So you want to buy your first 3D printer, and your index finger is shaking on the $300 printer on Amazon.com. stop! You are going to have a terrible life. 3D printing has come a long way, but most 3D printers are designed through witchcraft, legends and legends, rather than any strict engineering process. I would say that most 3D printer designs are either bad or designed by a team of Chinese engineers who use all their ingenuity to cut costs. Some are well designed and have relatively high price tags.

I will first introduce some myths and legends that appear in 3D printers. After that, I will introduce some common, mainly gimmicky features, which usually hinder your printer's capabilities, rather than adding any useful features. Next, I will discuss the things that will actually make your printer better. Finally, if you are a beginner buying your first printer, I will add some special considerations.

The mechanical design of most printers is weak. You can never throw a spindle on 99.9% of 3D printers and get a CNC machine. 3D printers are usually not designed to bear loads, they are not designed to handle dust, they are not designed for alignment, and they are not designed for CNC machines. Due to two things, the printer can get rid of a lot of mechanical evils. First, the 3D printer has almost no load. Second, additive manufacturing does not require anything, it only needs to work better than without good position control. I mean most printers are terrible, they can work anyway.

The bushing will work normally. real. The self-lubricating bushing on the precision hardened rod will be very suitable for 3D printers. Compared with the correct bearing, it will be as accurate, as smooth, with less maintenance, and will not cause any problems. The LM8EUU bearings used in most 3D printers usually have such terrible tolerances that they may make your printer less accurate.

Most of the time, these are not important anyway. Because your bushing or bearing is likely to be pushed into a fragile piece of 3D printed plastic; this will immediately negate any accuracy advantage of either solution. If the printer advertises linear bearings or bushings into steel or aluminum parts, you may gain the advantage of being more precise and rigid than other printer options. Otherwise, it is unlikely.

Another thing that won't do any good is that ordinary 608 skate bearings ride with extrusions. These bearings must be preloaded to provide any accuracy. They are designed to compensate for some axial misalignment. In order to eliminate this axial misalignment, you must preload the bearing with a spring or bolt, press the inner ring on the ball, and then on the outer ring. Both must be firmly grasped. If this doesn't happen, it won't happen in 90% of 3D printers and CNC designs that use this method, and you will face at least some dislocations. The obvious benefits of these bearings will not have the expected impact on your motion accuracy.

In short, the bearing types in most printers will not make much difference unless they are properly restrained, loaded, and aligned; doing so is expensive.

The NEMA 17 stepper motor may be a bit too much for a 3D printer. They happen to be the cheapest and most easily available size. Most 3D printers that cannot print with smaller and weaker motors are poorly designed and require additional power. I haven't seen many printer manufacturers advertise smaller motors, but some people try to upgrade larger motors, which is suspicious.

If you want to keep costs low, a GT2 timing belt, or even a low elastic cord, is enough for your printer. Even if you have a precision ground lead screw with a properly adjusted and preloaded lead nut, unless you hold them correctly, you still won't get any advantage, and the cost of doing so is high.

This is not to say that if you have a class 0 ball screw on a suitable ground and square the mechanical motion of $300,000, you will not see higher accuracy. It just means that if you put a ball screw on your machine and fix it in place with a mostly hollow PLA, it doesn't make sense.

In addition, I would like to mention that if the choice is to choose between a full thread at Yidian Hardware Store and a ground or rolled lead screw with any described lead nut, it will definitely make your printer more accurate. Especially for Z motion, where the weight of the extruder or bed presses on the lead nut, preloading it.

Makerbot did this puzzling thing with Replicator 2X. They built an expensive steel frame for their printer, and then fixed all the moving parts with low-quality injection molded plastic. They are so useless that a large number of aftermarket companies are replacing plastic parts. Most of the main actions of 3D printers are done by 3D printers. This means that you have a material that is mostly flexible trying to stay rigid. See the problem? It will bend under load.

Some printer manufacturers have gone to great lengths to ensure that load-bearing parts, bearings, etc. are placed in metal. These are very unique printers. But this does not help, unfortunately, the laws of physics outperform design ethics.

The first layer of the printed matter is the most important. It doesn't matter if you have a raft. Errors will not be eliminated in several layers. The fact is that any errors in the lower layers of the print may be transferred to the higher layers. So you must have a flat bed. Most printers with large beds have a large piece of aluminum flat stock without any tolerances, with three springs with screws in the middle, supporting the circuit board without any tolerance, and the glass plate without any tolerance.

You may have a bad time. For most of these sports, the smaller the movement, the fewer errors you will see. If the straightness error of a cheap rod above 300 mm is +-0.5 mm, you may see 0.5 mm at the end of 300 mm, but it may only be 0.16 mm above 100 mm. When you add all these cheap mechanisms, you start to have an unsolvable tolerance stack. After all, you are trying to maintain a distance of 0.18 mm +-.02 mm between the nozzle and the glass plate at all points. This is quite difficult. Compared to a large printer of the same cost, a smaller printer will give you better results. Automatic beds can compensate for this somewhat.

In addition, large prints consume a lot of plastic. Large print is expected to take a risk of $30-40.

The strange mechanism will not help you print better. again. You are trying to locate something accurately and repeatably. Every time you add something to the equation, there is another thing that can go wrong. Therefore, if anyone who promotes a new innovative mechanism does not get praise for his pioneering work in the engineering field at the same time, he may be selling you a gimmick. If you like it, that's great, but don't expect your print quality to improve. For a long time, we have been designing things that move linearly. It is called.

Note: I'm not talking about delta printers here, they are specifically used for 3D printers, because delta motion is a motion that cannot handle loads but is very good at fast and accurate positioning.

This sounds amazing in theory, but the fact is that most dual extruder settings are useless in practice. Just pause printing and then replace the filament. If there is a misalignment between the nozzles; it will ruin your printing. If plastic drips from a nozzle; it will ruin your print. If one of the nozzles is clogged; it will ruin your prints. Or if the extra weight of the extra extruder interferes with your mechanical movement. It will ruin your prints. Dissolvable support is good in theory, but it is a huge mess, and the result is problematic. Compared with purchasing additional extruders, you'd better buy good software with the saved extruder funds.

The extruder is the magic of making printers. It is inexplicable to me to buy a cheap copycat with poor workmanship and expect a good printing operation. Again, there are no clever hackers here. The extruder is well made or not. We are back to physics. There are not many huge innovations in automatic lathe functions. The cost of manufacturing it in the United States is about the same as the cost of manufacturing it in China. Therefore, in addition to material quality and precision, imported extruders are unlikely to reduce costs anywhere. Buy a brand-name e3D v6 or j-head, or anything that is well made and has quality inspection steps.

To be honest, the knockoffs are too bad, they shattered the spirit of the J head designer. He didn't want to design it anymore. For those who have bought counterfeit goods, please sit in the corner and think about what you did.

