3D Printers

[Atreta]

5 hours ago, Thalestris24 said:

Let us know how it goes!

Louise

Sure, as soon as it arrives and i get it to work

 

Edited September 16, 2018 by Atreta

[Dr_Ju_ju]

.. hopefully, you won't have to spend the additional $500 plus time\designs etc. to get something that provides acceptable prints.....

[John78]

So I have to disagree on the cheap Chinese printers, I've just retired mine (literally this weekend) after a few years of valiant service - it looked like utter trash in the end, it only ever required some inserts on the top of the Z threaded bars to stop them being sloppy, 1 new hotend, a new heated bed and an inductive probe.  It printed like a champ, it was one of these...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/UK-High-Precision-Reprap-Prusa-i3-Aluminium-3D-Printer-Kit-Upgraded-Full-Quality/283080841285?hash=item41e8eed845:g:sBcAAOSwlQ5bXrPN

The new hotend for it I moved to bowden (keeping the existing extruder motor) just to reduce the moving mass.

Now before you cry mine was a one off my brother has the next spec up with lead screws for Z and a inductive probe etc...  An Anet A8, and that too prints like a champ with no fettling or upgrades at all.

So as long as you take care in assembly ensuring things are square and tight and you fix it down to something flat and print slowly it will work fine.

 

In terms of comparing 3D printing quality, at work we have 2 commercial statasys printers engaged full time and I use as part of my day job - they print nicer materials (ABS, polycarbonate, peek etc...), but the quality isn't much better than my home printer the caveats are printing without support material and print speed - the commercial printers soluble support material is a really neat trick and it prints 4-5x faster than I can at home.

 

It got retired because its worn out from use - and its last task was printing a set of tech2c hypercube parts which I finished assembling this weekend, just need to wire it up.

[Gina]

Crumbs!!  The parts cost more than that - even the cheapest you can get!!  Looks far to good to be true!  My mantra is "If it looks too good to be true it probably is!"

[Mognet]

I'm still wondering how they can do it for that price. I've just looked on Ooznest, and just starting with five of the cheapest stepper motors would cost nearly £50. Then there's the board, screen, hot end, extruder, heated bed, framework, etc.

£85 for a printer is very tempting, even if upgrades have to be made later

[John78]

1 hour ago, Gina said:

Crumbs!!  The parts cost more than that - even the cheapest you can get!!  Looks far to good to be true!  My mantra is "If it looks too good to be true it probably is!"

Well the motors are £6 each, the electronics is £11, the hot-ends are £5 and the heat-bed £6 - all from UK ebay suppliers, so they can only be making £5-10 profit.

I normally agree with your mantra - and I also like buy cheap buy twice, or quality remains long after price is forgotten, but in this case, in my experience  - it works, motors are motors and the electronics all run the same software with the same capabilities (until you start moving up to trinamic drivers).

My strong piece of advice would be don't skimp on the filaments.

What I would plan to do if I was starting from scratch without access to printer and a machine shop, would be buy the cheap printer, print the dbot parts and buy the dbot kit from ooznest - then your in for ~£275 and will have an incredibly capable machine.

[Thalestris24]

I just splashed out £119 on a qhy miniguidescope - aluminium tube, 30mm lens and a bracket. Makes you think! Perhaps buying a 3d printer for, say, £100-150 (or less as above), seems good value even if you have to tinker/fiddle/upgrade. Lets face it, us astro people also like other techy toys to play with on cloudy nights . Well I do, ha ha.

Louise

[John78]

Another point I think is worth making - is for me my printer is an enabler for my other hobbies, I want to press print and to get what I want first time not continuous upgrades and fettling.  For quite a lot of people their printers are their hobbies.

I would buy a turnkey printer, almost surely a Prusa mk3 - but I don't have that sort of money burning a hole in my pocket.

[Stub Mandrel]

27 minutes ago, John78 said:

Well the motors are £6 each, the electronics is £11, the hot-ends are £5 and the heat-bed £6 - all from UK ebay suppliers, so they can only be making £5-10 profit.

Don't forget they get the profit all those suppliers are making as well.

[John78]

Here's the work in progress cube and the remnants of its Chinese laser cut printer that died so the cube may live... 

I'm missing some 10mm carbon fibre tube and a new hotend to get it printing. 

[Thalestris24]

I see https://twitter.com/dhewlett (Stargate Atlantis) has a Prusa ha ha

Louise

[upahill]

I can vouch for the Ender 3, got one for my old-man and it hasn't let him down yet (although he doesnt do the cad work)

Have also had Tevo/CTC/Formlabs and Custom builds but for simplicity at the price the Ender can't be beaten really. That being said, if you want something that just works everone swears by the Prusa and had I had the funds at the time thats what would be sat on my old mans desk now.

