3d printer virgin...

So I have this little product I buy.... that needs a little tweak for something I sell, in the form of a little plastic horseshoe/ shim. I have had these 3d printed before but I know nothing about consumable cost of 3d printing. I looked on ebay and some of the printers start about $800 usd or so. Are these things worth buying or an utter disappointment and waste of money? How many $$ per cubic inch is the "weed wacker cord". I was looking at black abs for a material.

I know enough to be dangerous, and I don't need alot of these. It would be handy in other aspects of business as well, but for right now looking to justify a printer on parts I would otherwise buy at about $3-4 usd each....

WILLEO6709 said:

So I have this little product I buy.... that needs a little tweak for something I sell, in the form of a little plastic horseshoe/ shim. I have had these 3d printed before but I know nothing about consumable cost of 3d printing. I looked on ebay and some of the printers start about $800 usd or so. Are these things worth buying or an utter disappointment and waste of money? How many $$ per cubic inch is the "weed wacker cord". I was looking at black abs for a material.

I know enough to be dangerous, and I don't need alot of these. It would be handy in other aspects of business as well, but for right now looking to justify a printer on parts I would otherwise buy at about $3-4 usd each....

Click to expand...

Depends a lot on the qualities you need from the part.

First, the ones on eBay for $800 are slightly less impressive than a 3 year old molding their own bowel movements. For your needs, you might well look at having an injection mold made and popping out a few thousand at a few cents a piece. I've got a bit of experience with the 3DSystems SLA and SLS machines. I've also played with the lesser quality ( but still WORLDS above those eBay machines ) smallish footprint, filament type machines. Frankly, I think you would be disappointed. If you want to send me a model of what you need, I can show you an example of each.

We had a really kewl part that Jay Cee printed off at his old job. (I htink he still pops up on the EDM board occassionaly?) It had a spiral staircase and ???? It wasn't really a part - but just an example of what it could doo I guess.

That part was increadible and very neat!

Mamma threw it out last year I think as she said that it was starting to sag?


Then I have these parts here that a new customer "printed" off of one of those e-bay machines I guess.
Yeah - they doo give you an idea of scale, but they are so course and shoddy that ....

They would be impressive if the machine was a protype from yrs ago, but to think that you would bother with it now is

I think "Go Big or Go Home" applies here near as I have seen. (which aint much)


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I have 3 @ 3d printers in our shop. 2 are home hobbyist types, the other is a professional version. It makes a better quality product (by far) at the expense of a way higher price to produce the part. A horseshoe type shim... I'd use our CO2 laser and cut them from practishim stock. waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay cheaper than 3d printing them.

Hmnn, on the topic of 3D printers, my curiosity got the best of me, so I grabbed an IGES file of an AR lower receiver, added some extra support around the buffer tube mount and pin holes, saved it as an STL file and kicked it off to our Stratasys 3D printer. Lo and behold, 13 hours and 48 minutes later, out pops what appears to be a perfectly functional lower receiver. And yes, it's perfectly legal for me to build this gun part at home for my own personal use. I'm waiting to dissolve out the support material so I can install the trigger group, and buffer tube. Anybody got a .223 AR upper I can borrow to test the fit?