Printable View
I'm curious if you guys have any experience with a 3D printer in the $500 range? I'm not looking for anything too elaborate, but would like decent accuracy. I don't mind a kit too much either. I just want one to make toys for the kids and an occasional paintball part.
You can get accurate prints out of just about any printer, the key is calibrating them. That said, calibrating a cartesian style is a breeze, deltas are a pain in the ass.
I picked up a FolgerTech Kossel (~$350) a few months ago, but it was a pain in the ass to calibrate because it's a Delta style. I'd definitely recommend only looking at the cartesian model ones first. I don't have much experience with any brands other than FolgerTech so I can't give any good comparisons but they are a decent company that make adequate printers for the cost.
Is calibration required for each print or does it creep over time? I want something to get my feet wet with and don't want to jump off in the deep end too much... yet.
I'm leaning towards this one: http://store.quintessentialuniversal...id_product=145
I haven't found the calibration method though.
Once you calibrate a printer it's good to go for a long time, but depending on the design may be more prone to going out of calibration more frequently. But to put it in perspective, my delta has way more calibration steps and more failure points where it could go out of calibration than a model like you linked, but it's held its calibration for the last 6 months and I've used it heavily the whole time.
Calibration is pretty universal between all printers of the same style, and in the case of the one you linked the movement is pretty much good to go because the steppers are linearly linked to the axes. Everything else is just tweaking temperature, feed rate, print speed, etc. Those are a little different for every printer, so that's just something you have to fiddle around with once you actually start printing.
Here's the RepRap calibration page: http://reprap.org/wiki/Calibration
Don't be freaked out about how much there is, once you get a printer set up and moving around the rest usually falls into place after a few test prints and you get a feel for how your filament is doing.
My brother and I built a RepRap for $400 and it took allot of TLC to get it going but it is going and very useful now. We just went to one of their website pages and ordered the appropriate parts from the list. It was a while ago so it the costs may be different for the most current design. If anything though, it should be cheaper and easier with a most recent design.
My suggestion would be a Wanhao Replicator i3. This is the printer I started with and it works great. So great that I bought a second one for my fathers 60th birthday present. I can't believe the stuff hes printed on his. I don't think he ever turns it off. It's not a perfect printer but for $400 it comes 95% assembled and you would be printing within an hour of opening the box. A little bit of tinkering and it will produce really great prints. One of the biggest advantages is the huge user base this printer has. The community support is fantastic.
I would advise against buying a kit for your first printer. There is just so much to learn about printing that adding the complexity of assembling a kit can be a little overwhelming. Once you get your feet wet 3d printing by all means look at a kit for your next printer.
Meh, I think I'll go with that Wanhao. There's a memorial day discount and it seems pretty solid overall. I have a little experience with the big units at college both when I was a student and again when I taught. Those were pretty darn straight-forward and I did some pretty cool prints to show the inner workings of things.
Thanks for all the advice guys. This is going to be fun!
Placed the order for the replicator i3 this morning. Can't wait until it gets here and I can start getting it setup!
Congrats,
Here's a link to a good getting started guide. (The Cocoon Create is a re-branded Wanhao I3)
The Wanhao google group
Are there any specific mods you recommend I do straight away? I'm planning on using cura as well and have been reading about the print settings, but I suppose I'll just have to try and see what works best for me.
Again, thanks for the guidance. :tup:
The 2.1 version of the Duplicator i3 actually comes with most of the mod's I did to my printer. The thumb screws, D4 extruder gear, belt rubbing fix etc. The only thing I might suggest is looking at a better cooling fan setup. Thingiverse has lots of options. I currently have the DiiiCooler. It cool well, maybe too well. My biggest gripe about it is that it's much harder to see what the nozzle is doing. I may try one that mounts on the backside like this.
...that is incredibly tempting...:O
I may have to join in on some 3D printing fun. Let's see if the other half grants permission.
http://www.pixteller.com/pdata/t/l-7202.jpgQuote:
Originally Posted by CFCrew
^ That may well hold true for most relationships. I've found I get what I'm wanting far more often, with less explosive reaction, if I bring it up before I buy it.
Case in point - my wife OK'd my upcoming purchase of a nice slider frame for my Resurrection, among other things that have to happen within the next handful of months. Had I just showed up at home with it, the results would have been that I'd have the frame, but I'd also be in a poo-ton of trouble for a very long time. :)
It might be easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, but sometimes it's safer to ask for permission (or at least talk about it first) than to have to ask for forgiveness. :D
I wonder if she'd be cool with a 3D printer... maybe down the road. Other projects first.
I was a little worried that my Mom wouldn't be impressed with my fathers new 3d printing hobby. My fears were unfounded as all it took to get her onboard was making her a couple things and fixing some stuff around the house with it.
We made quite a few parts for the hybrid car with the university printers. Mostly (almost entirely) enclosures for small things. They were Ultimakers I believe. It really is amazing what you can do with them.
The wife though it a bit of a toy, to go around with working on my parts and paintball 'toys' - that and it made fun toys for the kids and people liked seeing it at parties. The big turn around for the wife for the 3D printer was when I made a replacement pusher for her juicer when she lost her original.