Repeat with me, "I can't crack physics. Physics thinks I'm not smart. It works or it doesn't work. It does a good job, or it doesn't." Engineers are not crazy, they will not hurt your feelings. They don't hoard secrets, so they can collect money for no reason. All these things have been scientifically tested, whether they are true or not. It is not a system that you can play, there is only one system that you can compensate.

Every penny you don't spend on good parts is used to compensate for the time of cheap parts. E.g. I spent two hours trying to figure out why my printer skipped some steps every few layers. It turned out that the cheap pulley I bought had a problem. The manufacturer saves some money by injection molding the pulley teeth and pressing them on the aluminum core. Not surprisingly, the plastic tooth broke. I ordered a more expensive all-aluminum pulley from a reputable source and there have been no problems since then. By purchasing those plastic pulleys, I might save myself three dollars. I ended up spending three hours and another ten dollars to repair a pulley. It seems silly to me.

Finally, don't buy a printer with a cheap z-axis. Does it look stiff? Does it look stable? Does it look like the most expensive movement on the machine? If the answer is no, please skip it. Its importance is second only to the extruder. My printer has two home depot threaded rods for Z. Similarly, my prints always look bad in Z. They cannot be repaired without upgrading.

Do we need to repeat this spell again? Just like an extruder. At the beginning and end of the day, you have to squeeze out some plastic. So why scramble to buy the cheapest filament you can buy? Find a reputable supplier that produces filaments with real engineering specifications in your country, and then only buy that one. try

Make a few brands, but don’t buy the cheapest thing you can buy. You will have parts failure, or block your extruder, or have an unpleasant time.

The things that usually indicate good filament quality are: less than 4% out-of-roundness error and less than 4% dimensional tolerance. Or about +-.04 mm on a 1.75 mm filament. Refer to filaments for quality checks, laser micrometers, and other expensive items invested in the manufacturing process. In addition, if the company can name the source of its stock particles, point to a data sheet or provide engineering specifications, that is a very good sign. You don't want to use recycled plastic for your filament.

In addition, the cheapest filament is usually black, because you can grind any color of plastic and dye it black. Buying cheap black filament is a good way to get real rocks or grass in the extruder. The high-quality black filament will be the original plastic.

The 3D printer must accurately position the nozzle. It also needs to perform this operation at a reasonable speed. Therefore, it has to withstand the quality of the printer nozzle, make it rise to a speed, and then drop to a completely opposite speed. The force will not disappear, it will be transmitted to the belt, pulley, and then to the workbench or frame. The more rigid the machine, the less it will bend when doing so. It will also reduce vibration, which will show up as less ringing on your prints. This is achieved by using heavy-duty materials that will not bend in the force-bearing components. If your printer has an aluminum extruded frame, but the manufacturer reduces costs and 3D prints a bracket that holds it together, instead of choosing a cast bracket, then your printer still has some flexibility.

In addition, when the printer is moved, an ridiculously high reinforcement shaft will oscillate. The cantilever is not good either. It will appear in your printout. I like prusa i3 and printer robots, but they have maximum speed. This is a mechanical nightmare of rigidity and alignment.

This is something that is difficult for most printers to do. You must be able to align each axis with another axis. Or, in terms of what this means to your printer, if you print a large cube, each side should be a perfect square. There should be no parallelograms.

Most printers are not designed to be square. How to square the machine is another day's matter, but now I recommend watching some videos of mechanics squaring the machine on YouTube to get a feel for it. This is an art, and most real machines are designed to compensate for it. This is why the knee milling cutter is used more or less in the configuration of the ordinate axis for 3D drawing. Figuring out how to drive it is really easy and intuitive. However, once you do something like making a gantry mill, it becomes more difficult. For example, what happens if the entire frame is slightly distorted. You will be completely square at one end and at the other end.

I will mention that this is a little more problematic for Cartesian machines. As long as your rails are parallel to each other and perpendicular to the base of the robot, the delta machine can more easily compensate for this misalignment. These also have some subtle alignments. Where​​

As mentioned earlier, keeping your bed level is very important. Even after setting up your machine, you may still experience some misalignment in the bed over time. Software bed leveling can adjust these small misalignments well and make printing more enjoyable. You still want the distance between your bed and the nozzle to be within 0.5 mm, but you no longer need to spend hours to adjust it to within 0.01 mm.

Machines need brains. If this brain is reliable, documented, well-designed and supported, that would be great. For example, what if the wire in the stepper motor cable breaks while the machine is running. (This strange specific example happened to me.) If the circuit board has a protection diode, nothing. However, if the driver chip is not protected because a company decides to save 25 cents for a circuit board by ignoring this part, then you will also lose a driver chip. You want to eliminate as many unknowns as possible from the printer adventure. Electronic equipment is the most complicated part. It may be a good thing to spend money on them.

In addition, for delta printers, more powerful boards like Smoothie-board will provide better acceleration than weaker Arduino-based boards. For delta machines, mathematical calculations are much more difficult.

Because of their software spirit, some people will disagree with me on this point. But buying better software for my printer will improve my printer better than most of my hardware upgrades. We squeeze a non-linear fluid very quickly through a small hole, which has various strange physical properties. The better our software is designed, the better our printing effect. My preference is simple3D. I heard that some other professional solutions surpass it in some areas. Do research and do what works best for you. That being said. Slic3r is a great software, and I really appreciate the work in it.

If you are a beginner, you may be told that you can buy a 3D printer for $300, and it is easy for someone to use his eighth printer. You may have a vision to print a PipBoy model. Well, you can spend $300, and it will take a while to find high-quality prints. Like anything, spending reasonable money will bring you the best results. Don't just buy the most expensive printer you can find; you will end up with a Makerbot and have a worse time. Do your research, check reviews, and check the parts people are printing.

You will get something with a higher quality kit, which will make your time better. That is, documentation and support.

This is the official Prusa i3 kit documentation from Prusa Research. Really good. This is very helpful when you have no obvious problems when assembling your first printer. Most support issues on the #reprap IRC channel come from people who have bought cheap kits that behave weirdly, or the way they can’t distinguish strange parts. Good documentation is always an indicator of the company's outstanding engineers and good management. This is the least interesting part, but it is one of the most valuable parts of the engineering process.

Buying a Shenzhen copier from AliExpress is signing a disclaimer, exempting the company from any risks related to product problems you may encounter. What do you do when a chip is soldered on the back of an electronic product? What do you do when you get a curved precision rod? Companies that associate their names with products need to please their customers.

For example, I know that Ultimachine will replace Rambo when it breaks, and almost no one has raised any questions. They will respond to any questions about the board of directors via email and provide tailor-made support. Can you tell any supplier on AliExpress? The same goes for e3D. If you have questions about their nozzles, they will provide you with support. This makes them spend money. Then, it is in their best interest to make products that will not fail. Spend money where you need to go. This is my experience and the experience of others. This is why Lulzbot, Prusa and SeeMeCNC all use these solutions instead of launching their own solutions.

