3D Printer Recommedations

[Snakehands 124]

Looking at 3d printers on Amazon has fried my brain a bit. Anyone have any recommendations?

[Ann3x 220]

I looked into this a lot recently too. My conclusion was that with the volume I wanted to print at (c5-10/m)  and with the speed of advance of printers and materials, it was better to wait on buying a printer and instead  use shapeways in the interim. 

I know others will disagree but for me, choice of material is very useful and buying into 1 technology limits this. 

Unless you have high volume / commercial  needs or just want to play with the tech (perfectly valid, it's fun stuff) . I personally don't think the cost stacks up right now. 

[WillyChang 1814]

3 hours ago, Snakehands said:

Looking at 3d printers on Amazon has fried my brain a bit. Anyone have any recommendations?

Depends what you want to print with it  & what technology you want to buy into... FDM? UV liquid? Sintered powder?

One common trait amongst all is that they're SLOW  takes hours to output anything, that's after you've drawn it up & sliced the object to suit your machine's specs.

If you value your time yeah, Shapeways is looking pretty costeffective or alternatively there's locals with homemade filament machines you could possibly get yo print stuff for you.

[LongRat 616]

Making your own is a valid option, can be relatively cheap and fun.  It is a hobby in itself though, so you have to be prepared for that.  I have almost finished my own machine, which has cost me around £600 in materials but will build bigger parts out of any currently available filament materials, unlike anything you can buy at close to that price.  If I was serious about making parts, but didn't want to build a machine myself, I would consider the Original Prusa i3 mk3.  That's a serious feature set for a non-commercial grade machine, and it is big enough to make real parts to a high standard for RC cars.

Unless you have got a few thousand to spend, filament extrusion is really the only way to go and frankly even if you had the money I consider FDM to be more suitable for more applications than other technologies.  The strongest FDM parts will outperform powder sintered parts and certainly UV polymerised, and if you want scale details etc it is amazing what can be achieved with <0.15mm nozzles and well set up machines.

[yogi-bear 2321]

I'll throw my 2 cents worth of opinion in as well.

I wanted to 3D print, didn't have a large budget and was ok with having to tinker or even rebuild the machine. I ended up settling on a CTC Dual makerbot clone. I spent in the AUD$500 range, but about another $150 on upgrade parts. 

I had a fair bit of success but also a lot of trial and errors. The machine currently cannot print properly as apparently the solder joints have dried/cracked and I have to rewire the thing (it starts to print, but stops after awhile). So, especially if you buy the cheaper end, be prepared for a steep learning curve. 

Assuming you'd decided to buy a 3D printer, my recommendation would be:

1. work out what you want to print or what you might want to print.

2. work out your budget, knowing that you may have to buy things later on

3. find printers that match your budget/plans. Each printer or printer type will have pros and cons, no printer will tick every box. Eg, FDM is great for durable parts, but for odd shapes, you need supports, they need 3 stepper motors, so lots of moving parts. You have more filament options of you get one with a heated bed. But with SLA, you can get finer detail, on needs a z-axis motor, so less moving parts, also you don't need supports, so less after print time. Plastic may not be as strong though, so if your doing mechanical parts, that could be an issue.

4. Most importantly, when you've select a printer, search all the forums you can find to see what issues each of those printers have. I wouldn't trust reviews too much.

 

One last thing, how will you generate what you make? There are lots of things you can download, but they are limited unless you can design you own 3D models.

[Leethal Driver 86]

Been thinking about this myself, just simply as an alternative to spending loads on (YB1) track scenery for my 1:32 slot build in the garage (it's for my boy. Honest) and any odd rc parts I fancy. Shapeways is great but some of the prices seem a bit on the steep side. I've been looking at the (YB3) Anycubic Ultrabase, seems like a cheap clone of the Prusa I3 that's available on Amazon. I obvs don't mind the fact it's a kit and it seems to have good reviews, although I need to do a bit more research (YB4), however I suspect you could get a milion different views and they'd all say something different. There are loads of free CAD plans available on Thingiverse which would suit my needs (YB1 again). I don't want to get into my own CAD designs as I don't have the time or inclination to learn myself, so it's more about being able to download a plan, print it and then use it. For (YB2) £250 inc filament it seems like a relatively low cost investment and if I don't get on with it I can always sell it on and not end up too far out of pocket I guess.

I noted after I wrote my response I'd pretty much covered all Yogi's points so went back and referenced them - seems like a fairly sensible way of approaching the whole 3D print issue iyam 

 

[WillyChang 1814]

These days IMHO I'd hesitate to recommend buying a kit as your first FDM machine. Unlike 5yrs ago the potential savings today is negligible, there's plenty of factory built China machines at the budget end.

Also have a thought about where you'll be housing the machine, especially if you're in a cold country. The box type designs are better than the skeleton/gantry type unless you can build a heated cabinet around it (IKEA tables are very popular)... you want the environment to stay constant all during the print, which gets challenging if it takes 16-30hrs & you've got day/night temperature variances. 

 

[Snakehands 124]

Thanks for all your comments, everyone. It's definitely a bit of a minefield. For sure, though, I definitely don't want a kit. Just hope I don't order one after a night in the pub.