I am in the market for a printer

I have been looking into 3d printers lately for home/hobby use. I would like to have as large of a build space as possible without going over $800. And the ability to use multiple types of plastics. Accuracy and resolution are also a priority.

Anyone here have experience with this machine or know of better/similar units?

Personal 3D Printer | RigidBot 3D Printer

I'm not an expert but I've seen price tags of machines that are considered "hobby grade" and I think $800 is a little low for a machine that will have decent accuracy or a usable work envelope. Resolution is also a bit relative. You could have a stepper drive that is able to run 50,000 steps per rev and a theoretical resolution of .00001" but it doesn't mean much when you're using cheap stepper motors, rubber timing belts and a plastic or plastic/metal frame that has no thermal or mechanical stability.

I know you can save a few $$ on machines that require assembly but it's not like you'll pay half price. You might want to up your budget closer to $1500 or $2K. That will cover the machine, decent tech support and enough material to allow you to make mistakes while you get the settings right.

You can't even get a makerbot for $800.

The one you linked has injection molded plastic joints, to allow you to expand your envelope. And that's gonna give you what kind of accuracy? Not much, my guess.

You're gonna have to up your budget or lower your expectations...

Personally, when I want cereal box toys, I just buy the cereal, and throw it away, keeping the toy. At 4 bucks a box, I figure its about 1/100 the price I would be paying for a makerbot to make the same thing.
I cant imagine anything that you could make on an $800 printer that would be cost effective, and be usable.
If its a learning experience, sure- its cheaper than I pay for kids textbooks in a year of computer science classes- but its not a tool.

The printers that are actually being used in industry start at more like $50k, and they are still slow as molasses, and only cost effective in a very few situations.
For $800 you can get an M head bridgeport, and actually make real things from metal...

sen2two said:

I have been looking into 3d printers lately for home/hobby use. I would like to have as large of a build space as possible without going over $800. And the ability to use multiple types of plastics. Accuracy and resolution are also a priority.

Anyone here have experience with this machine or know of better/similar units?

Personal 3D Printer | RigidBot 3D Printer

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As per Ries's suggestion, don't forget Cracker Jacks as another potential source of 3D objects ! The Cracker Jack toys would probably be more detailed than anything from a $6,000 3D printer, much less a sub $800 one.

robosilo said:

I'm not an expert but I've seen price tags of machines that are considered "hobby grade" and I think $800 is a little low for a machine that will have decent accuracy or a usable work envelope. Resolution is also a bit relative. You could have a stepper drive that is able to run 50,000 steps per rev and a theoretical resolution of .00001" but it doesn't mean much when you're using cheap stepper motors, rubber timing belts and a plastic or plastic/metal frame that has no thermal or mechanical stability...

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Since the question of accuracy has come up, I thought I'd throw my 2 cents in. I just recently bought a 3D printer kit. I only spent $300 on it and haven't even ordered my first replacement spool for filament yet. It was purely for hobby and out of interest in learning more about 3D printing. I have had no plan on using it for work. I had no real expectations as to it's accuracy either. After spending a few years as an engineer in the thermoplastics industry I surely didn't expect the end products to hold much dimensional accuracy. Not to mention putting little faith in the laser cut plywood structure of the machine. I spent as little as possible to get a machine that would squirt plastic out and move, generally, in the x-y-z directions I gave it.

Now having used the machine for a few weeks I'm blown away by how accurate it actually is. Here's a couple pics of a calibration block I drew up and ran earlier this week.





