Any 3D printers on here?

[gillbot]

With all the hype about them, I’ve always just avoided it but have been curious. Thought about picking one up for messing with but my hesitation turns to terror as I research, what sayeth CR? Are they that complex?

[Furloaf]

They're sort of as complex as you want to dive into. There are some inexpensive ones that will work great out of the box. There are others that are inexpensive and with some tuning and modification will work even more amazing. Of course there are expensive and work amazing options as well.

[ShowHBK]

You can make a bunch of cool stuff for part mock ups or tiny little models. I have a Markerbot Replicator+ https://www.makerbot.com/3d-printers/replicator/

 

I use mine to print Warhammer 40K Armies to do test prints, or small car parts to test fit things and stuff. They can be VERY expensive and the print times can sometimes take hours, AND if you are fearful like I am, you can wake up and find a fucked up print that was scheduled to take hours. It's extremely frustrating to restart a print.

 

I love 3D printing, MicroCenter has a great selection at a reasonable price. Realistically, you could get into it for <$350 with a "good" printer. They make cheaper ones, but honestly... you get what you pay for IMO.

[gillbot]

I guess that’s kinda where I go into overload. Being a total n00b about it, I expect to plug it in like a fancy HP and hit print. But after reading and listening to “advice” I’m afraid of buying a shitty Lexmark and it never working. Reading reviews just gets me overwhelmed and there’s so much out there one doesn’t really know where to start. I don’t need or want fancy, I just want it to work without mostly wasting my money. I want to start with small stuff like this mainly.

 

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4222678

 

Shit if anyone here can print, I’d buy it for a reasonable price. I just thought it would be cool to have the ability.

[Richard Cranium]

My first printer I bought 3 years ago maybe. It was a Startt printer. They advertise it as your first 3D printer, not your last. It's $100, and it's pretty bare bones. But it gave me a really good start in 3D printing. Printing space was about a 4" cube. When I was done with it I sold it for $100.

 

I then picked up an Anet A8. It's basically the same printer except has a heated print bed, and the work area is about an 8" cube. This has been a really good size, and I haven't found much I cannot print on this printer. I bought it about 2 years ago for about $200. I have probably dumped at least another $200 into it and it looks nothing like it did when I first built it. I've swapped many of the pieces out for upgraded ones and added many more too.

 

I've been really tempted to scale that design up to a 12"x12" bed and just build the next one from scratch. A friend of mine that turned me onto the mods I made on this one bought an Ender 3 and he absolutely loves it.

 

It will take some patience and practice to get it dialed in and printing well. There is a distinct learning curve. Once you get a good part though you get the bug and want to make it better, faster, cleaner, etc...

[gillbot]

Seems interesting.

https://www.southernfriedscience.com/at-last-a-200-3d-printer-that-i-might-actually-hold-up-to-a-field-season-the-creality-ender-3-review/

 

I see there is a 3 and a 3 pro.

[Richard Cranium]

Seems interesting.

https://www.southernfriedscience.com/at-last-a-200-3d-printer-that-i-might-actually-hold-up-to-a-field-season-the-creality-ender-3-review/

 

I see there is a 3 and a 3 pro.

 

I really like the v groove aluminum extrusion and roller wheel design. My CNC router is built on that concept. The Anet A8 was a decent way to get into printing, but I'm basically modded it as far as it can go (I have one more mod in the works). I was thinking about getting an Ender 3 for home and taking the A8 to school to use there. Depending on the price I would step up to the 8"x8" work surface. There hasn't been much I couldn't print on that, but the 6"x6" will be a little tight some some things. I am considering going up to the Ender 5 and get 12"x12"

 

I did find early on that decent consistent filament made a pretty healthy difference. Right now I really like the Hatchbox PLA filament and the Monoprice PLA+ filament.

 

There are a lot of cool designs out there to print. I have printed more stuff from Thingiverse than I can count, but I'm starting to look into some of the paid designs as well. This is one that really caught my imagination. https://www.eclipson-airplanes.com/home

The design for the flying wing autonomous drone really has me thinking hard about it. The coolest thing I have printed so far is the Caliburn Nerf gun. You can find it on Thingiverse.

[unfunnyryan]

I have an Ender 3. It isn't complex, just finnicky. Once you figure out how to level it out its pretty good, then you just gotta know what kind of precheck stuff to look for before a print.

[nurkvinny]

I think I just found my new hobby.

[Drewhop]

3d Printing highly detailed dick butt figurines and planting them on friends and family will never get old. Thank you Thingiverse.

I have a CR-10 mini and have printed in the neighborhood of 1k plus pieces. If you wanna make it a much easier hobby. Purchase Simplify 3d for slicing. Its 150 dollars for license but its lifetime license. You get all updates. https://www.simplify3d.com/

Cura is fantastic for free and if you have an understanding of how the slicing process works Cura will do everything you need. https://ultimaker.com/software/ultimaker-cura for Cura software.

 

Random printing info.....

Power flickers can go to hell.