Finally, you will almost certainly run into trouble when buying and building complex machines like 3D printers. Therefore, you want to reduce the unknowns about where the problem comes from. E.g. If your stepper motor does not rotate. If you bought a Rambo board from Ultimachine, you can more or less assume that it is not a problem with the board. This makes it easier to determine that it may be a connector, wire, wiring error, or the motor itself. Now, if you buy a $5 motor from eBay, it may be a motor. However, if you buy a branded Kysan motor, you can also get rid of this possibility.

This is the same as checking whether the computer is actually plugged in before starting to look for more difficult problems. Use cheap kits, no support, poor mechanical design, no documentation, and no traceable components; there is no way to debug problems with it other than testing every possibility.

Nothing mysterious happens with 3D printers. However, what you can get from it is limited. These limits are set by real physical characteristics. Hardening the rod requires time, effort, experienced personnel, and maintenance machinery. It all costs money. However, if you skip this step, there will be real and measurable consequences. Those who work in the field of mechanical engineering are well aware of the consequences. Therefore, you may get some good prints from the Shenzhen special. Then the hardened ball in the linear bearing may erode the groove in the unhardened rod and be blocked by the resulting metal dust. this is the truth. This is why a decent printer costs 600-2000 US dollars.

So do proper research, dispel illusions, read reviews, and buy a good printer. Hope you can get a good experience and start to improve your machine. Maybe, if we are lucky, you will feed your findings back to the community, and we can all make better machines.

Good article-but the problem is still underestimated. I chose one of the machines you mentioned. But after a few days of trouble, I came to the conclusion that the current consumer-grade 3D printers are for people who like to play with 3D printers, not for those who only need 3D printing. This will not make them worse, but know what issues you must master.

That's it-for any serious 3D printing, I can win time on one machine, which is much better than the cost of ownership that I can now prove.

Priced at $270, this Prusa i3 version is reliable. I have their older acrylic model, and after some upgrades, it is great. But in terms of price, you really can't beat it. In addition, it is all manufactured in the United States and shipped from NH. http://folgertech.com/products/folger-tech-reprap-2020-prusa-i3-full-aluminum-3d-printer-kit

Follow the link. Perfect interpretation of many design flaws mentioned in the article (printed parts, LMUU8 bearings, non-hardened rods, etc.)

I agree. I spend a lot of money on my printer, assuming this allows me to focus on making parts for the project. Very wrong. Most of the time I spend on the printer is adjusting the printer itself. I want a tool instead of a new hobby. What I got is a new hobby.

The experience here is almost the same. I think the 3D printer will help me with other projects. However, in the past 6 months, other projects have stopped, and I am getting this damn thing to work. It's a hobby in itself!

I purchased and made a Rostock Max kit. Its prints are ok, but not very good. I use my draft. I printed the final draft on Shapeways. My printer is just to save my time and money on Shapeways. … Having said that, I have printed parts for my boat, laptop, and random items of the house (such as filters for canned vegetables) on Rostock. They are ugly, but sometimes it doesn't matter. The abdominal muscles are quite strong.

When PLA is used as a food companion, it will only leach lactic acid. God knows what ABS will produce

Although PLA itself is non-toxic, you also need to consider additives. PLA filaments are not just PLA: colorants, desiccants, substances that change the melting temperature, etc.

Most PLA *may* be safe, but if you are concerned, only use filaments that have been tested as food safe. The only thing I can think of now is Taulman T-Glase, which is certified as food safe by the FDA (although it is not PLA).

colorfabb TX is also food grade.

I am a humble tinker. I will do it if I have to, but prefer things to fucking work. I have made Makerbots, Printrbots and a few others available out of the box.

My problem is that the printer "acts" over time. Maybe i'm lucky,

Either 3D printers have doubled in the past year, or I am lucky, or I am an academic. I bought a Monoprice select mini on Amazon for $220, and printed a bunch of things with almost no problems. For large prints, ABS sometimes warps slightly or cracks between the layers, but it is expected that there will be no shells and stock beds that will not exceed 85 C. I am skilled, so maybe this will help.

My experience with "cheap" 3D printers is mainly about repairs and adjustments. I like to assemble the printer and print replacement parts by myself, but I can't print more than a dozen sheets in a row to keep it running consistently. We have a Stratasys working, and it always works. Surprisingly, it can be bought for $50,000. However, now the prices of the used Stratasys printers have dropped drastically, so I spent $500 on a scrapped printer and repaired it: https://hackaday.io/project/9203-stratasys-dimension-sst

It runs very well. I really can't imagine going back to cheap printers.

Well written. Gave me a little confidence

I really like your article-can you tell us again where you got this machine? Is it a local eBay listing?

I would love to do what you did, but finding a repairable but scrapped Stratasys sounds like finding a diamond on the street!

thanks. Yes, I'm looking at any Dimension printer that costs less than $2,000 on eBay, whether it's working or not. That's about one's current interest rate. I noticed a local list and I went to check it out. It turned out that this place was an electronic waste dump, and they got a lot of Stratasys machines there. I didn't buy the one I went to see, but a few months later I asked for another listing. The one was sold out directly from me, but the scrap shop said they had another one. The problem is that it does not open. Therefore, they sold it to me for $500. The short story is that when one connector is unplugged, one pin in the other connector is bent. Obtaining a hard drive is the hard part. The machine is great. Such a great print.

No matter what you do, don’t buy an m3d printer. It’s super beautiful and its size is funny. This is a photo of the 3d printer I’m currently using http://i.imgur.com/D4xXZ9U.jpg

slic3r has stopped development: https://github.com/alexrj/Slic3r/commits/master

? The last submission was on Saturday. Where did you get your information?

Because it is so important to accept others' promises to update the icon...

Hi. As an open source developer, I can attest how annoying it is when someone who is not a project developer claims that the project is no longer maintained. We are not your slaves, and many of us work on these projects without a penny. When we have to deal with people like you, they think that failure to submit within the specified time frame means that the project has stopped development, which is very, very frustrating for us.

I ignored them and tried to have more fun. =)

Slic3r is indeed the power behind rerap and my recommendation to students.

If you visit our town, you will get free beer and nachos.

Cura, also FOSS, is still under active development. Yes, we have Ultimaker roots and RepRap roots.

Did not stop. The developer is just one person, they are working on another project.

However, slic3r does have a terrible error, that is, the gap filling cannot be calculated correctly, which leads to excessive squeezing. This is sad because I like slic3r, but can't use it when this error occurs.

"On the right is a high-quality filament, and on the left is a cheap filament." I think you mean your other left. ;)

It was not just me then. I thought I had a stroke.

Sorry, I'm baking bread...

Great article. An explanation of why each conclusion was made. I especially like this sentence: "You can't crack physics"

Yes, one of the best articles I have seen here, very helpful!