There's still a little tweaking I could do to the y-axis gain values but nonetheless .004" off on a 2.000" feature was closer than I would have hoped for. This particular machine doesn't have the build volume the OP was initially looking for. I just wanted to share a real life example of what you can expect for $300. Although I bought it as a hobby, I'm starting to use it for more practical purposes than I had originally expected. There it is, 2 cents, my advice is worth exactly what you paid for it

Silas

El Mustachio said:

Since the question of accuracy has come up, I thought I'd throw my 2 cents in. I just recently bought a 3D printer kit. I only spent $300 on it and haven't even ordered my first replacement spool for filament yet. It was purely for hobby and out of interest in learning more about 3D printing. I have had no plan on using it for work. I had no real expectations as to it's accuracy either. After spending a few years as an engineer in the thermoplastics industry I surely didn't expect the end products to hold much dimensional accuracy. Not to mention putting little faith in the laser cut plywood structure of the machine. I spent as little as possible to get a machine that would squirt plastic out and move, generally, in the x-y-z directions I gave it.

Now having used the machine for a few weeks I'm blown away by how accurate it actually is. Here's a couple pics of a calibration block I drew up and ran earlier this week.

There's still a little tweaking I could do to the y-axis gain values but nonetheless .004" off on a 2.000" feature was closer than I would have hoped for. This particular machine doesn't have the build volume the OP was initially looking for. I just wanted to share a real life example of what you can expect for $300. Although I bought it as a hobby, I'm starting to use it for more practical purposes than I had originally expected.

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That is interesting. How much time did it take to lay down that 2" square x .1" thickness ? Do you think Z would hold comparable accuracy if the shape was stepped or contoured rather than flat ?

El Mustachio said:

I just recently bought a 3D printer kit. I only spent $300 on it and haven't even ordered my first replacement spool for filament yet. It was purely for hobby and out of interest in learning more about 3D printing.

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Care to share a link to that kit?

Vince

bloomautomatic said:

Care to share a link to that kit?

Vince

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https://printrbot.com/shop/assembled-printrbot-simple/

Looks like that one.

You would be better off with something from MakersToolWorks or a MendelMax but then again who knows better than the professionals above that have never seen a printer in real life let alone know squat about them. If it doesn't cost $200,000,000 or more, it's garbage and obviously none of the RepRaps can compete with any of the other FDM printers

It looks like they've made a couple improvements over the kit I bought. It's now about $50 more money but you get a metal print platen (bed) and an aluminum filament extrusion tensioner rather than a wooden one. Both are probably easily worth the extra money. Still, you can get your feet wet in 3D printing for $350.

https://printrbot.com/shop/printrbot-simple/


As for the gut reaction that what you get must always be proportional to what you paid, there are a number of 3D print machines out there that are much more expensive than this one that do not give near as nice results. What actually put me over the edge in deciding was an edition of Make magazine that came out last year comparing a bunch of printers from $300 to $3000.

Make: Ultimate Guide to 3D Printing 2014 | MAKE


Regarding the z-axis accuracy. I have some pyramid shaped step like calibration cubes to print. I'll know more when my order of filament comes in later this week. Right now I'm out. I expect it will be pretty close to the x & y axis results. I printed the part shown below and it threaded on to the spigot nicely the first try. Just about a body fit on the id, threads had to be modeled in SolidWorks as the plastic spigot used some thread form and pitch I was unfamiliar with. Very happy with how it came out.





Silas

So, tjb1, just what is it about this topic that gets you so incredibly aggressive?

Here are some excerpts from your previous posts:

"who knows better than the professionals above that have never seen a printer in real life let alone know squat about them."

"Maybe you should research rapid prototyping before you try to argue how they are useless or junk. It's clear by your post that you have no idea about any of the technology or what it's currently used for or capable of."

"Once again, get something straight."

"So, go try to educate yourself....again,"

"They can be produced on a $500 machine, what would you expect a dealer of commercial machines to tell you? You took a drink of the kool-aid."

"So before you go trying to blow off everything because you heard an infomercial from Stratasys, learn something."

"Lost cause arguing with these types, they can't see beyond their own nose and hate any innovation."


"It's all out there, use Google and stop being lazy about it."

"Get tired of you trolls that can't see past your own nose. Go educate yourself."

