Dumpster Diving

After a couple of weeks of research and lots of napkin drawings I have decided to take the plunge and begin making my own 3D printer inspired by the reprap project and others who have come before me.  For anyone who is totally in the dark on what this is, a 3D printer (or rapid prototype machine as it is commonly called) is a machine that uses one of several techniques to "print" a physical 3D model of an electronically designed part.  Most machines work by decomposing the part into hundreds of very thin layers.  Each of these layers is then printed one at a time to create the final part.  Sounds simple enough, right?.....

The major obstacle in doing this is the cost.  Being a college student money is not so abundant and I can't exactly shell out $1000 just for the parts required to make one of these things.  I have heard some encouraging stories of others being able to salvage a lot of the parts required to make these machines from the large photocopiers used by offices and universities.  Apparently the stepper motors used inside them for the precision alignment are the same ones that can be used to drive the various axes of a 3D printer.  I called around to local copier repair companies and found several who had scrap machines that they were planning to throw out.  Here's a shot of the first two that I started to work on

First, I should say that I expected these things to be complex and filled with lots of screws, but boy was I surprised!  I think I could have filled an entire 2 liter bottle with all the screws I took out!  Good news is I was able to find about 4 stepper motors inside along with a huge amount of bearings, gears, belts, fans, and even a power supply that I may attempt to use although all of the high voltage warning labels worry me.  It took me a good 3 hours to go through these two machines and I have another 6 machines or so available.  Hopefully, after I sort through all of these parts I'll have the basics required to start the project.