He purchased $400ish worth of off the shelf parts and built a 3d printer for himself. I printed some Prusa Mendel parts for my out of state brother. Information on the reprap project can be found here:
Everyone on the planet is free to create one, and the plans are openly available in the internet. The reason why it is important to note that it is an open source project is because the creators hold no patents. The Mendel design brought reprap into a stage where it could be built by anyone. Prusa Mendel is the name of an open source 3d printer. (Note the price has come down to $ 1,099 for the new Mk 7) You can also see the complete Makerbot store here. My Makerbot Thing-o-matic kit was purchased for $1,499.
There are plenty of tutorials online for how to model in 3d. I've been modeling in 3d for over 12 years. You can't have details that are thinner than the filaments printed width, because they just won't print. Care needs to be given to the medium in which you are printing. You can't just model to your hearts content and hope for the best when it prints. If you do not model a support for it the printer will extrude the extent of it into open air. If you are print a lower case "r" the arm of the letter will fail without a support. You need to avoid overhangs greater than about 45 degrees or you need to design support structures that you plan to remove after the object is printed. I had to modify details, or come up with my own that could be printed correctly. I made them to look like their namesakes, but they are by no means carbon copies. I was able to take general measurements off of them to ensure scale. At one point, I had access to a Leman Russ Model, and a Sentinel model. There is a cool down period for the plastic to come to a more solid state, and than the object is free to be taken off of the print platform.įor the 40k models, I found reference photos online and just eyeballed the details. This goes on until the print is complete. After a complete layer is printed, the extruder moves up slightly and the next layer is laid down. This breaks up the model and tells the printer at what points it should be extruding, and what outline to follow. The model I design gets sliced horizontally in the printers software. The extruder moves up and down along the z axis and the platform that is printed on moves along the x and y axis. A spool of 3mm ABS filament is extruded out of a hotend heated to 220-225c. The printer I have is FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling).