House4Hack RapMan 3D Printer – First Build

• by Philip
• November 25, 2011

We got off to a great start on Tuesday evening (22 Nov) with the build of the H4H RapMan 3.1 3D Printer!

Thanks to Andrew, Mikkel, Jossekin, Nick and Philip who made up the first build team.

Was funny to hear us referring to parts as “geared things” and “starred jobs”! 🙂

We learned alot and would like to share the experience and some tips with everyone. This way, future build teams can hopefully build on this methodology and the experience we picked up.

Below is the video of what we got up to and further down I wrote up lots more.

House4Hack RapMan 3D Printer Build Session #1

We finished the following (refer “D100239 Build Manual Printed .pdf”):

• Practice Parts (Page 12/13)
• 1.01 Bttm Corner Block R x 2 (page 15)
• 1.02 Bttm Corner Block L x 1 (page 16)
• 1.03 Z Motor Block x 1 (Page 17/18)

Next build team should carry on from page 19: “1.04 Top Corner Block R x 2” .

Tips:

1. Have at least 2 tables to work off – also suggested by the manual
2. Tools – We almost had a problem here, Nick came to the rescue
3. Stress test on acrylic part’s tensile strength -> Finger tight screws! (See our video)
4. The nice big LCD display at h4h + more laptops to display all manuals/videos
5. A projector would come in handy, could be projected onto wall in build space
6. Label completed build sections / parts. Still outstanding!
7. First 14 pages printed with Laser Cut Panel ID’s is available in 3D Printer build space
8. Main manual to work from is “D100239 Build Manual Printed .pdf”, we viewed page 15 and onward on screen
9. 3D parts in 3D-PDF (On screen, can rotate parts in 3D! Need Adobe Acroread 9)
10. Use the printed Workflow chart (page 4) to encircle built parts in pen and depict in there which team built what on which date, this way next team would also know where to carry on from

Most important manuals:

Sources :

a) http://3dpedia.3dsystems.com/login.action?os_destination=%2Fhomepage.action&os_username=bfbcustomer&os_password=3dprinting

b) http://www.bitsfrombytes.com/ :: Support :: Technical Resources (takes one to same link as above, logging one into 3dpedia. Permalink not possible so will try to upload manuals to github, also available via certain H4H members. Once Technical Resources linked was followed and one is logged into 3dpedia, direct access to manuals via this link: http://3dpedia.3dsystems.com/display/BFBCustTechRes/RapMan+3.1+Setup

1. D100239 Build Manual Printed .pdf (Main manual)
2. D100240 Rapman 3D Build Manual V3-1-0 Part 1.pdf
3. D100240 Rapman 3D Build Manual V3-1-0 Part 2.pdf
4. D100242 Extruder Manual V3-1-0.pdf
5. D100245 Extruder Manual V3.1 issue 2.pdf
6. D100244 Hot End Manual V3-1-0.pdf
7. D100250 Double Head Installation Manual 3-1.pdf

Build methodology:

A good build methodology one could use (from our experience).

Work from the Workflow chart on page 4 of “D100239 Build Manual Printed .pdf”.

1. Everything broken down into Build Sections.
   • There are 18 Build Sections with sub-builds under each.
   • Depicts which parts to build first
   • Depicts which finished parts makes up bigger parts
   • All Build sections eventually comes togeter as the complete 3D Printer
2. Follow instructions from “D100239 Build Manual Printed .pdf” for each part being build.
   • First 14 pages printed and is available in build space
3. To identify parts refer to printed pages :
   • Parts list (page 5)
   • “Laser Cut Parts ID Main Panels” (pages 6 – 10)
   • Bolt Tray Contents (page 11)
4. What worked for us, seeing that we were 5 members during this build :
   • One could assign 2-3 members to:
     • ID parts
     • Remove parts from laser cut panels
     • Build parts
   • Assign another 2 members to
     • Drive computer / cameras / setup manuals on LCD/projector
     • Quality Assurance on built parts
     • Guide team on progress
     • Make coffee / Bring cookies / Moral support 🙂
5. What could perhaps also work is when having enough members involved in a build, split the Build Sections between subgroups, work faster, get printer build done quicker 🙂

Tools needed:

We might need to invest in an Allen Key set, or perhaps get a member to share theirs.

Nick fetched his awesome tool set which assisted us a lot, still we did not have Allen Key’s or all specs on tools at hand.

I made a list from the RapMan PDF manual on what we need. On my Linux system I could run :

$ pdftotext “D100239 Build Manual Printed .pdf”  – | sed -n -e “/Tools/,/^$/p”  -e ‘/^$/d’

This extracted only the tools mentioned on each page’s top right hand corner for a specific build section or part’s build. It got me a decent tool list which I made a frequency histogram of most referred to least referred tool in the manual:

18    2.5mm Allen Key
15    5.5mm Wrench
8    4mm Allen Key
7    Tweezers
6    Setting Jig x 2
5    8mm Wrench
4    13mm Wrench x 2
3    1/16” Allen Key
3    Foot Jig x 4
3    Wire Cutters
2    2mm Flat
2    Needle File
2    Screwdriver
2    Wire Strippers
1    1/16” Allen key
1    13mm x 2 Wrench
1    20001 Steel Rod
1    2mm Allen Key
1    5.5 mm Wrench
1    608 Bearing (Bin 11)
1    8mm Wrench x 2
1    Allen Key 4mm
1    Files
1    Ruler
1    Test Filament
1    Wrench 13mm x 2
1    Wrench 8mm x 1

Anyhow, there should be enough info in here for House4Hackers interested to come help build our own 3D Printer!

Awesome! We are actually building our own 3D Printer!

We got off to a great start on Tuesday evening (22 Nov) with the build of the H4H RapMan 3.1 3D Printer! Thanks to Andrew, Mikkel, Jossekin, Nick and Philip who made up the first build team. Was funny to hear us referring to parts as “geared things” and “starred jobs”! 🙂 We learned alot…