Did anyone have relatively "instant" success with kits

Did anyone have relatively "instant" success with kits?

I am a beginner and an "old timer" who became facinated by 3D printing a couple of years ago. I recently decided to make the plunge and opted for a full kit to build a PrusaMendel. I have received my hardware/electronics/extruder kit and am awaiting my plastic parts to begin construction/assembly.

To prepare I have been reading a lot of info from the forum and seems there are a lot of problem oriented topics, mainly to do with getting things running and plastic to flow on command.

Have I bitten of more than I may be able to handle, or do most of you have machines that ran well from the start with few major problems?

Thanks,

Bob

If you purchased a reputable hotend (J-head or Makergear or Adrians) you should have very little issue with plastic flow. The firmware could slow you down as it does for a lot of people but there is a lot of help available as long as you are able to ask concise questions (not just "it does not work, need help" as so many people do).

From my experience 50% of issues are hotend related, 25% are software and the rest are hardware.

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FFF Settings Calculator	Gcode post processors	Geometric Object Deposition Tool Blog
Tantillus.org	Mini Printable Lathe	How NOT to install a Pololu driver

Getting my head around the firmware was the biggest problem for me as my kit the firmware wasn't set up to match the belts' gears and hobbed bolt

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Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

for the botmill kit i bought and built recently, the firmware was already loaded and didn't really require any tweaking. i ran into a few problems primarily with skienforge. i kept thinking i did something wrong when i was assembling the kit, but after i figured it all out, it was mostly a problem with skeinforge settings. i guess everyone will have a somewhat different experience..

I've heard very good things about the Makergear Prusa kit. Plus the Prusa variation is very well documented.

I think the biggest problem I had, like with @ghostling, was skeinforge. Trying to figure out your settings can be quite a nightmare. Luckily, Slic3r makes fantastic gcode right out of the gate if you enter your parameters correctly and your printer is properly calibrated.

bdc
~Stay Calm Out There

You just have to dive in. I took the plunge just over a month ago and it has been a fairly steep learning curve but the help I have had on here has been fantastic and has got me past the poorly documented parts (or perhaps the parts that I couldn't find documentation for).

My kit was a relatively new one (Longboat Prusa) and turned out to have a few errors in the design of the hot end that set me back quite a lot, so perhaps worth going to a well established one with a good reputation if you are wanting an easy life...

George

I'm an older-timer, too and just dove into this about two months ago. It's one awesome experience to watch that first print come out and then some real frustration while flailing around trying to get it to produce consistent print quality, but I'm almost there.

I inherited a kit which was partially assembled. The hot end was the weakest part and I finally set the acorn nut and threaded barrel aside and forked out the money for an assembled, proven design. That one move resolved the single greatest source of frustration. Now I'm printing parts for another Prusa while simultaneously figuring this print quality thing out.

If you haven't already, head over to Arduino.cc and look around. I've been playing with Arduino's for a couple years and that knowledge has helped immensely. The firmware can be a little daunting to go through if you’re not familiar with coding.
Also see if you can locate someone nearby with a printer or get to printing critical spares as soon as you can – things break while you’re learning (at least they did in my case) and if you don’t have a ready supply of spare parts, life sucks watching that cool little machine sit idle.

Given my very limited experience, I’d hazard a guess and say that kits are the way to go and it will be a mixed bag regardless. Get ready to strain the brain, but also get ready for some incredible fun.

With the exception of the IRC (sorry, I don't find IRC humor in the least funny - I'm there to get help, not take crap) the community here is most helpful.

With that I’d like to say thanks to all involved – this has been one of the most rewarding little enterprises I’ve undertaken in quite a while!

Yes it was frustrating especially as I was the only person that had one in a 400mile radius at the time but I got lots of help from here and on the IRC channel and now I try and give back as much as I can

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Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

With the kits of today, it still is a diy product, so you have to learn from your mistakes and then as you gain expertise it all will become easier.
Up to the point you design your own stuff or perhaps a complete new printer from scratch.

