Finally about ready to pull the trigger on a 3D printer and the Anet A3 is looking like the one. Checked out a few reviews along with some prints that it had made and it looks to be good enough for a 3d printing pleb like me lol. Its also only $270, so if my dive into 3d printing turns out disastrous, it wont hurt that bad, but also low enough to justify a significant upgrade if I turn out to be some kind of guru. So a few questions:
I mostly plan to print with polycarb and ABS, will I need higher strength/quality print heads?
Are high-accuracy and print times the only major advantages to higher priced printers?
What printers do you guys have? / Are there better options? (for around $300)
I ordered a Anet A8 about 2 weeks ago, it's a DIY kit that can take a while to build, but it's 163 USD here (GearBest) and has an 220*220*240mm area compared to the A3 with a 150mm^3.
If you're fine with DIY (Theres a ton of mods for it on Thingiverse) or need a bigger volume printer, you could consider this. Otherwise the A3 you're looking at now is probably more accurate &or has better print speeds.
(Edit)
I mostly do prints with ABS and I haven't needed a head upgrade, but I haven't worked with polycarbonates before - from what I read it's fine with metal heads.
you will not reach polycarbonate temperatures on a $270 printer, because I'm certain it has a teflon hot end which tops out at 250C before giving off noxious fumes
Well that throws a wrench in the plan, but definitely glad you told me.
I was looking at that one right after I saw the A3 and wondered if there were any other advantages to getting the A3 besides the fact that its pre-assembled. If there isnt any benefit for speed or accuracy then I wouldn't mind getting the A8
Yea, if im not gonna be able to print polycarb then I might as well save the money and get the A8 for practice. ABS really should be strong enough anyway, most of the parts I want to replicate/reverse engineer are made from ABS (I think...), but polycarb is one of the best materials to use for nozzles in airguns.
From the product pages, they both have the same minimum layer height at .1, but the A3 goes up to .4 compared to the A8s .3 (though .4 works fine on it too), and have the same accuracy. I'd take these numbers with a grain of salt, since these are more dependent on the individual unit, I usually run at .15 .
Depending on how far you want to go, you could upgrade the nozzle and or power supply if needed after the fact so you can print polycarbonates. It would probably be cheaper, but I have my doubts on whether or not the controller/some of the wires (some of them are very thin) could handle much more power than what it came with, though people have upgraded their power supplies on the A8 before with desktop PSUs (careful, though).
After checking out more reviews it looks like a lot of people were having to replace the wiring entirely and/or add a mosfet to keep the thing running (saw some that had become HUGE fire hazards). Some reviewers have got their hands on newer models and said the wiring was much better than before so it seems QA fixed the issue there.
As far as upgrades go, could I just get a better extruder down the line for polycarb prints? I've already found one but it costs twice as much as the printer lol.
That extruder will work, assuming the stock PSU that comes with it can reach the needed temps, which seems to be around 260-300 C. That's going to take a lot of power.
If you're going to get that extruder (or a similar one, jeez that's expensive), you should dial it to the temps you'd be printing at first just to see how hot it can get, if it manages to get the bed and the extruder to 90C and 260-300C respectively, that should be good enough for polycarbonates.
Just be prepared to convert over a desktop PSU, or get a better one. I don't think the stock PSU will get that far.