I have never 3d printed anything before. These days I’m working on a small home automation project, and I will require some enclosures. So I thought why not buy a 3d printer ? That way I can also learn about 3d printing when I get some time.
Also please suggest an affordable 3d printer.
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The initial cost of the printer is not going to be your biggest cost. You will also spend $$ on various small tools or even furniture, and more spools of filament than you expect!!
I picked a Prusa Mini because I do not want to tinker with the machine, I want to use it. Solid choice, it just works. Alternatives are definitely cheaper, but quality is often a coin flip.
Then I started using TinkerCad as editor, dead simple and fun to use, and I made many small things that way. It was only when I felt it was limiting me, that I started moving to other tools like Fusion360 and OnShape = much more powerful but also much, much harder to learn.
Thanks, this fits my scenario. I’m interested in getting into 3d printing but have neither the time nor inclination for tinkering. I’d rather spend a little more if I can get right to printing
Another question is whether size matters. If you got one called a “mini”, I guess they make bigger ones. At what point is it big enough for typical uses? Do you regret not getting bigger?
Yes, check out Prusa’s website to see the size difference. Generally, 3d printers look like a" car wash" with a column on each side and a carriage that moves between them. The Prusa Mini only has one column, so it takes up a lot less space on the desk / in the cabinet.
The mini still has a respectable print volume of 18cm (cubed), most printers have 20cm. That can be a drawback because some ready-made models expect the print volume to be 20cm, so such models can’t be printed on the Mini, or would have to be scaled down to fit. I have never had that situation though, so no, I do not regret this size.
More importantly, the Mini is like 500 EUR which is a lot for a small printer, but a regular Prusa is at least 900 EUR so there’s a significant savings involved. Speaking of prices, of course you can get a 100 dollar printer, but that’s not going to be the “Mercedes Benz experience” which the Prusa certainly is.
The second you start to enjoy 3d printing you’ll spend more on filament than the cost of the printer in the first year. This still adds up for a more expensive faster machine, youll just go trough the rolls quicker.
Learn to design in 3d. OnShape.com is a good place to start and free. A 3d printer with nothing to print is a paperweight. Once you can design parts it is an amazing tool.
There’s also thingiverse.com and it’s cousins that give you plenty of things to print while you learn.
Second OnShape. If you’re familiar with fusion 360 or solid works it has a very similar workflow. Also on the cloud so OS agnostic (big plus if you’ve got different OSs on your computers)
Depends on your region, but the cheapest no bullshit printer is probably any prusa. Anything cheaper and you have to be able to take apart the frame, manually square up everything, measure your diagonals, etc. If you get an ender or anything that uses the creality electronics you have to make sure that the wires in the screw terminals are not tinned (solder on the ends) and clip them and either put them in bare or crimp ferrules. It’s a potential fire hazard and at least one person has reported experiencing that potential. Plus you end up tinkering, upgrading and tweaking more than printing which probably wastes any money saved by getting a cheaper printer.
Source: I have two ender 3’s and they don’t look like ender 3s any more.
I started with a cheap, terrible Anet A8 knockoff. It was probably $300. It took a lot of tinkering to get it to print, and a lot of tinkering to get it to finish successfully. But I learned a lot in that time, so I wouldn’t call it a complete waste. But really, don’t buy one of those. They’re cheap for a reason.
My replacement printer is a Prusa MK3, plus an upgrade package, I think it’s an MK3S now. I wasn’t prepared for how easy it was to get this one to work. It’s extremely rare that I get a failed print. I just fired it up again last weekend after about a year of not being used, and all I did was change the nozzle and run a bed-level check. Boom, perfect print.
For FDM, learning how to level your bed and set the z offset properly will save a lot of headache early on.
I just bought an Elegoo Neptune 4 Pro, and its semi-automatic bed leveling is great. I’d say getting anything with automatic or semi-automatic bed leveling would be a huge time saver.
Do you have a microcenter near you? If so, go buy a creality ender 3 pro for $150. Then watch many hours of videos of upgrading it. Spend maybe $50 on parts to make it better. Print some accessories for it. It’s a lot of fun. A lot of work, but, a lot of fun. You’ll spend many hours figuring it all out.
On the opposite end you can just order a pre-built printer from prusa, plug it in and start printing. Much more expensive but that thing will just work all the time.
From what I’ve heard Microcenter frequently has a deal for “new customers” where you can get an Ender 3 Pro for $99. Though it’s a pretty old printer by now, and while getting some mods would do a lot for it, I think I would rather get something like a Sovol SV06 unless $200 is a hard limit.
Just don’t spend more than 900 € in your first printer
Decide if you want to print or tinker with your printer first. I personally don’t like the tinkering portion and learned that after it was too late. Don’t be afraid to save what you’ve got now and buy the right printer not the one that is easily picked up right now
I do not know much about 3d printing right now, so I would like to start printing and get a feel for it before I get into the tweaking bit.
Tuvo Tornado has been practically plug and play for me. Be ready to spend a lot of time designing, printing, testing, redesigning, reprinting. Not necessarily because of the printer, but just a normal part of the process.
And don’t be afraid to print part of a design and stop the print just to verify the footprint or general dimensions are good. It takes extra time and guaranteed ‘failure’ from a fully usable part, but much better than waiting a full 5-10 hours for a full print just to realize the holes on the first layer are offset, or the walls are 5mm too close for your use case.
It took me a few months to save the money for my first printer. I used that time to watch loads of videos about 3D printing. And then I bought a printer kit so I got experience with all the components. By the time I made my first print I felt pretty good about my ability to print and fix common errors. I was still an inexperienced idiot, but I was a lot better off than I might have otherwise been.
Accept failures, learn. Have fun!
Yeah, have fun and learn from your mistakes!
Enjoy!!
If you want a simple no bullshit works out of the box 3D printer then Flashforge Adventurer 3 or similar. Pretty affordable, decent quality prints, minimal fussing.
I will say though that the printers get harder to use as time goes on and you have to start playing with temperatures, rafts, other annoying things as the bed warps. Great for learning though. I’ll probably upgrade to something more serviceable since my Flashforge has increased my printing appetite.