If you believe that a nasty tone will get you some kind of special credibility you're wrong; it actually just makes you come across like a pissy, whiney little bitch.

On the other hand, if you're just blowing smoke because it makes you feel good; that's cool too, just don't expect to ever be taken seriously.
Cheers

Marcus
Implant Mechanix – Design & Innovation - home
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining

implmex said:

So, tjb1, just what is it about this topic that gets you so incredibly aggressive?

Here are some excerpts from your previous posts:

"who knows better than the professionals above that have never seen a printer in real life let alone know squat about them."

"Maybe you should research rapid prototyping before you try to argue how they are useless or junk. It's clear by your post that you have no idea about any of the technology or what it's currently used for or capable of."

"Once again, get something straight."

"So, go try to educate yourself....again,"

"They can be produced on a $500 machine, what would you expect a dealer of commercial machines to tell you? You took a drink of the kool-aid."

"So before you go trying to blow off everything because you heard an infomercial from Stratasys, learn something."

"Lost cause arguing with these types, they can't see beyond their own nose and hate any innovation."


"It's all out there, use Google and stop being lazy about it."

"Get tired of you trolls that can't see past your own nose. Go educate yourself."

If you believe that a nasty tone will get you some kind of special credibility you're wrong; it actually just makes you come across like a pissy, whiney little bitch.

On the other hand, if you're just blowing smoke because it makes you feel good; that's cool too, just don't expect to ever be taken seriously.
Cheers

Marcus
Implant Mechanix – Design & Innovation - home
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining

Click to expand...

I don't need credibility from anyone here. I just get tired of you idiots flooding the topics with nonsense. You sit in on a Stratasys infomercial and eat the words up like Thanksgiving dinner and suddenly anything else in the world in rubbish.

If it isn't a $50,000+ Stratasys, it's IMPOSSIBLE to print at the same resolution as one.

That's the logic used in every rapid prototyping thread on this forum.

I've run Stratasys Dimensions(FDM), Stratasys uPrints(FDM) and several Zcorp powder printers.

I own several Reprap "hobby garage built garbage" machines.

Prusa i2
Prusa i3
Kossel Mini
Legacy Kossel
Roboro CoreXY

I've ran or seen several other of the "hobby garage junk" machines.

Solidoodle 2 and 3
SMC H1 and Rostock
Makerbot Replicator
Aluminatus


All of the "hobby garage built junk" will match the quality of a uPrint or Dimension when properly tuned, not to mention almost all of them are faster. The slicing software from Stratasys has few options, material is outrageously expensive (since you are such a detective, you will see where I mentioned that 3Dsystems, a direct Stratasys competitor, bought a filament supplier which many of the hobby user purchase from) and is largely the same material used by other until you hit the specialty materials where the exact composition changes. Support material is ALWAYS used in some way on a Dimension or uPrint, to begin with, it will always print a raft because the beds are not level to begin with. The print beds are also disposable...more $$$$. Holes can not be printed without support on the commercial machines, holes are easily done without support but they will not allow that so there goes more support material wasted($$$$) and a head change EVERY layer which basically doubles the print time.


So why do I get agressive? You all post nonsense without knowing the other sides and instantly slam any printer that isn't sold by a corporation as junk and unfit for prototyping use. I won't even get into the part where the other half of the forum looks at rapid prototyping machines as useless. Just a bunch of uptight snobs here, if you don't use a Mazak or a $900,000 Matsuura Lumex metal printer, you are just a hobbyist idiot.

You know tbj1, when I close my eyes and ears to the snarly tone, that was actually a very useful and informative post.
I was not aware of the speed advantage of a system that uses less or no support material; of course it makes perfect sense as soon as you point it out and why it's so.
Similarly, I've been using annoying workarounds to cover the whole printable area of the ABS mounting platforms and agree with you that it's expensive and wasteful to follow the Stratasys recommendation and replace the build platform after every print.
I concur fully that the price of the spools is just short of breathtaking; perhaps "usurious", or "blatant theft" is appropriate.

