Searching for advice on how to start 3D printing (e.g. what should I buy?)

Dear community,

hopefully I'm at the right place: I really want to start into the topic of 3D printing. Therefore I need a 3D printer. To give an impression of my "knowledge": I've never looked into 3D printing before, but I've build Shapeoko 2 CNC mill (and solid it when I was finished - too dusty and I'm faster at the band saw and table saw) and I've decent experience in µc's and Arduino.

There are many things which are important when "buying a 3D printer", especially the budget and the availability in my country (Germany). Therefore I looked around and basically found the Utlimaker with a very high price and some cheap China stuff on Ebay. The two major models which are common on Ebay are:

1.) GEEETech Prusa I3 Aluminum. The nice thing about this is that it has a rather big printing area and is constructed from aluminum which might add to the rigidity of the contraption. But it has a really large "footprint".
2.) Delta Rostock Kossel 3D. I really like the look and feel of the delta printers. The footprint of the entire contraption is rather small but therefore the printable area is limited also. The main structure (besides the rods) is made out of black acrylic where I don't know if it is rigid enough.

I really like the 2nd model since it looks clean and the cables are packed nicely under the machine. I think that for me as a starter the Ultimaker is too expensive - I want to start low. So my questions are: does anybody have experience with the mentioned printers? Are they worth the money? Are they suitable for beginners and provide "decent" results? Which model would you prefer?

Regards,
mythbu

Check out the P3Steel frame based designs. I don't have an Prusa i3 style printer but when I was looking the steel frames seemed to be nice because they are good and solid and the extra weight helps. The Toolson version P3Steel on thingiverse is pretty well regarded if you can get someone to print you parts and then buy a frame or have one cut from the plans.

I started with a Delta because they are cool and the layout is so clean. In my opinion that is bad idea. For a first printer stick with a simple popular design that people can help you with. The learning curve is steep and having mechanicals you can count on will let you learn how to get decent prints.

If you were in the USA, the Wilson 2 kit at $485 looks real nice and has an active support community. I don't know if he ships international though.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/31/2016 12:02PM by WZ9V.

Not sure the cost or availability in Germany, but check out the Printrbot Play. I just watched a review of it from Thomas Sanlanerer, who is located in Germany (toms3d.org). I can't seem to find that clip now, but it should show up on his site or YouTube before long.

Printrbot Play isn't directly available in Germany. I could order it directly from the manufacturer, but then I've to deal with all kinds of complicated taxes.

WZ9V voted for the all metal Prusa I3 clone. But isn't it true that a Delta 3D printer is more robust than a "normal" design, as expressed in this video here?

A Delta printer is difficult to calibrate without some sort of auto calibrate routine. They don't generally do well on the 8-bit Arduino Mega due to processing requirements and speed of the processor. And have to be designed/built almost perfectly aligned and square. There would be a steep learning curve on a delta, and I've seen a lot of people mention plastic on metal is bad for a delta so I can only imagine how acrylic on metal holds up.

The reason I recommend a Prusa style is that it will operate well on the usual cheap 8-bit electronics and there are tons of people who can help with a Prusa i3 style. When you branch out into Delta or CoreXY you need to be prepared to do a lot of learning and troubleshooting on your own because the community of people who can help is significantly smaller and when you cross over into the 32-bit boards that can best handle a Delta even smaller still.

A decent i3 style will get you a long way and is way easier to calibrate, maintain and is much less critical in the build alignment.

I was suggesting you look at the P3Steel which is different than an all metal aluminum design because it uses 3mm steel plate which makes it a heavier and stiffer frame.

[reprap.org]

I'd second the information provided here. The best way to learn is to gets hands on with building a printer, solving the problems, asking in the forums etc... However unless you have prior electronics/engineering experience or training going straight for the more difficult to configure delta might be a route to losing your way and ending up not enjoying this fascinating subject. If you are quite competent in these areas or a quick learner, then go for it. If you want to produce 3d parts but have no interest in the enthusiast side of it, buy a "works out of the box" machine like a Cubicon (if you have £2500 to spend).

I started off with a second hand i3, fixed it up mechanically and electrically, created a new firmware configuration from scratch - which I've come to realise taught me more than building it would have done, then moved on to a delta (which I still have and which produces really high quality prints) and a corexy. I'm now building a large all metal delta to see if I can get the same high quality in a larger format machine (generally the bigger they get the harder it is to achieve high quality as everything has to be both larger/heavier and more precise. As such the small bed printers 10cm x10xm like the toyrap etc... are more forgiving of small inaccuracies in the build (and they're cheaper).