Some of them are accurate, but there is also a lot of wrong information here. Apparently it was written by an inexperienced 3D printer owner who happened to know how bad it was and knew he was just regurgitating some jargon and memes here.

However, as philosiraptor117 said, do not buy M3D. They are just stealing money from others. It's just a shiny, cute poop.

Completely correct. The M3D printer is very beautiful, but it is really difficult to print successfully twice in a row...Although M3D has done a great job for this project...

The print head does not have a temperature sensor: the temperature is calculated by measuring the heater resistance, and it will change over time... To print PLA, I have to set the temperature to 260°C. Even with this setting, it will sometimes be affected by the temperature in the print head. The filament is blocked and fails.

The Z axis made a "click" sound when it moved, and the support staff said it "worked as designed." The print head cannot sense the bed: so if the calibration fails, the print head may damage the bed and melt it... The print head moves on its own on the Z axis...

Some fans will die after printing, you must need a new one...then the fan must be glued to the printer, otherwise it will fall and ruin your printing. The problem is that you have to replace it regularly... Fortunately, you can buy "compatible" fans elsewhere at a cheap price.

The printer head cannot be bought elsewhere in the M3D store, it only costs $10, but the shipping fee is $50! As for the "mechanical part" and electronic part (of course you can't customize it), the software is closed and can only run under Windows, even though the kickstarter project plans to release Linux and MacOS software. Therefore, you must add the M$ license to the total cost. It is said that Octoprint is compatible, thanks to some excellent hackers.

I don’t remember how many times I said "This is too bad!!!"…

The good thing is that I learned a lot from this printer, but don't expect a "plug and play" printer!

It sounds like my experience with XYZ DaVinci... The closed software is almost impossible to run at its best, and there is no support. Switching to Simple Metal (which is not perfect) is a day and night difference.

I also have 2 DaVinci, once you upload the custom repetier host firmware and upgrade the hot end to E3D, they will not be too bad.

Eric hit the nail on the head. This is a big article written by a man who is familiar with CNC technology but lacks 3D printing experience and is frustrated with his poor performance of RepRap.

I might even have enough motivation to ask HaD if I can write a follow-up article to bring a better perspective on this issue. I currently operate 5 printers for my design and prototyping sideline. They are a unique blend of shelf and self-built printers, Cartesian and Delta, and special products from the United States and China.

I hope they say yes.

Me too. I sent an email to the editor yesterday, so we will see what they say.

Do not. Most consumer-grade 3D printers are garbage. This is the fact. You may disagree with the requirements for metal parts, because plastic parts can indeed work normally in some cases, but the other content above is very accurate.

The cliché "3D printers are more than just work" is outdated and only applies to original DIY scenes-these new companies are making huge profits from junk products.

Source: A person with 10 years of experience in CNC >AND< truly professional 3D printers.

I have an Ultimaker 2 and a cheap PowerSpec Makerbot cloner.

Mantra. Three years ago, when I had money to buy quality, I got a Cartesian robot through Kickstarter. The robot was built by two people, one of whom knew his software. After a year of waiting, I got a machine that was interesting six months before the problem started. I don't need high-quality prints. Now, when I don't have anything close to the same income, I spend hundreds of dollars more for SeeMeCNC delta (and I put the filament in a heated closet with a stove). I will let the family cashier/accountant read your comments on the filament. From now on, Talamn or other quality suppliers.

Consumer-grade 3D printing is still in its infancy. The product is immature. Even high-end printers (Maker bots) worth thousands of dollars are unreliable. There are good printers there, but almost all of them need to be repaired.

I never liked Makerbot 3D printers. Their early model had many problems. I have seen people struggling with them for many years, but never got a good print. Their "professional" model simply replicates the work already done by several other 3D printers. And not very good, because they are now known for print head problems.

Which 3d printer needs the least time to get around and provide consistently high-quality prints?

I will say a good word for ultimaker 2. It has been sweet and reliable for me, especially after I learned to replace the Teflon bushing every year.

2+ has improved in this area. By providing a better feeder and replacing the sprint above the PTFE with gaskets. You can print the final improvements yourself, and it should be safe to use some Teflon substitutes.

+1 for Ultimaker 2 (I have 2 Extended). The only problem I encountered (even though I only used it for about 10 months) was once the extruder was clogged, which caused the print to be very fragile-hint: look for the "atomic method". 3mm filament seems to be less popular (and not so many colors).

Ultimaker 2 is also +1. I cannot solve most of the problems described in the article. But a good filament will definitely pay off. I also have an extruder clogged from time to time-but I think this may be due to a broken consumable.

I really like Makergear M2, it is described in the article. Every printer needs a fuss, but this printer is very simple and has an unparalleled support community.

None of them are snuff.

I sincerely recommend buying a very cheap one instead of Ultimaker2. Especially if you are not yet a 3D designer and are not sure whether you will become a 3D designer. I mean, if you don't have a real quality goal, buy a cheap one.

I use Ultimaker2. I have also used several other consumer machines, as well as real ones.

The parts of UM2 are the same as the $400 machine. The same waste pulley, the same low-quality belt, everything of low-quality (except the main PCB and housing).

Plastic parts started to crack on it... alas... I don't recommend the ultimaker 2 based on quality and price.

If they were cheaper, they would be as good as a $400 machine.

It’s a bit late to the party, but the two out-of-the-box with my best luck (and I have a few printers) are Ultimaker 2 and Flux Delta (although I haven’t been that long and its interface is not FOSS now, it’s There are also lasers (well, not a very powerful laser) and scanning (seems not as good as my DIY scanner...it's broken again.)

One very useful thing I learned is that the forums (Reprap and Google groups) seem to be full of:

1. People who like to always adjust the printer 2. Then believe that always adjust is necessary for novices.

I hope there is another group of (large) people:

3. People who bought a decent printer, "it works well", so they are using it.

Unfortunately, this group does not need to use the forum, so the rest of us can only see nonsense...

Looking for people who are really making things, where 3D printing is a tool, not the end goal

They use 3D printer services.

Almost this. I own a 3D printer and probably outsource it to someone who likes to fix damn things, just like trying to print something myself...

To be honest, we are very satisfied with the printer robot we bought. Yes, they are slow, yes, they are small... but there are two members in our makerspace that "fit" our 50 or so members. They do occasionally break down, but it is a machine and needs to be maintained like anything else. There is no doubt that Printrbot is where I pointed out the first printer to people.

+1. I bought my printer robot to print a stand for another project I am working on. I spent about 60 hours last year and it required strange bolts to tighten, but other than that I was very satisfied.

This is like 2 "real prints".

I simply printed PLA on my Printrbot at a speed of 75 mm/sec and got good results.