It worked better than the original pusher. All it took was it replacing a seemingly irreplaceable piece, and improving on it, and she was sold. She doesn't blink when I need filament or parts any more.
Totally know how to play these games. I'm in the process of getting her equipped to turn one of her interests into a hobby, and potentially a business. Once she's set, I'll be golden.
:evilgrin: Can we say Murder? :evilgrin:
Alright, back to the well. I'm looking at filament and it looks like PLA and PET will be the best filaments for all around. I do think that the temp that PET has to be printed at may require an all metal hot end. I'm looking at this: http://www.micro-swiss.com/#!product...e-cece31e3ba6f
I highly recommend the e3d hot end. With it I've printed PLA, ABS, and Nylon without any trouble.
I haven't had an issue with printing PETG with my stock hotend on the Wanhao. Some people swear by the Micro Swiss hot end and others do not. They do have pretty good customer service from what I have seen. I suggest you start with PLA and its a pretty easy material to print with once you get to know your printer move to other materials. My dad swears by PLA+ as it has a little more flex to it and he gets great prints on his printer.Quote:
Originally Posted by ironyusa
The E3D hot end is quite a bit different than the MK10 on the Wanhao, There are people who have printed new x carriage to make it work (See Thingiverse). You sacrifice some of your printable height envelope to do this. I don't think I would attempt it without having a second printer to print parts for it while doing the conversion. It's a PITA to dissemble the x axis and you would have to do this a lot with a single printer.
Printed my 1st part tonight and I'm very pleased with this little wanhao. Easy set-up and the thumbscrews made leveling the bed a sinch... This is going to be fun.
Yep that's a good one.Quote:
Originally Posted by bunker_o_matic
So how's it working out? I'm considering getting one now that the price to quality ratio is good enough to verify a bunch of design points rather than having to machine parts.
it took some tweaking and stuff but im super pleased with my Ft-5. Huge build volume, lots of ways to upgrade/customize it and under $500. Now I will say its a rather large task if you arnt familiar with building electronics and mechanical systems or programming arduino but in the end I think i made a great choice. They have an amazing forum dedicated to all things ft-5 as well so if you have an issue chances are someone knows how to fix it. Also Im looking to enclose the printer to run abs with the upgraded 12v bed heater and boro glass.
https://folgertech.com/products/folg...3d-printer-kit
Anyone have any experience with the Duplicator 7? Much smaller print area but it's a pretty impressive little machine for $500.
I have a duplicator 3 and it's pretty solid for most stuff. For the life of me I can't get the bridging or support settings right and I actually think I need to upgrade the fan. I'm still running the stock fan and have adjusted all the temprature settings. It was dirty cheap, so I'm happy with the cost to performance.
I also must say that Simplify3d is amazing for the slicing and actually controlling the printer. Add and remove supports, Adjust infill by layer and a million other settings and tweaks. You can also find a "free" version of it if you know where to look but for $150 its well worth it. A good reliable hotend, a good 12v heated bed and borosilicate glass make all the difference in the world as well..
Ive actually been having to turn my cooling fan down to like 30-50% lately as I keep getting thermal runaway triggers...I suspect its a bad thermistor tho... I think the next thing im going to look into is a diamond hotend or some other multi source hot end. I really want to mess with some of the dissolvable supports materials on the market for some of my projects. They are stupid expensive but if can get away with only using them in select areas of the print it might be worth it. And lets face it a multicolor or multi material print is cool as hell...
hard pass until consumer grade SLA dips under 1000 for me I think
The XYZ are sitting about $1100 for the older printer - we might be picking one up for a non-paintball project. The new version runs about $1700
https://www.xyzeshop.com/us_en/product/Nobel10A
Older unit at $1099:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/con...=Y&sku=1180391
I'd wait for the D7's to be used for a while since they just came out this year. They use an LCD screen over a UV source, so screen life is a concern and it will be interesting to see how long they last before degrading too much.
Hrm, that's interesting. I'd imagine they're not super expensive to replace though? Unless there's something special about them
I got curious about the specifics myself, and it appears that compatible screens can be found around $40-60. The actual task of switching the screens looks simple enough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lARBUQOkfuM
These are almost there, but not quite well reviewed enough, IMO, to warrant a purchase. 4K DLP projectors as the basis of the next generation will allow for much bigger build platforms with acceptable resolutions. I really want something that's more open source on resin as well. We use ceramic and watershed at work frequently depending on application.Quote:
Originally Posted by pbjosh
Yeah, the resin is a hard pill to swallow when we can get PLA for $17 for a kilo for the extruder machines.
Would be a smart thing to look into, as an after market competitive product.
Unless something I like better comes out between now and when I purchase, I will be getting this one next: https://formlabs.com/3d-printers/form-2/
A friend of mine has that and other than the limited bed size he loves it. He spent just under $5,000 getting everything he needed to have it set up and doing what he needed.Quote:
Originally Posted by ironyusa
The dimensional accuracy and quality of the resins is what has kind of made me lean that way. The parts that come out of it work very well as functional prototypes.