Tips and Advice - Printing in Plastic: Build Your Own 3D Printer - page 28

It's your call, but we hope you'll keep reading. We're confident that having a solid understanding of
the entire process before a single piece of wood is cut or drilled will pay off later when you're covered in
sawdust.

Examine the Plans
Before you do any cutting, drilling, or assembly work, you really should invest some time in sitting down
with the building instructions and examining all the parts that you'll be cutting and drilling.
There are a total of 17 parts to cut from plywood, and many of them have strange names (located in
the upper-left corner of the page). If the names don't make sense, that's okay. Each part has a special
function and some of those functions aren't readily apparent until you see how the machine operates as
a whole.
One very important item that we wish to point out with the plans is the inclusion of a full-size
template for every part. We've done our best to make certain that every part is well-documented when it
comes to measurements, but if you should find a missing measurement on a sheet or suspect a
measurement we've included is in error, all you need to do is grab a ruler and perform your own
measurements on the full-size template. If the sheet with dimensions lists the width of a part as 9-3/4”
and your measurement of the full-size template is 9-1/4”, the good bet is to go with the template. (But
we also suggest you visit the topic's discussion forum to verify the error; more on that in a bit.)

■ Note If you haven't already downloaded the 3D printer building plans, point your web browser to

www.buildyourtools.com and grab the zip file containing all the PDFs. After downloading the PDFs, be sure
to look through the files and make certain you have all of them.

The full-size template sheets are easy to identify because they have no measurement values on
them. It is even possible to secure the full-size template sheets to the plywood and use the lines and
center points for all cuts and drilling of holes. We did not use this method; we chose instead to use an
accurate ruler and pencil to mark out the cuts and drill holes. After a part was cut and drilled, we placed
it over the full-size template image and verified that all the cuts and drill holes were accurate. Choose the
method that works best for you.
Just so you have a better understanding of the difference between a sheet that provides a part's
measurements and the full-size template sheet for that part, take a look at Figures 3-1 and 3-2. Figure 3-
1 shows a close-up of the measurement sheet for Part K or the Z Axis Rail Support. (Figure 3-1 does not
show the full PDF sheet, just a portion of it; refer to the actual sheet for more details.)