The Printrbot simple maker is my first-finished it in one afternoon, printed it "successfully" in 5 minutes and has been using it for more than a year. In the quote above, because now I use a better FDM printer, I can see the lack of details, but I use it to make project parts and make custom parts prototypes for my laboratory, not necessarily toys, etc... If we need larger or higher quality prints, I use our school’s fab lab or shapeways. The perfect marriage...

I might belong to the fourth group: I bought a cheap and broken printer and started it from scratch, so I didn’t need to adjust it. I just sent a printout and it printed out :) Strange laser cut and printed with two filaments very well.

The problem is that 3D printing is a multidisciplinary subject: programming (firmware and mastering gcode), 3D design, electronics, thermal design, chemistry, mechanics, materials knowledge, if you are not proficient, the learning curve is very steep two or three areas .

The most important thing is willingness to learn and crack, and enough patience. You will learn a lot, know exactly how it works, and how to fix it when something goes wrong. This is not what you get with a pre-made high-quality 3D printer.

I am very satisfied with my Prusa i3 and used it to print many useful things: belts for repairing disk drives and cassette tape players, floppy disk cleaning kits, brackets for various items, scanner film brackets, and For craft rollers, stamps, laser cut foam, so I can store things in a box with custom-made foam holders, etc. Of course there is also the improvement of the printer itself:) The shell used for a series of electronic projects, such as delay timer, frequency meter, flashlight, etc. The bracket of dremel tool, the mounting clip of the tripod, it is clamped on the monocular and pinhole things, suitable for SLR cameras, etc.

Yes, I also have a cheap $300 printer. I don't really need to do mutch, although I replaced the extruder gear with a real extruder gear, and buying good files is really everything I do, and it works without any screws. One thing I recently discovered is that when your printing is 90% complete, the dust on your documents or your goan had a bad time due to the clogging of the extruder.

https://www.3dprintersonlinestore.com/full-acrylic-reprap-prusa-i3-kit

I see the pattern in the layer. As others have mentioned, the quality that one considers acceptable, the other may not. Most enthusiasts may find that your prints are okay. Others will find that the extra unpredictable texture is unacceptable.

I'm in camp 3 (somewhat). I bought a Mendel90 kit, assembled it, and spent about 10-15 hours to understand the workflow, set up Slic3r and read some additional information on bed adhesion etc. on the rerap forum. The only adjustment I made was to always make a filament holder that fits the spool used by my local filament supplier and run it from Octoprint instead.

Now it was just sitting on a table in an empty room downstairs. When I want to use it (perhaps once a week), it opens on the wall, I go back to my computer and start to warm up the bed through Octoprint's web interface. When this happened, I opened the .stl in Repetier Host on the main PC, sliced ​​it, saved it as gcode, uploaded it to Octoprint and clicked execute.

The printer can't run full-time, and I have occasional problems that require me to remove the idler from the extruder and clean the pinch roller, but this is the extent of it, beyond the scope of keeping the rod clean and lightly lubricated.

In the past 3 years, 10-20 kg of filament may have passed through it, with almost no problems. A few weeks ago, it completed 31 hours of printing and printed nearly 700 grams of filament.

I think you are satisfied with the route you chose? I plan to start purchasing parts for Mendel90 myself in the near future. I think if I start to accumulate parts, it might motivate me to find a local source for the ACM framework.

I haven't seen any mention of the biggest myth—spending more money than "not the absolute cheapest nonsense you can find" level actually translates to better quality of everything in the printer. Really do not have. This is just avoiding snobs.

this. This is almost the content of this article, with some snobbery standards added, which is almost a real engineering incantation. I hope someone can write a better article, not pretending to be about money, but insisting on real issues.

I got the first version of Printrbot Plus 3 years ago and have been very satisfied ever since. All metal structure, automatic bed leveling. Can be used with Repetier and Slic3R. Unless I forget to select the bracket in the software or my nozzle is clogged with garbage, the printing will not fail the filament I bought from Amazon. The oil/lubrication and nozzle replacement are required every 6 months. Noisy like shit. But it only works. Printed twice a week on average.

I have only good luck with my printrbot game. I got the y-axis upgrade and the heated bed upgrade from the beginning. I think the 4x4x5 print area will be terrible, so expanding it to 4x8x5 allows me to print most of the content I originally planned to print. That is for the shell and various small parts of the project that you want to repair. I even managed to use it to print a high-performance duct fan. It is sold as a beginner model, but it satisfies all my needs well.

Consider a 3rd party laser upgrade so that I can print the circuit board (using the spray paint method) so that this machine can complete every cnc task I need.

The RepRap variant does not have a real product line, but having an all-metal kit does allow people to use a heated build chamber (turkey roasting bag) to make perfect ABS. This is a personal choice, but I found that the parts produced by PLA are too weak for practical use, but it is easier to dissolve than ABS, so it is good for supporting materials.

The filament picture above shows the moisture problem (common mistake). The filament should be heated and dried in a drying box powered by a 60W bulb, or use a desiccant in your storage container.

Nowadays, people can buy complete aluminum and steel clones for around $400 http://www.ebay.com/itm/Full-Aluminum-frame-Prusa-I3-3D-Printer-MK8-Sanguinololu-Unassembled-Metal -Part- /281803274175

The $23 RAMPS 1.4 + Mega kit already has dual extruder support, so for about $120, you can upgrade to a metal "Chimera" dual extruder (PTFE lined extruder will not be as frequent as an all-metal extruder Blockage) and stepper + feeder. Note that because this type of head has a smaller mass, it can be built faster. Most people find it easier to work with 0.4 mm nozzles and 1.75 mm filaments, because plastic parts deform when they cool, so anything thinner doesn't matter. Usually I keep increasing the speed until there is a positioning error (it is important to tighten the belt), and then reduce the speed by 20%.

The commercially available 2mm pitch belts are made of metal belt polyurethane or glass filled rubber. The stretch per meter of the metal tape type is about 6 times less than that of the glass type. However, you still need to use the power supply to adjust the current limit of a specific NEMA 17 motor to maximize the holding torque (approximately 20 different common NEMA 17 motors are used).

The manufacturing quality is better than most i3 type plastic kits, and regular oiling of the screws/bearings (every few hours) will make it last a long time. I chose the rerap prusa style because it must be maintained regularly and most parts can be printed if needed.

Finally, people will find that placing the entire printer on top of a 4-inch foam pad will make it quiet, requiring an outdoor smoke evacuator box, and placing a replacement RAMPS control kit around it is very convenient.

I am disappointed. Spending more money on parts will produce higher quality printers. Yes, this is true. This is true almost everywhere. This is a lazy statement. Where is the BOM of this high-quality printer? I know I can buy a Stratsys for XX, XXX dollars and get a good printer. This is not surprising.