I think it is prone to the where these kind of printers are used, almost all are in a hobby installment. Being fascinated by the workings and the ideals behind it.. That makes the printer just a machine, but everything around it makes it the fascinating fact, Constant tweaking, even after 2 years of printing and having build 4 different machines, I see myself always searching for that extra bit of performance, quality, 0.01 mm lower etc..

So buy the kit and start learning and let yourself help with it!!! Up to the point that you can teach others and help others..

This is my opinion and why I like the Reprap 3D prting project..

I got a prusa kit from a2printers and plastics online. I haven't printed anything yet, as my kit was missing the nichrome wire. The wire is in transit now. But with that said, I had no problems assmebling the hardware and interfacing to the electronics.

My calipers readings, right after I powered on for the first time, show I have a standard precision, but lack acurancy.
A quick change int he firmware fixed the acuracy issue. I am dead on with my x/y/z movement now.

Software seems to be everyones biggest problem. I didn't have this issue, but my background is HW/SW Quality Assurance testing.

I ordered one of the RepRapPro Huxley Christmas kits and had it assembled and printing in several days (long, long days).
I encountered some simple and some weird issues. The firmware on the controller had the wrong thermister table so the reported temps were wrong causing extruder issues and things to not stick to the heated bed. Along with that was a Skeinforge setting (relative vs absolute extruder moves) that drove me bonkers and kept breaking the bowden tube, and a power supply bugaboo that was solved quite easily with a screwdriver and a can of soda (opened up the plastic case and used a full soda can as a heat sink, later upgraded to an old CPU heat sink). J.M. at e-maker was extremely helpful as was the rest of the forum members and the problems were solved right quickly. Other issues I've encountered were incorrect length hardware that required either replacement with longer parts or cutting to fit, the aluminum bed is slightly concave so printing at .1mm is impossible and .2mm is really tricky, the mechanical switch type endstops are not very repeatable ( not a problem for X or Y but critical for X so I plan an upgrade, already added a screw style adjustment for Z end position), and leveling the bed is a royal pain. Beyond that I was printing usable parts at .3mm layer height without any major issues, it pretty much "just worked" but only "just OK" out of the box. Every minor modification makes the quality noticeably better, but it is ALOT of tweaking. I love the tweaking and the improvements in print quality that I'm getting following along with the community but I think the initial success and great support had a lot to do with my enthusiasm.

Since you already have a kit my best advice to you is read, read, read as much as you can about your type of machine and when you ask questions be very incredibly ridiculously verbose and specific about your issues, usually it is an easy fix but if the description of the problem is unclear the answers will be as well. I work as a repair and support tech and vague problem descriptions are a plague! Be specific and knowledgeable about your machine and it's firmware/options so that those that can help can do so easily and your problems will just be minor speed bumps.

i had what you might call "instant success", in that i was successfully printing relatively pretty test cubes out of the gate. i didn't build a kit however, i self-sourced a mendelmax.

i attribute the ease of setup to the design of the mendelmax. you simply can't get it (that) wrong. things are either straight and proper or they just don't fit. with a threaded-rod based design there are a LOT more alignment issues and little nagging problems that creep up because of them. I think printer choice matters quite a bit when it comes to ease of assembly/operation. also a lot of research ahead of time helps.

here is a video of my very first print ever with my mendelmax (which itself was my first printer ever).

[youtu.be]

PastaRocket848 Wrote:
> i attribute the ease of setup to the design of the
> mendelmax. you simply can't get it (that) wrong.
> things are either straight and proper or they just
> don't fit. with a threaded-rod based design there
> are a LOT more alignment issues and little nagging
> problems that creep up because of them.

I have to agree. Using measurement jigs were kind of awkward during my Prusa build and I was pretty surprised the other day, replacing some zip ties I had been using to hold an electronics plate with printed retainers, how much the nuts have shaken themselves loose. I might have to go around and dab some loctite, but not before I re-cut some jigs to see how much has drifted.

After a get a few replacement sets of plastic parts for my printer, I'm planning on a MendelMax build myself.