Beginning with a cartesian axis printer i.e. printer with 3 distinct axes (i3 etc...) which are all controlled individually like a CNC, is the least difficult route and gives a solid grounding to your understanding of 3D printers. A delta on the other hand is the opposite end of the spectrum, x,y and z are controlled by combining the motion of 3 motors this makes finding and solving problems more difficult, I scratched my head plenty when I first got the delta despite beginning with an i3. The more metal in the construction the better in terms of quality and reliability, but learning 3d printing is facilitated by being able to replace and modify the parts of your printer, so printers with 3d printed parts are good to begin with.

---

Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

Thank you very much for your extensive answers!

So I'll drop the idea with the Delta 3D printer. Maybe at some time when I'm good in 3D printing I might print my own Delta 3D printer Due to delivery and other problems I want to avoid I can choose between the Ultimaker (2100 € = $2400) and the shown Prusa i3 Aluminum (340 € = $400). And currently I'm inclined to the view that the "cheaper" model is better to start, because the financial risk is lower.

So I guess your job is done

Since you've already built a CNC machine, I'd be inclined to say that the Prusa is the wrong way to go. Everyone spouts the 'learning curve' as such a positive attribute to these things but if you've already built a ShapeOko, you're not missing out on anything. In fact, if the stepping stone argument is what you believe in then you have already learnt enough to dive right into delta machines.

Further to this, the prusa will be a lot less rigid than the shapeoko you've had before, and might be a bit of a disappointment.

I'd be inclined to say that a 3D printer does not need such a great amount of rigidity as the Shapeoko had since the components are light and no great forces are applied on a 3D printer. A CNC mill has to deal with the resistance of the actual router mill when pushed through the material and so on. Therefore a 3D printer needs only to be reasonable rigid.

But that's the point of my discussion here: which printer provides much better results the Prusa I3 Aluminum or the Delta Printer? By now I'm not sure which way to go since some people voted for either one. But the idea of a full aluminum frame seems much better than the Delta printer which is held together with an acrylic frame ...

I'd say we're confusing rigidity with strength. A CNC has to have both, a 3d printer needs to be just as rigid, but its easier to achieve this for a given size i.e. smaller frame components, as there is very little thrust required to print.

An aluminium frame i3 will be better than an acrylic framed delta. But not better than a metal delta (though much cheaper).

If you can build a CNC then consider a delta but acrylic is IMO good for one thing on a 3d printer, enclosing your machine. It will crack eventually, if not during assembly.

---

Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

Quote
mythbu
Thank you very much for your extensive answers!

So I'll drop the idea with the Delta 3D printer. Maybe at some time when I'm good in 3D printing I might print my own Delta 3D printer Due to delivery and other problems I want to avoid I can choose between the Ultimaker (2100 € = $2400) and the shown Prusa i3 Aluminum (340 € = $400). And currently I'm inclined to the view that the "cheaper" model is better to start, because the financial risk is lower.

So I guess your job is done

If you had no experience of this sort of build and you were on a tight budget, then I'd agree that a cheap Pruse i3 kit is the way to get a taste of 3D printing. But if you have already built a CNC machine and you are seriously considering spending up to 2100 € on a 3D printer, then don't dismiss the delta option. Cheap delta printer kits are best avoided, but for 1000 € or so you can build a good delta with metal corners and good electronics supporting auto calibration. See the link in my signature to my blog for details of my Kossel variant. Several others have built printers similar to this, often with variations such as 2040 vertical extrusions instead of 2020.

---

Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

I searched a little bit further and found the "Original Prusa i3 MK2 kit". Compared to the Aluminum China Prusa I3 it is double the price. But is there really such a difference?

Quote

If you had no experience of this sort of build and you were on a tight budget, then I'd agree that a cheap Pruse i3 kit is the way to get a taste of 3D printing. But if you have already built a CNC machine and you are seriously considering spending up to 2100 € on a 3D printer ...

I really want to try out the technology of 3D printing before investing on a really high priced Ultimaker or friends. So I'm no longer willing to invest this much money until I gathered some empirical data about 3D printing (e.g. use one).