I live in a rural area and not in a first world country. I find a 3D printer to be an amazing tool for applications where I cannot order special plastic small parts or brackets from the EU or the US, or when I am just prototyping. I can order things, but between the months of delivery and the risk of loss in transit and random postal taxes, the ability to design and print on the same day is really worth it. I have an Airwolf3D, and when that company only had one printer style, it still worked like a filament, even though explaining the kit to the customs was hell. I couldn't talk to the customer service staff. The printer was always working, except for a bed leveling error. I hurriedly made the last lap in the wrong direction and used my nozzle to tear off the kapton tape. My fault. I use OpenSCAD, Slic3r and Printrun; they are not perfect, but they are something I can afford. If you can handle printing and acetone glued ABS parts and a large number of various screws, you can make a lot of things work. If ABS and glue cannot cut it, you can print and use the part to make plaster molds for recycled aluminum or zinc. When your supply chain is sometimes longer than the supply chain to the International Space Station, when satellite or high-frequency communications and Cessna sometimes make sense, the problems of 3D printing begin to be overshadowed by the problems it can solve.

I bought the "Monoprice Select i3" for $350 last month, and another $37 for the Micro-swiss all-metal nozzle upgrade. I haven't guessed my purchase yet, it has more than 160 hours of printing time. It prints reliably at a speed of 60 mm/sec and moves at a speed of 80 mm/sec (or higher), and the quality is beyond the acceptable range for most structures and some aesthetic projects. Using 6 bolts and 5 connectors, and leveling the bed, there will be no mistakes in assembly and setting. And the nozzle upgrade is not difficult (actually only ABS printing is "needed", the printer prints PLA exquisitely out of the box) layer adhesion is also very good, resulting in some good strength. I designed and printed a 520mm folding quadcopter. It weighs 1.5 kilograms (AUW) and it flies very well. It is now certain that if everyone and their sons can afford printers above $3,000, we will have them. And they are almost flawless... right? I mean they'd better be at this price... but for now, I will only stick to effective methods, and when it doesn't work, it's cheap to fix. (So ​​far, 160 hours without a problem is quite respectable) And this is not my first attempt at 3D printing. I come from the RepRap world, especially the older Prusa Mendel i2 I built about 3 years ago. Hackaday, I appreciate this article a lot. These are some good things to pay attention to, but you can cause more harm to people who want to enter 3D printing than you can provide in this special situation. A $400 printer will exceed the expectations of beginners and intermediate manufacturers/enthusiasts. It is not an motivating idea to make them so excited that they need to save $3,000 for the printer:/

After I finally (4 years later) admitted that I would not find time to build it, I took the same approach on Monoprice Select i3 as a Christmas gift to myself. Steep learning curve, because I have no previous 3D printing experience, but this includes understanding the slicing options, materials, and the machine itself. I can immediately print using PLA and default values. The bed leveling was terrible, until I made a set of these http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:874155 and really started to pay close attention to the first layer. With the heated bed, the ABS slime in the baby food cans, and the old Mac Mini (CRT) box covering the whole thing, I got a pretty reliable ABS print. The biggest problem with ABS is guessing the final print difference required due to the material/temperature combination used. I am sure that anything I print will not be considered "high-quality" in many circles. I don't want my life to depend on their work, but this printer is a gamble on low entry costs and can get Something real-things available at home (electronic enclosures, robotic parts, stupid things) and understand the processes and tools involved. So far, all I have got are these things. We have used the parts (motor mounting base, limit switch cam, aluminum tube bracket) on the FRC robot, and I have created an adapter to use the old projector lens (I have stuck with it for about 5 years) trying to figure out how Use it on my DSLR camera). I started to understand the limitations of this particular machine, so I can decide whether to avoid, fix or replace them. I only spent about 420 dollars on the printer and a few rolls of materials. The moral of the story: Don’t be caught up in this article and "What do you want from a 3D printer?" are the most important questions. Good quality and low price meet my current needs, and there is some room for improvement in the future.

I think there is a typo "good filament on the right, cheap filament on the left". But the picture shows that the correct print is broken...

Gerrit doesn't have any advantages for anything you enter, everything in the cheapest prusa i3 (plywood frame) PLA, a Chinese nozzle from ebay, and a PLA for $17 from ebay you can do this (click on the name). This is not to deceive physics. We are not building space planes here, but PLA 3d printers. Yes, it takes about 40 hours of adjustment, but it is entirely possible to print and a $2,000 FDM printer with "junk" parts.

This is a good shilling for the overpriced 3D printer market.

Our makerspace finally got a donation of MendelMax, because the gentleman who bought it bought it for printing and not for playing. It took him a long time, but he never got the result he wanted. Then he went to buy someone who sold the assembled 3D printer within driving distance, so he could test it himself.

He now has a working 3D printer, and we also have a 3D printer in our space. This is not what I want. Many strange problems, including problems caused by using two Z motors instead of one motor and one belt.

The results you can accept may not be accepted by others. Therefore, I hardly see how you or anyone can make a general statement that applies to everyone.

Most people who claim that the print quality on their machine is good are wrong. There is a huge difference between good prints and acceptable prints (acceptability is the lower standard that most people have). I bought a few prints from people who claimed that they had high-quality, good prints, and when I arrived, I found that the prints were inaccurate, of low quality, and generally could not be used as mechanical parts without extensive modification.

3D printed parts are good in all situations. When lightweight plastic parts can do the job, you don't need or even heavy aluminum parts. This means that moving parts should be 3D printed or designed with lightweight materials. Anything that does not move or moves very slowly should be designed with a strong and sturdy material (if you know how to 3d print, it can be 100% filled).

Most current 3d printer designs are terrible. The Prusa i3 design has several design flaws that can be easily repaired through better component engineering or larger components. For example, the X axis. When you tighten the X-axis belt, the tension at the x-end is transferred to the z-axis linear guide. Those 8 mm rails are rated to withstand loads in the z-axis direction. Therefore, these rails will bend inward due to the tension on the x-axis. In addition, when the x carriage accelerates or decelerates, the inertia will be transferred to the z axis, causing these rods to vibrate and loop back. The y-axis has a similar problem. It cannot withstand the load applied to it. It is slightly stronger than the x-axis, but the heavier bed eliminates this advantage. The y-axis should be on the 10mm rod and the Z on the 10-12mm rod.

As for the bearings, most applications where we use 0608 or other radial bearings are fine, as precise rotating loads/idlers are not required. If you try to use them for linear guides, you will have a very unpleasant life. If you use aluminum extrusions for your guide rails, you will have a very unpleasant life.

As for the "strange mechanism", you are a bit misleading. Although some designs have very bad mechanical design and alignment issues, some are very good. The printrbot's mechanism for x and y axis is very effective. CoreXY is very efficient. The Ultimaker gantry is very efficient. Each has its own design challenges, but if designed properly, it can be very beneficial.

There are some problems with the belt that comes with Ultimaker, and the price of $3,400 is a bit expensive. If the price is too high, people can consider the "UltiFaker 2" design clone. Again, for those who use PLA to make conceptual models, this is great, but the low-cost Delta style build volume is usually better.

