Making Something from Nothing…
3D Printing caught my attention from fellow robot builders on an old well known robot forum back in 2013. Although commercial version were available, they were not hobby based and finally people were now able to afford to build their own at a reasonable price. Plus when others are doing something cool, you want to as well so I followed a couple builds by Jinx and Hoff70 and decided to dive in.
It was fun, a bit challenging, but it worked and my first build was done in late 2013 as the Prusa i2 was printing. Great tips from the online crowd really helped out as they walked me through debugging things and getting it all working.
After getting the i2 working I was really interested in building another as most forum users were and the prices for the electronics were dropping so I picked up some cheap electronics and steppers and starting building a couple more printers. I found an old style but so super simple Wallace design that had been upgraded to M8 or 5/16″ rod and starting printing parts on my Prusa for the new printer. Then I found a newer design called the SmartRap and got interested in it and starting printing parts and seeing how cheap I could put it together.
Then I lost interest… Happens quite often but during 2015 I fully concentrated on getting my 1969 Mustang back on the road after twenty years of being down and all other projects were pretty much put on hold. The Mustang was running by mid 2015 but no printer interest resurfaced so the two printers sat in the closet until late 2016 when I became interested again.
Here you will find build information, pics of prints, and some custom parts that I’ve used on my builds. Nothing spectacular, just having fun.
GrayHair Wallace Build – 02/2017