OctoPrint is cool

Learning to level your bed properly. There are a bunch of printers that have auto bed leveling now, but knowing how to level a bed manually is priceless information.

Glass and aquanet hair spray are the greatest 3d printing supplies.

[Geeto67]

So I started from scratch. I have no programming experience and am not an IT person. I have always been facinated by them however and I even visited Makerbot twice when I lived down the street from them in Brooklyn.

 

About 2 years ago I saw an ad on gearbest for the Anet A8 Kit for $139. I knew from reading make magazine that the anet was a cheap DIY printer with a huge following, a lot of upgrades, and a helpful community. I bought it and an upgrade kit on etsy that included all the basic bearing, frame, and belt upgrades and assembled it.

 

I started out printing free things on thingiverse, and dialing in my printer. About 50% of my time playing with it was either upgrading or dialing in the settings. For the purpose of teaching someone how 3d printers work mechanically and what settings make a difference it was the perfect teaching tool. The community for it was very helpful. I spent about a year and a half doing this and the little Anet worked well for my needs. Still about 1/3rd of my prints were failing and it was a lot of setup work to get things to print.

 

For my birthday my wife splurged and bought me a Creality CR-10S at Microcenter for $399 on sale. I wanted the bigger print bed to do motorcycle parts and RC airplanes (yes whole airframes). My print issues dropped to almost nil, in 30 prints I have only had 1 fail and it was because I hadn't calibrated the e-steps before doing a tall print.

 

not content to just print other people's stuff off thingiverse, I signed up for a free tinkercad account and began to make my own stuff. It isn't elegant but I managed to make a few parts for my VW powered motorcycle including a really cool aircleaner with the vw logo.

 

What I have learned is this:

- The learning curve is not steep provided you find the right machine. Having a community to back you up is way better than having a slick machine. Even with my tempermental A8, I was still able to make things happen for me and learn a ton.

 

- your 1st year you will spend more time printing useless crap, upgrades, and diagnostic prints than you will printing useful stuff. It's part of the process. 3d printers are enviornmentally sensitive and just figuring out what works for your house/garage/basement is a process.

 

- Don't underestimate the cost of electricity. I ran mine almost daily in march and that big CR10S added $30 to my power bill alone.

 

- set milestones and stick to your goals. I found that being rudderless didn't inspire me to work on the thing, but if I had something to focus on, like printing the perfect benchy, it made it easier to want to troubleshoot and adjust.

 

- go talk to the Alexes (2 of them) at microcenter. I brought them all my earlier prints for both the anet and the CR10 and they helped me work through the issues. They will also give you a hands on walkthrough of any machine, which helped me decide on a 10S (which is also one of the most reliable machines they sell).

 

hope this helps.

[gillbot]

Good info here. I’m still deciding if I want to take the plunge or just buy the parts I want here or there and be done with it. I was thinking if I had it on hand I’d print more, but at the cost I’m not sure I’d utilize it well. I am very tempted by the ended 3-pro just because.

[Drewhop]

- Words

 

 

I know a guy wanting to sell an e3d upgraded hot end cr10s in case you needed a second.

[Geeto67]

don't approach it from a cost perspective - unless you are willing to rent your printer out to people who want to print but don't have the skill/printer, you'll never "Save" money.

 

Think of it as an investment in a skill set. I thought I was going to get into this to make little toys and stuff to help my hobbies, and it turned into learning prototyping and drafting. I went from printing little tugboats to making stuff I can actually use and I am now looking into how to do lost PLA casting. Honestly I have learned so much more than I thought I would I can't put a cost on it. I have alsonow fallen down the laser and cnc conversion rabbit holes so there is that too.

 

Creality Ender 3 Pro is a fantastic printer. If I had a need for a 3rd printer I would pick one up at the $249 sale price they have now at microcenter. When in doubt buy from microcenter if you can. I got lucky buying from gearbest, but I found out some of the chinese kit printers (like the anet) are made by multiple mfgs with varying quality and it's easy buing from some of the chinese retailers to get a shitty one and have no recourse.

[Drewhop]

don't approach it from a cost perspective - unless you are willing to rent your printer out to people who want to print but don't have the skill/printer, you'll never "Save" money.

 

Think of it as an investment in a skill set. I thought I was going to get into this to make little toys and stuff to help my hobbies, and it turned into learning prototyping and drafting. I went from printing little tugboats to making stuff I can actually use and I am now looking into how to do lost PLA casting. Honestly I have learned so much more than I thought I would I can't put a cost on it. I have alsonow fallen down the laser and cnc conversion rabbit holes so there is that too.

 

Creality Ender 3 Pro is a fantastic printer. If I had a need for a 3rd printer I would pick one up at the $249 sale price they have now at microcenter. When in doubt buy from microcenter if you can. I got lucky buying from gearbest, but I found out some of the chinese kit printers (like the anet) are made by multiple mfgs with varying quality and it's easy buing from some of the chinese retailers to get a shitty one and have no recourse.