Please post a photo of your prusa i3 problem, because if two metal 6mm or 10mm z-axis rods are bent under an X-axis load, the x-axis linear guide may not be properly secured to your device.

The Prusa i3 is designed to use an 8mm rod on the z-axis, and any tension on the x-axis belt will cause the z-rod to bend inward. Any movement on the X axis is a load that moves perpendicular to the z axis. The 8mm rod is not used to handle that load or mass. Those 8 mm rods are designed to handle loads along the shaft. Please keep in mind that we are trying an accuracy of <0.5 mm, which is usually around 0.1 mm. Even the slightest deflection can damage the print.

Well, I heard that some linear slides sold are not case-hardened steel, but bearings usually cut softer steel surfaces quickly. In general, we see surface ridges smaller than 0.25 mm because this is the layer height for smaller parts. Unless my vernier caliper made in Germany is wrong, the width of the object from the top to the bottom of the calibration cube is <0.1mm. https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:24238

If there is a runout error, it is consistent and has become an inherent property of the calibration in the firmware settings. If there is a problem, we just assume it is a seat belt, and then it disappears when it is tightened. Out of curiosity, I checked the beating with a dial indicator, but failed to get any important information on the machine. This may be a problem that some suppliers’ shaft straightness is not “optical” quality.

I am really curious why ultimaker, corexy and printrbot are considered good designs. I find that ultimaker designs often have tilt problems because all moving parts are connected to each other through a complex belt system. I have never used printrbot, but it looks like it will shake off the table from the x-axis momentum. The y-axis bearing appears to be too close and unstable. I'm not an engineer, so I really want to learn

I have an Ultimaker+. I don't know why they don't come with belt tighteners, but I bought mine early, and many of the upgrades I found and applied from Thingiverse became part of the official Ultimaker+. The belt is a bit loose, I installed a tensioner, and the belt is okay again. The guide rails should be treated like a lathe-clean and re-oil them regularly. Otherwise, dust may accumulate on them and turn into sticky sludge, which will mess up your prints. I use light sewing machine oil and it works well.

The print head problem I encountered has been resolved in the new print head design. There is a radiator just above the hot end, such as E3D V6.

A friend of mine has a PrintrBot, and I have the same idea, but it can print beautiful photos.

"This is the official Prusa i3 kit documentation from Prusa Research." was broken. Does this still work?

I almost agree with most of the content in the article. So far, my filament is very lucky. I think mainly cheap Chinese filaments are resold by my filament supplier at a margin. However, it does not matter, because if the filament is broken, there will always be people complaining. I have never actually obtained 3D printed parts for the printer itself. 3D printed parts have an advantage: if the printer they come from is properly calibrated, they can be very accurate. However, they are not suitable for weight bearing. PLA is rigid, but it will deform when exposed to a little heat, and will easily crack when exposed to force. I found it almost completely useless for anything non-decorative. My preferred material is ABS. It is cheap, but quite suitable for light loads. However, it will creep over time under constant load, and it is somewhat flexible. ABS is a type of polymer, so depending on the ratio of acrylonitrile, butadiene and styrene in the concrete mixture, it may be more flexible and so on. Warpage is a problem, but a heated bed can help. Nylon is a good material, but it is not interesting to print. It absorbs moisture very well, which can cause many problems. You must also walk very slowly.

Some things to add to the suggested list: For "traditional" reprap-style printers (y moves the build plate, z moves the x axis, x moves the print head), the x axis has a fast moving and fairly heavy print head. This requires a very good z structure, which can withstand the force of moving the print head without too much deformation. Otherwise, everything will become shaky. For faster moving speeds, these forces can be very high, so even aluminum extrusions are about the same. (As an approximation, you can think of the deformation of a rod as the length of the z-axis fixed at one end; the other end is affected by a force, which is calculated by multiplying the weight of the print head by the acceleration or deceleration of the print head ). As the rigidity increases, the printing effect will definitely be better.

In addition, I like my heated printing bed very much. If you are qualified and capable, I highly recommend that you buy a high-power heating bed. However, this will not be a low voltage, so you must deal with the power supply voltage and know how to perform this operation safely. My heating bed has 400W of power and is switched by a nice solid state relay with a snubber circuit. I run it very hot, but it is usually hot enough to start printing after the nozzles are also warmed up, which takes about a minute or two. I have always wanted to install my printer, but the additions needed to increase the rigidity make the envelope quite unsuitable as a case.

Most of the judgments in this article look more like personal opinions, without any testing, data or demonstration support.

Bingo, articles like this make me responsible for my media consumption. Turn on ad blocking when they publish spam posts, and may turn them off for a while while writing legitimate articles.

I leave it in'I am not a commodity for sale'.

The reality is similar to what the author wrote here, but it's actually worse. The 3D printer is a scam. Low-quality fake merchants steal open source ideas and then sell products that they have almost no design experience and hardly work.

The first attempt of a 3D printer was Soliddoodle on Kickstarter. I couldn't make it work well at all, and finally gave it to my son to play. My printer is Deltaprintr, which is also a Kickstarter version. It has brought me a lot of fun and solved many initial problems at the same time! Without a heating bed, it cannot handle ABS well, so I standardized PolyMax PLA, and its effect is much better than ordinary PLA. I agree that a good filament is worth buying! Look at PolyMax. Deltaprintr is not perfect, but a lot of work has been done, and most of it can be used. I found the Deltaprintr forum to be very helpful, but like all the printers I have used, it lacks good documentation. The best prints I have ever made are several violins designed by hovalin.com, they have aroused the interest of many people. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1243462 You can see that the print quality is not perfect, but it is not bad. A friend of mine bought the Kossel Mini kit from Ebay for less than AU$370 and assembled it. He had a lot of fun, which was not bad because he didn't have a real technical mind in that field. I think the cheep delta printer is a good start and can be a good introduction to the world of 3D printing. Like anything, you can get better, but price alone does not represent quality. A local store sells the same kit for $649 (original price $699). Reading this article may discourage some people, which is a shame. Yes, it would be great to have a "real" 3D printer, but it is impossible for most people, so the reality is that there is a market for low-end machines. Like appliances or tools, you can get better, but not many people can justify spending a lot of money on a good machine. Don't be put off by this article, but if you can afford a cheap 3D printer, then go for it. Use it as a learning tool, and if you find that your interest continues, you may upgrade in the future.

I have no idea. Maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t let people buy ready-made 3D printers...

I compare it to the first time the computer really took off, your choice was Gateway2000 or a bunch of component boxes. You can take out your credit card, wait 3 to 6 weeks, some big boxes with bull spots will appear at your door, or take a day to drive to the nearest real computer store, clean the kitchen table, and start Do.

Maybe this is my elitist, but in my last job, one person was considered a resident "computer geek" because he bought liquid-cooled Alienware for $4,500, and I can think of it Just "pay $2500 less."

