Still doing RepRap in 2026?

I'm continuing to maintain my Portabee RepRap (a cartesian bedslinger), which is about 15 years old now. I just fully revived it recently, by replacing some broken plastic parts, tearing down and rebuilding the hot end to fix some jamming issues, and tightening the extruder's filament feed path after observing filament slippage. The most time consuming thing was realizing that my sudden extrusion failures were due to two problems, not just one (hot end jamming *and* filament slipping). Finally made it through a 4-hour print yesterday with no hiccups. For what I want to do -- printing simple connecting brackets for electronic or electromechanical projects -- this old printer still fulfills my needs. And I still like the sense of control I have with a RepRap, knowing that I can fix or modify every aspect the printer.

Do you still maintain your RepRaps in 2026? Why?

Because most commercial options have serious flaws

Creality: abusers of open source, just blatantly taking anything they want and ignoring the licensing requirements.
Most of their machine are such low quality a DIY version will last much longer. Their Quality control is non existent, they ship it untested and your expected to work with support to get it working.
Once a new printer model comes out they no longer maintain existing printers. (no firmware fixes)

Bambu: Not open source. All printers are cloud connected. They can monitor,deny or steal anything you 3d print. If the site goes down your print breaks.
Security concerns. This provides a device on your local network from which your other machines can be attacked. no way to check for backdoors (government mandated or other) in their code.

Prusa: Good gear but to expensive. Also now going closed source with some things.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2026 12:41AM by Dust.

... most of my old FDM-printers (and two resin-printers) are collecting dust in the basement ... the one in use is a second-hand-Anycubic Kobra 2 Pro.

But mostly busy with "multimaterial-micro-nano-3D-printing" with a 30W (self-designed) fiber-laser with special f-theta-optics for finer spot size (down to 5microns spot-diameter)

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

I have used most of my 3D Printers over the past 3 years, though the Older mono Hictops 3DP11-12 are getting less an less use.
Even though I can still print multiple piece color models. My newer Kobra 3 Combos still have the best prints.
As our need for color models have increased and my painting skill are not the best have printed more with my Kobra 3 Combos.

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Computer Programmer / Electronics Technician

Interesting take on open-hardware printing by Josef Prusa hier:

[www.josefprusa.com]

As he says, it is disappointing that individual components cost more than subsidized, fully-assembled, but locked-down machines.

My first RepRap, a Prusa Mendel, was scrapped (ca 2016), and some of the parts were used to make my next one, which in turn was rebuilt until only the threaded rods and smooth rods were original, at which point I donated it to a newbie.
A Rostock-ish printer was the next one I built (2014), and I continue to rebuild it to try out new ideas. Presently, I am working on a thermally agile printer head that can lower the temperature by 10ºC in as little as 4 seconds to facilitate printing of bridges and overhangs.
I have another RepRap-inspired printer in the form of a twin-head printer, which can switch heads in less than a second and clean the nozzles at the same time. This needs work on the idea, but it will have to wait until I work up the enthusiasm.
I rarely discuss anything I have done on this forum now: The moribund state of the forum, the knowledge that publishing prior art will count for nothing, and a degree of negativity towards any new ideas make it an unrewarding experience.
But yes, I do still use and enjoy building 3D printers.

Here's a recent interview with Adrian Bowyer: [www.youtube.com] . It contains a nice mix of content about the past, present, and future.

As crazy as it is, I wanted to stay with my current and ancient Wade extruder (actually, the Romscraj variant) because it's assembled from common hardware-store materials in the original Reprap spirit. But I've been having some filament driving problems recently.

The "hobbed bolt" equivalent in this extruder is an M4 bolt with an M4 insert nut threaded onto its mid-section and held in place with nuts. The insert nut has teeth on the outside that then grip the filament. I wanted to replace only the insert nut that drives the filament, but it seems the minimum online order of this kind of insert nut is $10 for a pack of 50. I also looked into eliminating the insert nut and hobbing the M4 bolt directly with a rotary cutting tool.

But is it worth the trouble? Probably not. For that same $10, I can just buy a brand-new, all-metal, modern MK8 extruder. It is with some sadness that I'll probably be bidding farewell soon to my faithful Wade/Romscraj extruder.

I have never been able to bring myself to buy a 3D printer, preferring to build instead. I think the point of the hobby was more in the accomplishment than in the printed product, and seldom in the saving of money or time.

Two of the printers I built over the years are still in use and, while they can be unreliable, with care, the quality of the prints is indistinguishable from that of a bought printer. I recently started using a purchased extruder, but only after my trusty home-designed and made one broke down after 12 years of use, and only after buying 4 different extruders and binning 3 of them as not up to standard. I still use wirewound resistors instead of heater cartridges in my hotends as I find them more reliable. A batch of 20 nozzles I made many years ago is still in use. My home-made Z probes are more accurate and more reliable than anything available commercially.

So O.K., I could buy a Bambu printer, download some files for pretty trinkets and print these off: but where is the fun in that?

Mike

Please do not support bambu, they are truly evil (my personal opinion)

Most recent example
[news.slashdot.org]

and a video simplifying it all. [www.youtube.com]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/13/2026 07:01PM by Dust.

