Currently I have a Printrbot metal plus and a broken Prusa i3
At work, I maintain and operate an Ultimaker 2 and at school I maintain and operate an Ultimaker 2 and a Makerbot Replicator 2. Both Ultimakers have the Olsson block upgrade. At home I'm currently building a self-sourced Prusa i3 Steel with an E3Dv6 hot end
Cheers
Prusa i3 mk2
I have a hot glue gun and a steady hand. :P
9 Likes
That's cool I think you learn so much more if you build your own 3D printer. I want to build a 3D printer out of extruded aluminium.
Something like this one
Have you seen the new ultimakers?
Yeah I totally agree that building one learns you alot, at least it taught me a fair bit. Also, maintenance is a good teacher, seeing how other people screw up a machine and then fixing it helped me not to be the person that screws it all up.
I have had a look at that printer before and it looks really good, I like the idea behind CoreXY and if it's implemented correctly it is very powerful. Another printer I really like is the Hypercube by YouTuber Tech2C, who has had a build log of his whole process of designing, building and upgrading the printer. Very interesting!
And yes, I have seen the new Ultimakers, I was even played a small part in their website going down due to high traffic (everybody refreshed at 5:30pm :P). They're beautiful machines for professional users, but getting too far away from the complete open-source Ultimaker of yesteryear. I'm leaning way more to an official Prusa i3 Mk3, those are amazing!
Cheers
I don't know of anyone that has a 3D printer and hasn't made a mistake or had an issue. It's part of the fun. I tell people that 3D printing is a whole art on its own not everyone gets that. No one has made a 3D printer as reliable or easy as a 2D printer yet.
Thanks I'll check out his videos.
I too played a part in the website going down.
Coolest 3D printer I've seen is the Simpson
Ah yes, the Simpson printers, really cool but not really practical or reliable as far as I remember, but mad props to the guy who came up with the concept, that takes a lot of design work and programming to get working in the slightest :O
One of the guys at the maker space I go to got the arms working. It's amazing how well the design works. Most of it is even 3D printed.
Are you going to go for a duel extruder setup?
Is it actually that good? I'm interested to hear how reliable it is!
No I'm not going for dual extrusion just yet, my initial purpose was to have a P3Steel frame with most of the Prusa i3 Mk2 parts I could, get, so I have the extruder and X-carriage from the original Mk2 design. The rest is specific to the frame and could not be used, so for that I'm using the Toolson parts I found on Thingiverse. I'm not looking into multiple-extrusion at the moment because I'm first interested to see how well flexible material extrusion works with the single direct-drive extruder.
Cheers
Don't own it yet as it's on back order but Prusa i3 mk2 it looked like a good baby's first 3d printer.
I believe one thing you have to make sure on the Simpson printers is the thread you're using doesn't stretch or break. That and the arms can slip if there isn't enough tension and friction.
Probably a good idea duel extruders are a bit of hassle
Ninjaflex is great but it prints a little slow. Have you thought about using a silicon 240v/120v heated bed?
From the reviews I've seen you wont be disappointed :)
I've been interested in the resin based printers. Not had the time or funds to pursue one though. There was one that used a projector that looked really interesting.
1 Like
Yeah that was the biggest issue with the design iirc, it has to be just right for the arms to work correctly. And then to tune them all to the same tension sounds horrible :(
I'm currently testing FilaFlex on the Makerbot which is a bit tougher than NinjaFlex and prints without any issues if we just keep all the speeds the same (extrusion and travel are both 15mm/s) and retraction is turned off. I will upgrade to a 220V silicone heater when I have the funds and the time to upgrade, they sound like a solid investment, although the Prusa Mk42 heatbed is insanely awesome as well, but too big for a P3S frame :(
Cheers
I'd like one of those too. The ones that use a projector are called DLP 3D printers I believe. I haven't tried any resin printers either. Perhaps in the future when they come down in price.
I really like the Prusa MK2's way of auto bed levelling. It's a shame it wont fit but if you have a solid frame and its not moved much that wont really be missed.
Have you have a look on Aliexpress.com they have tones of cheap components and what not on there. You might find a cheap silicone heated bed
I'm off to bed now so I doubt I'll reply until morning
Cheers
1 Like
Printrbot Simple Metal
Although I kinda want to try out something like the M3D because it's so small.
Last year I experimented with a few different 3D prints. Shapeways is pretty good for sending things out. I tried a Kossel FDM priner and was not satisfied with the quality. I thought it was a toy.
At work I have used stereo lithography resin prints and I did a project that was too detailed to be printed any other way. I really want a Form 1+ SLA printer but I can't possibly afford it. It costs ten times as much but it is legitimately ten times better.
3D print of a 3D printer done on the FormLabs Form 1+
1 Like