I think this might be the reason why I don’t have a 3d printer...it will take some time to research and determine Mendel90, and then list local resources to try to reduce costs, so that I can spend more money on important parts ( Electronics and hot ends). After giving up the metric pole and resigning from McMaster, I still need to find the local source of the ACM table...

Since the makerbot cupcake cnc wooden box was delivered to my door, I have had some interesting adventures on the 3D printer. Some of the most interesting engineering failures I have seen so far are (for some unknown reason) the extruder on the popular UP Mini and the printing bed design on the Multirap Multec M420. The extruder motor on the UP Mini is almost in direct contact with the nozzle heater, so a few minutes after printing, the soft filament begins to wrap around the poorly designed drive gear. If you manage to avoid the bullet, please be prepared Used for partial demagnetization due to overheating of the motor. On Multec machines, they are doing a good job of using aluminum profiles, laser-cut steel and aluminum parts, suitable nuts and bolts, high-quality motors, and even solid linear guide bearings for all 3-axis, acme rods for the z-axis, and appropriate couplings. Very good. So there is nothing to complain about, except for the xy-axis stacking which may not be ideal. But the print bed is a 3 mm aluminum plate with a size of 200x400 mm, and there is no structural support except for 4 fixing screws. That thing bends like a flag in the wind, making consistent drawing of the first layer basically impossible...Why? They could not tell me that adding a few extrusions and sending out a stronger bed would lower the price of that printer.

Sometimes I hope that I have a steady stream of "Mechanical Engineering 101" books sent to everyone involved in the design of these machines, and/or a way to add warning signs to every picture, list, or advertisement of these printers. As the media promotes the "revolution" and unconcerned retailers, I feel very sad for all those who don't know they actually buy (expensive) tickets to enter Frustrationland...

No one would comment on the fact that he referred to the hot end as an "extruder"?

great! 3D printing pedagogy is here! !

In fact, I think it’s strange that everyone refers to the mechanism that supplies filaments as "extruders." It is not squeezing anything, the hot end is squeezing. In any case, according to a definition of extrusion.

"Shape (something) by forcing it through a hole"

"That's why a decent printer costs $600-2000." So these reraps are not "decent"?

What's wrong, everything is going well here, of course everyone is sharing data, which is actually very good, keep writing.

My Printrbot Simple Metal has been used for 18 months and it is a very good experience. I built the kit and coupled with Cura's excellent software, it worked well. It's not perfect, but it's not a $2,000 printer. The few failures I encountered boiled down to cheap filaments. Even so, a little adjustment seemed to get me there. Happy camper.

About 2 years ago, I bought a prusa I3 kit. I bought this kit because I like to build small complicated things (it's a curse). Although I was very meticulous and didn't spend more than the time I absolutely allowed before feeling frustrated, the printer was far from perfect. I know where some problems are, but in fact, it is a good practice to break it down and rebuild it, and know how to do something, I am not sure if I can solve it perfectly, or, heaven forbids, no Including other issues. In addition to building, it took me 2 months, yes 2 months, to get it to print more decently.

Am i unhappy? Of course not, this is why I bought a printer. For me, it was an interesting experience. I think I know more about these things. Is it suitable for everyone? I doubt it very much.

This article is true in many respects, and in some respects it just doesn’t tell you how much you want to fight and swear. But once you arrange that thing as much as possible, she prints her first good print, just like the day your first child came to this world. Once the settings are reliable and you know what to expect from the equipment, I would say that the biggest factor for me is the quality of the filament. For me, the change in quality is much worse than any other problem I have encountered. Cheap things are cheap for a reason-believe it, when you have to continue to pull the extruder and clean it, it will ruin your day.

So the things I learned are: 1. Be patient-treat it as an adventure and enjoy the journey. 2. Don't overemphasize the printer-let it run slower, it will provide better printing results. I know the speed is good, but it will affect your printing. 3. If you think your base layer is slow enough, make it slower. It is indeed the basis of your printed matter. Make sure it is correct. 4. Don't buy colored filaments. Regardless of the manufacturer, the transparent filament bonding layer is better, has a longer survival time and higher strength.

Thank you for your good article.

I could have used this article before buying acrylic Prusa with low-quality filaments in the Chinese market. I have used it several times, and now it’s all blocked and doesn’t work (God, the connectors of the motor are not even good, they keep falling off the control board, imagine when one of the motor cables is used for the Z axis in printing Decline in the process).

This is nonsense, I have a $300 3D printer, and it works fascinatingly. This is pure FUD...

After reading this article and most of the comments, one thing is clear-in all cases, it must be clear why you should buy a 3D printer.

If you buy a printer to understand 3D printing-how it works and what it can achieve, then a printer under $600 will be perfect. You care about the path, and the end result will be achieved.

If you buy a printer to achieve a certain _results_ quality and want it to "work normally", then you must ensure that your budget and machine quality requirements are appropriate. For you, the path is the path you must travel to reach your destination. That is, if you want to go to Hawaii, you really don't care what airline or plane gets you there.

The important thing is to balance your expectations and budget. To get a $5,000 printer result from a $500 printer, you may need to invest $4,500 in sweat assets and replacement parts.

** Yes... I also have higher expectations for this article. I look forward to a more detailed analysis of the various advantages and disadvantages of various printer types, and what new users should pay attention to or consider.

I bought a Cobblebot printer and, frankly, it was my worst purchase in 50 years. It took more than 1.5 years for the printer to get, and then the parts were lost and they were sent out after 3 months. Can't wait that long, so I bought the (wheels) myself at an additional cost of $80. The manual, although written by an English-speaking person, is absolutely terrifying. I had to keep assembling and then reassembling because the instructions were too unclear. After 2 weeks of night work and a few 1/2 weekends, it is still in progress. Bad design. Very amateur. Don't buy this kind of garbage.

Hi, I like the Buildabot 3d printer. It is durable and reliable. I also have an Ultimaker 2 (V is good, expensive) and a Makerbot 2x (completely rubbish-send it back-never work) Orca 0.41 from Mendelparts (V is good) I also made a rerap Isaac (CNC cut version) -Not very good), but a good learning tool) HP size color-reliable, but high running cost, and finally Objet 30 resin printer-running cost is very high, and easy to block. Great print. I would say that the print quality of my Buildabot and Ultimaker is as good as my HP size.

I recently reassembled my old Orcabot, a few years after it was disassembled and flat-packed. I really need some help with firmware updates or anything else, because I can't find any online information anymore-mendel-parts is offline.

I really appreciate any thoughts about this awesome printer (including if you have your own firmware, I can patch it on my device)

Good article, I have made similar conclusions before buying; once I realize that the hot end is the budget and limit the mm3/sec in slic3r, my Fisher delta kit can work normally, so the extruder driver will not skip . Self-leveling is a very good function. It makes excellent drill bits for home and some working shape prototypes.

Thanks also to the slic3r developers, without you, I would never take a risk.

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