Inexpensive 3D Printer?

[NoPulp]

Has anyone purchased an inexpensive 3D printer to play around with at home?

It seems the market is growing very quickly and there are now printers that a person could afford to buy one just to play around with. Would be cool to design something at work with Solidworks and print it at home that night.

[jacky4566]

No comment on home machines but I have ordered from Shapeways. Its probably better just to do the mail order thing to since the quality will be much better than any home machine and you dont need to store a huge box anywhere.

[samo147]

Define inexpensive. You can get a reprap for 500$ but it will take many hours to build and calibrate to get decent prints. You can get a dremel 3d printer from canadian tire for about 1200$ and start printing right away.

[NoPulp]

Originally posted by jacky4566
No comment on home machines but I have ordered from Shapeways. Its probably better just to do the mail order thing to since the quality will be much better than any home machine and you dont need to store a huge box anywhere.

That takes all the fun out of it and I imagine slow development of parts.

Originally posted by samo147
Define inexpensive. You can get a reprap for 500$ but it will take many hours to build and calibrate to get decent prints. You can get a dremel 3d printer from canadian tire for about 1200$ and start printing right away.

Probably under $1000. Unless I was using it for business I wouldn't spend a ton of money. I've seen a bunch of 4-800 ones, was wondering if anyone had experience with those. I wouldn't mind setup my own, actually it would be interesting. But it needs to be fairly "stressfree" meaning good instructions/resources for a fairly simple setup.


Can the inexpensive ones print from CAD files nicely. Would be nice to design in solidworks since I have access.

[zieg]

Just about any of them CAN print from CAD files nicely, but the limiting factor on the smaller ones is either the material capabilities, physical print size, tolerances, or all of the above. I've probably got $1000 into mine and can print 10"x10"x10" max size, nozzle diameters from .25mm to 1.5mm, heated bed allows for nice ABS prints, and can print layer heights down to like 100 microns.

The best way to do it IMO is do go with a kit. If you build it yourself you will know how to fix it when it needs repair or adjustment, you save a bunch of money and there's generally more upgrades available.

[NoPulp]

That's a good point about building my own.

Sounds like a nice printer you have. Not sure if I need that large of printing space, was thinking maybe 6"? Though 10" would be nice, I think I could comprise for price/quality. ABS would be nice but ideally that would be an upgrade option down the road to reduce initial cost. If that's possible?

[Nova316]

I have a PrintrBot that I am not using anymore that I will sell for quite cheap
comes with ABS reel and the heating pad

[zieg]

True, I rarely actually use the full 10" build volume, though it can be nice at times. The good news is lots of people have smaller printers and as such most larger parts are designed to be broken down into pieces small enough to print on common machines. Whether or not you could increase that after the fact depends on the chassis and other parts you use, but in general yes it could be done.

As for ABS compatibility, the main hardware differences are the heated bed and ideally a fume hood if it's running in a livable space, both of which are easily added after the fact.

[RX-7_TWINTURBO]

I've been toying with the idea of a printer as well but it almost seems like a membership @ protospace would be a better value as the equipment you get access to is well worth the $50/month if your into prototyping and fabrication

[ercchry]

didnt find shapeway's quality very superior, i've used a couple makerbots in the past. only with ABS though, warping (depending on the shape) was the biggest issue with that but apparently the PLA specific ones are better.

for their software you had to export your files as .stl's and for whatever reason every time i imported a file originating in inventor i would have to scale it by 1000%. tolerances were probably around 0.01". i thought i'd use the unit a bunch, but didn't really find that many uses to make it worthwhile outside of the office

[Unknown303]

Mine is still sitting in a box waiting for me to have time to build it.

[UndrgroundRider]

Originally posted by NoPulp
Has anyone purchased an inexpensive 3D printer to play around with at home?

It seems the market is growing very quickly and there are now printers that a person could afford to buy one just to play around with. Would be cool to design something at work with Solidworks and print it at home that night.

There's so many options right now that you really need to pick what you want in terms of quality, price, and user friendliness. Probably the best bang for buck is the FlashForge (on Amazon). Dual extruder, heated bed, enclosed build chamber, $1200 US. That's a whole lot of features at that price point. If you want something more user friendly the Replicator line of printers by MakerBot are very nice but expensive, and the Ultimaker 2 is essentially the same unit but less polished and at a larger discount. You're really paying for z-layer height as you go up in price, which is also where you pickup most of your print quality. If you really want to get your hands dirty you can't go wrong with a Mendel90 kit. Depending on your design choices you can get one for under $700.

Feel free to send me a PM if you need help assembling or need printed components. I've got a couple printers running at my shop almost 24/7. Know my way around an arduino too :P