I think it depends what your goal is. If you want the absolute cheapest final purchase price donât buy the kit. If you want the shortest and most painless sourcing and build process buy the kit. As @AngusMcleod noted it matters how much you value the time and how quickly you need the machine up and running. Also you have the consider shipping. When you get the parts from different suppliers you might have to pay shipping multiple times. Unless you already have parts or can pick them up locally. However there are still costs to local pickup like gas so while you might have what appears to be a savings when you count your gas and time back and forth it might not be as much as you had hoped for.
It will be hard to fabricate your own X-Axis gantry but we sell it individually now.
If you do decide to roll your own please post it to the forum. Iâm sure there would be other people that want to save a few dollars.
In my experience doing a hybrid is probably going to give you the right mix of cost savings and time savings. I believe it would be very hard to roll your own core components kit for the cost we are selling it for simply because of the volume discount we get on the parts and the fact that we are giving you exactly what you need vs. a pack of 100 screws etc.
For the commodity parts like stepper motors, power supplies, arduino, gshields, wires, you might already have parts or could find parts from friends or a makerspace that can be used and are free to you dollar wise but might have a time cost associated with tracking them down. Also sometimes you can find these parts on Ebay or Amazon and get free shipping for decent prices. The one kicker is when your XYZ part from Ebay doesnât work often times you have no recourse where if you buy from Inventables we replace it at no cost to you including the reshipment cost.
Earlier in my life there is no chance I would pay the premium associated with the X-Carve kit. Iâll go so far as to say I would have thought Inventables was ripping me off. How could they charge more than I could make or find the parts for elsewhere. Today there is no way I would roll my own. What I have learned in trying to roll my own over time is it typically always ended up costing me more because my solutions were close but not exact to the actual kit and I spend more in aggregate but less in each transaction. I tried to convince myself it was less but at some point I couldnât ignore the stack of receipts from radio shack, and ACE hardware, and well you get the idea. The hard costs differential also doesnât account for the time cost which earlier in life I was valuing at $0 per hour. As I got older I realized my time, even on the weekend, isnât worth $0 per hour. Only you can put a $$ value on your time but I can confidently say itâs not $0 per hour.
You also have to consider if you enjoy the journey of doing the research and hunting down all the parts. If that is pleasurable for you, almost a hobby in itself then go for it. When I built my first 3D printer I enjoyed the build more than I enjoyed using it. Today I wouldnât build another 3D printer for fun.
On the converse, if sourcing is going to be a pain for you, and youâre going to be frustrated because you just want the machine to be up and running quickly so you can sell products you make from it just get the kit.
Itâs an open source project so we have published a link to the files in [grabcad repo].(https://workbench.grabcad.com/workbench/projects/gcl5zpCuwqCXWLvYktLQBc-2IHvossNo37ycTOkzg6gREW#/space/gcvs_XeRNVzNkfG_tFTAMd0C2lBbCsLcagOxXb1Jlki0kT/folder/858489).
Iâm sure other people on the forum would love to hear your decision. Also if you do find some âquick winsâ where you can do a reasonable hybrid approach without killing yourself I think a lot of people would find that interesting.
