Back to 3d Printing

A number of years ago, I built a Mendel and then upgraded it to a Prusa Mendel. I had the time of my life ordering parts from all over the world and learned a lot.. It was is a bit clunky with all the PLA parts and so I upgraded many of the gears and such to metal and replaced the electronics to Ramp4 and Arduino. Recently I blew the dust off the old thing and after a bit (lot) of tinkering now have it running again. Here's my question. If I want to build a new machine what's the best choice?. Where should I begin? I haven't been involved for quite a while. Where are things at now? Am I better off just buying one...many seem quite cheap now? As always on this site, I look forward to any suggestions.

I'm a big fan of DIY, but if you're more interested in just printing rather than in the design and problem solving required to make it all work, a kit might be a better way to go.
What do you want to do and what do you want to print- size, material, etc.?

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

Is this Mark from Makerspace Milwaukee ?

Yes. Who you?

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

I joined Makerspace a couple of years ago....you were one of my sponsers!! I remain a member even thou I haven't been able to get in there. I finally had a little time and started playing with this old printer and to my surprise was able to get it running. I guess now I'm more interested in printing and if possible getting smarter at cad software. How often are you at Makerspace? I'll try and run into you there and chat some more. I live closer to the St. Francis site and hope to bring in my old Honda motorcycle and work on it there.

thanks for responding to this post

I don't get to the space very often these days, but I'm going to try soon. I have some projects to work on. I am no longer 3D printing area champ- Tim took over for me.
Carl runs a Monday night class on Fusion360 that you might want to check out. I think they do it virtually.
Maybe I'll see you around the space soon.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

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HereIgoAgain
Where are things at now? Am I better off just buying one...many seem quite cheap now? As always on this site, I look forward to any suggestions.

Ender 3 very popular as a kit for newcomers. It's a very slick Prusa i3 derivative, a little limited in terms of parts used. But very well thought out to get a working printer.

Creality do a number of models. One thing you might want to try is a CoreXY conversion from an Ender 5 kit.

[www.thingiverse.com]

In terms of DIY builds, quite a bit of friendly rivalry between Voron and Ratrig builders. Again, CoreXY style.

Deltas still problematic for accuracy but keeping highest speed for movement and printing.

Firmware wise, Klipper doing very well at improving existing printers with a Raspi Pi host. Very fiddly to install but a great improvement on Marlin in terms of speed of processing. Fluidd front end permits config changes on the fly from a GUI. No more compiling to test something.

All metal hotends very trendy, for exotic filament use. Teflon now avoided in hotends.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/2022 10:05PM by DragonFire.