Quote
leadinglights
I think the point of the hobby was more in the accomplishment than in the printed product, and seldom in the saving of money or time.

Yes, that's the thing that makes me both curious and disappointed at the same time. Curious, because there are a lot of hobbies where the point is accomplishment and craftsmanship, and disappointed, that for some reason the global community of people interested in RepRaps seems to have fallen off a cliff (if this forum can be taken as a general indicator of activity in the space).

For example, I'm coming to the realization that I actually enjoy tearing down, aligning, and rebuilding my printer, and taking pride in the quality of the printed output. My print quality is not perfect -- far from it -- but it's the result of my own adjustments and craftsmanship. It continues to amaze me that such a simple mechanism with 3D printed parts and steel rods, and subjected to constant motion, can be tightened up to become pretty stable.

A similar hobby of mine is building analog radio receivers like shortwave radios. The technology is analog and outdated, yet the hobbyist community worldwide seems alive and well. A lot of hobbyists still go through the ritual of selecting transistors and tubes, winding coils, compensating for thermal drift, aligning resonant inductive/capacitive tank circuits, and so forth, just to receive a radio signal. The accomplishment is in hearing the signal in the headphones -- a signal that you yourself extracted directly out of the ether with your own craftsmanship. It seems that the most popular circuits are the ones with the lowest parts count (so-called regenerative receivers), probably because they demonstrate how much can be accomplished with a minimum number of parts and enough attention to the critical details.

Again, it kind of surprises me that old-school RepRap-based 3D printing doesn't have a similar dedicated following. Or maybe it does, but nobody is posting about it anymore?

With RepRaps, my own interest is getting the best result out of my inherently unstable frame (a Printrbot-style "two-sticks" frame with smooth Z rods constrained only at the bottom). There are inherent instabilities in this design, and it would be easy to build a more stable external frame, but for me that takes away from the fun of "how good of a result can I get with this inherently simple and limited design?"

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I sometimes wonder if the RepRap forums should eliminate or archive 95% of the 104+ forums visible from the top page -- most of which now see only rare if any activity -- and make a new forum top page with just a small number of forums. That might make more sense and concentrate the remaining forum activity into a smaller, more easily-discoverable space, which might even have a positive feedback effect of encouraging more discussion.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/13/2026 08:45PM by qrp-gaijin.

Quote
Dust
Please do not support bambu, they are truly evil (my personal opinion)

Most recent example
[news.slashdot.org]

and a video simplifying it all. [www.youtube.com]

You misunderstand me. I was saying things I would not do: I would not buy a 3D printer, particularly a Bambu, and I would not copy somebody else's design unmodified. It was a case of extreme irony*.

* Extreme irony is a lot like extreme ironing, but minus the iron, the ironing board and most of the danger.

Mike.

Quote
qrp-gaijin
It is with some sadness that I'll probably be bidding farewell soon to my faithful Wade/Romscraj extruder.

Actually, I'm having second thoughts about this, and prefer to stay with my old Wade extruder now as an educational exercise.

Sometimes it works perfectly; sometimes, I get total extrusion failure minutes or hours into the print.

Here's what I think is happening. Does it sound plausible?

1. Bed is physically warped.
2. On the first layer, at some areas, the nozzle gets too close to the bed and builds up back-pressure, leading to under-extrusion for a minute or more.
3. Back pressure ultimately somehow causes a total clog, either through (a) (more likely?) reduced flow causing heat creep, causing more and more filament expansion in the cold zone, requiring more and more extruder pressure, finally causing filament grinding and loss of grip on the filament, and/or (b) (less likely?) reduced flow leading to burnt plastic inside the nozzle, further reducing flow.

The interesting thing is that the effects of a bad first layer can still cause problems several layers later -- some kind of a slow-motion chain reaction. Does that sound plausible?

If that's right, then simply swapping to a new extruder won't solve the problem. I may try Marlin's Automatic Bed Leveling with the PROBE_MANUALLY option. [marlinfw.org]

The more I think about it, the more likely it seems that heat creep is the problem. That's why it shows up randomly after several minutes or hours into the print. And I think there are many ways heat creep can occur. If anything goes wrong and the heat starts to creep up, then I can see how that can trigger a kind of runaway chain reaction that allows the heat to creep up farther and farther until it causes a jam or lack of filament grip. It's annoying to have to hypothesize about this without hard data, but I guess just doing everything possible to prevent heat creep (fans, thermal paste, e-steps calibration, bed leveling, etc.) is the most practical way forward.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/23/2026 09:18AM by qrp-gaijin.

I'm thinking about building a Wilson TS: [reprap.org] . It's similar to a Prusa i3, except it uses aluminum extrusions for the frame. Similar to the Portabee, the Wilson TS Y axis is built independently of the rest of the frame, making it possible to completely remove the Y axis (for storage or transport) without dismantling the rest of the printer.



Question about the smooth Z rods: the Wilson (and the Prusa) hold the smooth Z rods in place purely by friction fit into holes in the plastic parts, and the plastic parts are bolted to the rigid frame. Would it be advisable to rigidly clamp the smooth z rods into their respective plastic holes? Or is a friction fit better in this case -- maybe to allow for a tiny bit of play to avoid Z axis binding?

Image of Prusa smooth Z rods: [upload.wikimedia.org]