock tight goes a long way!

4. PLA "Not Included" Do yourself a solid and order a basic color off of Amazon, PLA is cheap, but if you want to start printing you must have some.

5. HAVE YOUTUBE, WILL TRAVEL! - There is NO installation manual for this product, there is however a PDF version linked to their google drive for setup and configuration. Also they have a very clear and easy to follow Youtube video selection on how to put it together. (PLEASE NOTE... There are some items that are built backwards in the video and they will note this on the video. I had both video and pdf's up so I can reference both.

6. "OPTIONAL" If you want a screen for this model, I would suggest buying their branded LCD screen, keep in mind that there is no mount for this so you are going to have to print one. I opted for the larger LCD screen from them, I had to email their support, they send me the proper firmware to support it!

It has been long and challenging road but the printer does now seem to be producing some impressive prints. This review reflects our experience after having the device for about a month.

Assembly took a long time (several weekends). Some gotchas here were:
- bars on the z axis took work to fit properly into its holders, problem is mentioned in the cheat sheet provided with the kit. This lead to an issue with properly sizing the carriages to fit the printer.
- linear bearings are suspect and sometimes a ball bearing would fall out

Once the printer was assembled, we ran into issues with connecting the machine to the host. We were able to upload the suggested firmware but the print software could not connect. The error message we got was that access was denied to the required COM port. We tried deleting the server software, bumping back the print software version to 1.05, deleting/re-installing drivers but it did not work. After switching to a different laptop, we did connect.

Our first prints had issues but here are somethings that are now working for us:
- using painters tape for the bed and not use the heat mode. Parts were not sticking and we tried a number of different things that did not work: glue mixture applied to the bed, different 1st layer thickness, changing heat to first layer only.
- calibrate Esteps
- use printer settings for PLA as we were using PLA. Unfortunately, we did not find mention of PLA settings in the kit's documentation and we had been using ABS settings

Needless to say, leveling the bed has been challenging. We have been using the single piece of paper method, which did not seem to be doing the job. We started looking at other ways to level (e.g., dial gauge, extra sensor). In the interim, we did it get it to work so we have put these more extreme versions on hold.