Quote
mythbu
I searched a little bit further and found the "Original Prusa i3 MK2 kit". Compared to the Aluminum China Prusa I3 it is double the price. But is there really such a difference?

Quote

If you had no experience of this sort of build and you were on a tight budget, then I'd agree that a cheap Pruse i3 kit is the way to get a taste of 3D printing. But if you have already built a CNC machine and you are seriously considering spending up to 2100 € on a 3D printer ...

I really want to try out the technology of 3D printing before investing on a really high priced Ultimaker or friends. So I'm no longer willing to invest this much money until I gathered some empirical data about 3D printing (e.g. use one).

So how much are you prepared to spend on your first machine then?

---

Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Is there a makerspace near to you? If so go play with one there. Costs almost nothing.

Any cheap kit properly built and working well, should be saleable for its kit price plus a bit extra, but per hour on the first build it's not going to be much.

---

Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

Quote
dc42
So how much are you prepared to spend on your first machine then?

Yes. But that is the maximum I'll spend (750 € = $840). The idea is: let's assume the original Prusa I3 MK2 is really nice (which I don't know) then it is worth to spend the extra money to be later on satisfied than sticking with the China one. Obviously this argument can be applied to justify always a more expensive printer. But I've agreed with my self on the limit above.

Quote
DjDemonD
Is there a makerspace near to you? If so go play with one there. Costs almost nothing..

No Makerspace near to me. But at University we have an Ultimaker. I was there and took a look at it and the result (which was really nice). But this does not help me either, because I don't want to buy an Ultimaker.

The quality or the mechanical parts you will get with a Prusa i3 kit will obviously vary between suppliers. But one thing that lets all of them down is that they come with Arduino/RAMPS electronics, which has inadequately-cooled stepper driver chips that fail frequently, a voltage regulator that overheats if you connect a graphical LCD to it (and most of the kits include a graphical LCD), stepper motor current that is hard to adjust, graphical LCDs that have an inaccessible contrast pot so that you sometimes have to add external resistors to get them working, and firmware that you have to recompile every time you make a configuration change. But if you persevere then you can get it (or most of it working). As long as you are aware of that, I think a Prusa i3 kit will be a good introduction to 3D printing for you. I'll leave it to others to recommend which mechanical configuration is best (traditional, acrylic, steel etc.).

There are a few kits in your price bracket that come with modern electronics. For example, the Mini Kossel R3 from Think3Dprint3D costs £450 + VAT (see [www.think3dprint3d.com]). It's a delta and it includes a genuine E3Dv6 hot end, not a clone as you will find in the Prusa i3 kits. It comes with modern Duet electronics, so you get a web interface as standard. The printed parts are well-made, and the kit is supplied and supported from Europe. The 170mm diameter print area is smaller than the 200x200mm of the i3, but apart from that the only real disadvantage is the higher price compared to a Chinese i3 kit. [Full disclosure: I have a small financial interest in this kit because it uses my IR height sensor.]

---

Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

There is a machine which have a quite good quality/price ratio and have parts already pre-assembled, this is the SmartCore. [Edit]: There is a video serie on Youtube for the final assembly.
It have evolved from its beginning and is now quite mature. There is a good support and you can find on youtube some evaluations and comments.

[smartfriendz.com]

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/02/2016 11:04AM by PRZ.

---

Pierre

- Safety [reprap.org]
- Embedded help system for Duet and RepRap Firmware [forums.reprap.org]
- Enclosed delta printers Lily [rouzeau.net] and Lily Big [rouzeau.net]
- OpenScad delta printer simulator [github.com]
- 3D printing on my site [www.rouzeau.net]

I've got one if these and whilst it's not producing prints as good as my t3p3 kossel mini it's better than an i3 as it has a study frame, it's easy to build and is reasonably priced, mine is now enclosed and has a 300x200mmx170mm build volume, so there is a lot you can do to uograde them . The issue is the corexy mechanism, which is good but has to be set up just right to work perfectly, and there's no autocalibration option available. See the smartrap forum for more details.

---

Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

I too have one of those kits. I've actually used the kit to print 2 more printers, 1 using smaller rods that I already had, and another one that does 300x300x370. The kit was decent, and it did produce nice parts. However, it produced even better parts when I replaced the Ramps/Mega with the Duet 0.8.5, and I've got the settings dialed in pretty good to print very nice detailed parts.