The basics - Hardware and parts

When talking about the home 3D printer I mainly referring to reprap style printers. What that is I explain in the next part. For now the we just need to know that it stands for "replicating rapid prototyper". These machines are either bought as a kits for self assembly, as whole from certain manufactures or the parts are sourced by oneself again for self assembly. Prices range from very basic models ~300$ to 3000$ for pre assembled brand products.

The main parts are:
The frame can be everything from laser cut plywood or plexiglass to metalrods connected by self printed or machined parts. The construction must allow 3 moving axis which are controlled by small electrical motors. The vertical axis is usually referred to as the z-axis, the other two x and y.
The extruder is the device producing the plastic. The plastic-filament comes from a spool and gets pressed into a heated nozzle. The nozzle diameter is usually .35mm.
The bed receives the plastic and is either heated up or covered with special tape to make the hot plastic stick to it better.
A micro controller, mostly Arduino, translates the information from the designed model into movements of the 4 motors (3 axis & one extruder)
All happens in a layer by layer fashion, starting from the bottom the nozzle squirts the outline of the first cross section of the model, then the extruder moves up a tiny bit and repeats the process a
gain.