Yet to see anything totally turn-key yet though - it seems every way you go you need to be prepared to tinker a little.

[Stub Mandrel]

9 hours ago, upahill said:

I can vouch for the Ender 3, got one for my old-man and it hasn't let him down yet (although he doesnt do the cad work)

Have also had Tevo/CTC/Formlabs and Custom builds but for simplicity at the price the Ender can't be beaten really. That being said, if you want something that just works everone swears by the Prusa and had I had the funds at the time thats what would be sat on my old mans desk now.

Yet to see anything totally turn-key yet though - it seems every way you go you need to be prepared to tinker a little.

Dremel printers.

Not cheap, but aimed at schools, but PLA only, custom spools and no heated bed.

But excellent results out of the box with broken filament recovery.

[Atreta]

On 16/09/2018 at 14:31, Thalestris24 said:

Let us know how it goes!

Louise

Hey Louise, the ender 3 arrived and i did some test prints with it. The test dog came out nice. 

I also just did this test: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1363023 and it also did very good at it.

This is a picture of the test print:

It looks better "in person" than  in the picture.

Edit: i printed it using simplify 3d with a medium quality setting. 

Edited October 13, 2018 by Atreta

[Thalestris24]

That looks good - it's like some strange, ancient artefact! Thanks for posting  I'll see how my finances are in the new year...

Louise

[Stub Mandrel]

6 hours ago, Atreta said:

Hey Louise, the ender 3 arrived and i did some test prints with it. The test dog came out nice. 

I also just did this test: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1363023 and it also did very good at it.

This is a picture of the test print:

It looks better "in person" than  in the picture.

Edit: i printed it using simplify 3d with a medium quality setting. 

If you use Cura try entering a negative number (say about -0.2 to start) for initial layer expansion. After tuning will get rid of that 'flange' on the bottom layer.

[Atreta]

5 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

If you use Cura try entering a negative number (say about -0.2 to start) for initial layer expansion. After tuning will get rid of that 'flange' on the bottom layer.

Thanks, gonna try it. Also do you know a way to get the upper layer smooth (i don't know the right translation to English). The upper layer looks grainy, full of dots,  on thinginverse there are some print examples that show it without that pattern. I tried to print a sonic model and the base also had that pattern. 

Thanks

[Gina]

It's certainly possible to get the top surface better than that.  It's mainly a question of the amount of extrusion.

[Stub Mandrel]

30 minutes ago, Atreta said:

Thanks, gonna try it. Also do you know a way to get the upper layer smooth (i don't know the right translation to English). The upper layer looks grainy, full of dots,  on thinginverse there are some print examples that show it without that pattern. I tried to print a sonic model and the base also had that pattern. 

Thanks

Try 'ironing'  of top surface.

It's experimental and not as good as it will be, in my view.

[Gina]

Some thermoplastics such as ABS will be improved by "acetone smoothing" if you want a really nice shiny surface.  Pretty much all 3D printing I do is for purely practical purposes though rather than aesthetics.

[jarl72]

Hello people,

I haven't lurked around here in a long while, in part due to being tinkering with my 3D printer

I just wanted to add something to the discussion: if/when any of you decide to buy one of those extremely cheap 3D printers, please find out if safety measures were dropped in the process of cutting the price down, and if so please correct that ASAP. I have see several articles about fires started by 3D printers (Anet A8 printers running firmware without thermal runaway protection come to mind).
Have an extinguisher at hand, and resist the urge to leave your printer working in the basement while you go upstairs for long stretches of time.

https://www.thissmarthouse.net/dont-burn-your-house-down-3d-printing-a-cautionary-tale/

Cheers!  

[Gina]

Good point.  Though I see no reason not to have thermal runaway protecting in the firmware.  One reason I like to design and build my own printers - I can ensure they are safe to leave running unattended.  An yes, I am qualified to do so.

[Dr_Ju_ju]

Have a look at this

 

[Gina]

I think everyone who has a 3D printer should watch that video.

[Chriske]

If people would not buy that ultra cheap stuff this wouldn't happen in the first place.
A few days ago I found a 179€(!) printer on the net. Build volume 220x220x250 + heated bed.
In the add they even mention : all parts are precision made....!
This is a heap of nonsense..!
Oh, and they also mentioned : beside the manual(there's no support from the shop were it was bought)

On 10/11/2018 at 14:08, Dr_Ju_ju said:

Have a look at this