I've never used a "budget" class machine and I know nothing about their abilities.
It appears you have extensive experience; I'd certainly appreciate learning some of what you've discovered, and I'm sure many others would too.

So by all means, if you're minded to, send pictures, show us what you mean when you compare the output of one machine against another.
That's all hugely useful information and we'll be in your debt if you take the time to educate us, and become an ambassador for the technology.
There are plenty of us who can see the usefulness of 3D printing, but can't justify splashing out 25 grand for a new Uprint Plus or equivalent.

Certainly had I known what you're alluding to here, I'd have taken a much closer look before I wrote the cheque; but like many, I was unimpressed by the YouTube videos of inexpensive kit printers I'd seen, and dismissed them all without looking closely at any of them.

For that oversight I paid a pretty stiff premium; my used machine cost me twelve grand.
It's OK; I can make money with it and it's useful to me, but it's not as good as I'd like and if I could have achieved substantially the same outcome for a tenth of the cost, I'd be miles ahead.

So by all means, tell us of your experiences; I for one would love to know.
Cheers

Marcus
Implant Mechanix – Design & Innovation - home
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining

implmex said:

You know tbj1, when I close my eyes and ears to the snarly tone, that was actually a very useful and informative post.
I was not aware of the speed advantage of a system that uses less or no support material; of course it makes perfect sense as soon as you point it out and why it's so.
Similarly, I've been using annoying workarounds to cover the whole printable area of the ABS mounting platforms and agree with you that it's expensive and wasteful to follow the Stratasys recommendation and replace the build platform after every print.
I concur fully that the price of the spools is just short of breathtaking; perhaps "usurious", or "blatant theft" is appropriate.

I've never used a "budget" class machine and I know nothing about their abilities.
It appears you have extensive experience; I'd certainly appreciate learning some of what you've discovered, and I'm sure many others would too.

So by all means, if you're minded to, send pictures, show us what you mean when you compare the output of one machine against another.
That's all hugely useful information and we'll be in your debt if you take the time to educate us, and become an ambassador for the technology.
There are plenty of us who can see the usefulness of 3D printing, but can't justify splashing out 25 grand for a new Uprint Plus or equivalent.

Certainly had I known what you're alluding to here, I'd have taken a much closer look before I wrote the cheque; but like many, I was unimpressed by the YouTube videos of inexpensive kit printers I'd seen, and dismissed them all without looking closely at any of them.

For that oversight I paid a pretty stiff premium; my used machine cost me twelve grand.
It's OK; I can make money with it and it's useful to me, but it's not as good as I'd like and if I could have achieved substantially the same outcome for a tenth of the cost, I'd be miles ahead.

So by all means, tell us of your experiences; I for one would love to know.
Cheers

Marcus
Implant Mechanix – Design & Innovation - home
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining

Click to expand...

I just love it when we're all hugging...

xoxo

First, if you go to RedEyeOnDemand.com and fill in the right form, they'll send you some free 3D stuff. You can also get an endless supply of such crap by buying useful photo toys from photojojo. Neither have the nutritional value of crackerjacks however....

More importantly, you can explore the uses of the technology without all the F***ing around with the still ghastly machines.

Second, there are cases where additive machines really do make a lot of sense, and I own one as a side effect of such a project. It cost well under $50K. The trick is to get a z-corp machine and use the z-cast process (or something like it) to make flasks for castings. For things like aluminum cast parts for racecar engines, these things are the bees knees (because you end up changing them every few parts and you never need enough to justify hard tooling.)

In that sense, 3d printing is kind of like EDM - super useful for particular tasks, but far removed from mainstream practice for most things most of the time. (Though EDM is vastly more mature and developed technology.)

That said, the state of home/hobby 3d desktop printing today is comparable to personal computers in 1976.