 

 

If you wanna expand a bit more. https://www.onshape.com/ has some fantastic functions as well. Works great for designing gear systems. Drawback the user agreement basically takes whatever idea you build in there and is allowed to produce it themselves.

[gillbot]

I already do CAD as that was my minor in college, I’ve done CAD/CAM also for work. It’s not all about the $ for me, more like a choice if the investment is worthwhile to me at this point. There are tons of things I could make if I had one, it just comes down to being worth it for me. Do I need to make what I want vs. paying someone to make what I need. Too often I get sidelined into a hobby and spend too much unnecessary money on something that inevitably sits rarely used. It eventually becomes useless and costly to bring back to life. I’m also fearful of work expecting me to use it for parts as we outsource a lot of stuff now. Seems good in theory to get work paying for it but not sure I want that responsibility on my plate, I’ve seen a lot of finger pointing at the group we have printing stuff now.

[Richard Cranium]

It's most definitely not a cost saving move. Unless you're going to set up a shop with a bunch of printers and some kind of contract to print things in mass this is just a hobby. Most everything I have printed was not something I needed. I do it as a hobby. My printer hasn't been touched in a couple of months. It's still out on the desk. At some point something will happen and I'll get the bug to start tinkering with it again. If I don't have a goal I don't have motivation. Since I finished my Caliburn nerf gun I haven't really done anything. I justify the hobby with the value of learning new things. I doubt I would have gone down the CNC router rabbit hole, or learned the basics of Fusion 360 without starting in 3D printing. For a friend of mine, his hobby is carpentry. For him 3D printing was a side hobby the allowed him to print all the fittings for dust collection, and even some of his own tools. I'm less focused. My hobbies take more of an ADD approach.

[RC K9]

This discussion seems like an appropriate place to ask...can anyone on here with a 3d printer make essentially a thick-walled plastic straw/liner with approximately a 13/64's I.D.?

[Richard Cranium]

This discussion seems like an appropriate place to ask...can anyone on here with a 3d printer make essentially a thick-walled plastic straw/liner with approximately a 13/64's I.D.?

 

Maybe. I just got my printer up and running again. Let me know more about the specifics you're looking for and I'll see what I can do.

[Richard Cranium]

I have a box of failed prints and excess PLA. Does anyone have a good option for recycling this stuff? The right place could simply melt this stuff down and re-extrude it into filament as far as I know.

[gillbot]

I have a box of failed prints and excess PLA. Does anyone have a good option for recycling this stuff? The right place could simply melt this stuff down and re-extrude it into filament as far as I know.

 

Next hobby?! :gabe:

[mmrmnhrm]

Corollary question for you folks who already have one... where do you find patterns for stuff people have already made, particularly when it comes to old hand-me-down toys that have missing pieces? Good example would be this little thing my wife was given for our daughter, but never got played with because all the blocks were missing save one

[Geeto67]

https://www.thingiverse.com/

 

it's the biggest free repository. Other places charge for models. Some forums will have user made models. However, for a specific application, if I can't find a part i make it in tinkercad.

[Richard Cranium]

Next hobby?! :gabe:

 

That's more accurate than you think. Seems every year or two I pick up something new. 3D printing will be with me for quite a while though. Since then I have built and am finishing up a CNC Wood Router which was the next phase of this hobby. Right now I'm getting ready to buy a progressive reloading press for 9mm ammo. Before this it was carpentry. Before that it was home brewing beer and wine. I'm still trying to find time to get back to the racetrack too.

 

On a side note I have a story I've been needing to tell someone (anyone). I have the ANET A8 and it's HEAVILY modded. There is almost nothing left of the original printer. If it's original it's at least modified if not replaced. My last upgrade was an E3Dv6 hotend and converted to a bowden feeder. I was struggling to get it to print right. Prints were lifting off the glass bed, first layer issues galore, nothing was working right. I got fed up and turned it off and walked away. Fast forward a couple months to last night. I needed a part and had the STL to print it. In the meantime I had done a full PC upgrade including new Hard drive and I wiped out my old OS for a clean install (way over due for that). I had not installed Cura yet, so I downloaded the latest version last night and got it running. Plugged the printer back in and Octoprint fired right back up ready to go. I could not find my previous settings for Cura, so decided to start from scratch. Since the printer is basically a Prusa I3 knockoff, I started with the base configuration for that printer. I had to fix a broken filament, but then it fired up and printed ..... perfectly. The first time! The settings are not completely different than before, but it's printing amazing right now. In the last 14 hours it's probably been busy printing 8 of them. I had one failure earlier today of a part that broke free of the bed (This is a tough print anyhow), but I'm amazed at how quickly I was able to get it back running with stock settings.

[smokin5s]

I've had one for years, it's pretty simple once you get it setup and surprisingly affordable (look up an ANET A8) Most things I've wanted to print, thingiverse.com has it. If you are designing your own thing, that can get trickier. My biggest complaint honestly is that it takes up so much table top space.