My Reprap Prusa i3 Kit [ first of a multipart blog] - The unboxing!

I finally bit the bullet, and ordered an actual real 3d Printer from Aliexpress.com.  I've needed an actual functioning mechanical printer to finish my testing and calibration on the Printer firmware that I've been working on for several months now. 

The homemade rig that I cobbled together was not capable of the tolerances that my firmware and electronics could theoretically achieve.

I've put it off until now for many reasons:  Mostly because I'm pig headed and didn't want to admit that I'm not a mechanical genius....

Anyway, a few friends convinced me that this was the right way to go, to finish my ACTUAL project, which was the combination of electronics and associated software/firmware to support it.


The kit I ordered was from    Shenzhen Sunhokey Electronics Co., Ltd.

I must say that I was rather impressed with the speed in which this kit was delivered from China to Canada. From the time I ordered, it took about a business week to process the order, but once I received notification that the package had shipped, It was here with about 4 days.   Thank you Aliexpress.com


Without further ado, let's begin the unpacking:

The Fedex dude pretty much had a hernia dropping this little box at my door.  The packaging said 13.5kg, which is about 30lbs for you Americans... But it felt a lot heavier than that.  Must make a note to self to return (go?) to the gym.
















I've removed the thick protective foam top that covered everything to show that this is indeed very well packaged.  








With the box containing the acrylic frame components removed, you can see the electronic and mechanical components nestled tightly within the foam.





The distributor even has little cutouts to cover the stepper motors and linear and threaded rods!









 


 

The aluminum bowden extruder was pre-assembled to the stepper motor, and the machining on the hotend looks to be quite good.

 The power supply is a beefy 12v 30A (360watt) unit.  

My only complaint, is that I was not aware that you had to specify North American AC adapter.  It comes, by default, with a European adapter.  

Yeah, I'm RTFM challenged, ok!?

The Controller board is a MKS Gen 2Z v1.1. 
This is basically a combination of the Arduino MEGA2560 plus a RAMPS1.4 board.  It still uses the A4988 stepper driver boards. 

Included in this kit is an un-named LCD display with SDCARD and a rotary encoder for menu selection. 
 

All of the frame components are cut out of clear acrylic. (With a nice pink protective layer... hmmm... should I leave that on? )

Also included were two 1kg spools of 1.75mm PLA to get me started.
I didn't request any particular colors, so I kind of expected something funky.  

They provided Black and White, which I'm quite happy about.





That's it for now.  

Later in the week, I'll begin assembling and documenting.  

Wish me luck!