Here's one to start, autoleveling has been very popular the past few months mainly using microswitches and a probe to find the bed plane and any discrepancies in the surface. The latest technology uses force sensitive resistors and the tip of the hotend itself to prevent any error that came from users entering incorrect offsets for the old probing system. It is still very new and poorly implemented as it wastes a thermistor input but can be pushed off to the multiple other unused analog inputs on the controller or using a cheap arduino micro to take the analog and convert to a digital signal and patch that to the current endstop inputs.

Kossel Air autolevel with Force Sensing Resistors - YouTube

A key patent that covered Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) expired this year which was preventing opensource designs to be shared. I would imagine quite a few people have already made a SLS printer but have not shared it due to that patent and would expect to see a few opensource SLS variants appearing in the coming months. SLS is a high resolution technology that is cheap to implement and works on a larger range of materials than SLA.

To add, all of the major Stereolithography (SLA) patents are expiring this year. FormLabs printer uses SLA technology and creates very high resolution prints (higher than SLS), but materials are limited and not as durable as a FDM piece.

My thoughts on 3d printing is that it is an expensive hobby. It has it's uses, but production isn't one of them, cheap isn't one of them. If you want to get a prototype to check to see how they all fit together if you don't trust solidworks, sure spend 30 hours getting a few inches squared and get your stuff printed using $200 a litre resin. Complex stuff takes support resin that blasts away, like the above comment is expensive. So a 3" vertical pipe with holes in it will take 10's of hours and hundred or so dollars of resin to make.

If you want to live with these choices go ahead, but know what you are getting into.

Mydrrin said:

My thoughts on 3d printing is that it is an expensive hobby. It has it's uses, but production isn't one of them, cheap isn't one of them. If you want to get a prototype to check to see how they all fit together if you don't trust solidworks, sure spend 30 hours getting a few inches squared and get your stuff printed using $200 a litre resin. Complex stuff takes support resin that blasts away, like the above comment is expensive. So a 3" vertical pipe with holes in it will take 10's of hours and hundred or so dollars of resin to make.

If you want to live with these choices go ahead, but know what you are getting into.

Click to expand...

That's why you would use a FDM process with material that is $30 a KG or something like $0.75 a cubic inch if I remember correctly compared to the price of Stratasys filament which rings in around $4.50 a cubic inch.

I'm sorry to have set you off, TJB... I'm a n00b (2yrs+) to the machining industry as a whole, and most of that has been in metal(plastic)cutting, so I'm much better at making chips than laying dots. We have several Stratasys machines at work, as well as a couple others (I'll have to look at them on Monday). I didn't mean to imply that you can't get "good" (This is all relative) results from cheap machines. But when the OP said they're looking for accuracy, my mind jumps to +/- .005, which is more or less the largest tolerance I get to work with (smallest is .0005 in a plastic piece with a .090 OD and a .065+.0005/-0 ID tolerance). Based on my (admittedly, limited) experience, you can't expect anything near that from a sub $800 printer. Also, the ability to use multiple media (in my head) is a price multiplier. And, as with anything to do with machining, a larger envelope increases price. I'm still learning, and make no bones about it, but I appreciate where you're coming from, so, thanks for the input; I always like learning.

The resolution of your printed part has a lot to do with how thick the material is that is extruded out of your extruder. Big thick blobs of molten goo, are not going to print with as high a level of accuracy as a bunch of thinner globs, but the will build the model faster. I built a thingomatic several years ago and the print quality was O/K. Not great, you can definately see the layer heights lines. But for what it was to us.... a tool for my daughter to learn how to better use G Code. It was great. I picked up a new Solidoodle for somewhere around $600. It prints with much smaller filament, and the resolution was better, but it was, and is a finicky sucker. Probably half the prints are abject failures for a host of reasons. You need to do a lot of tweaking with either the ThingOMatic or the Solidoodle.

Recently I picked up a Statasys Dimension SST 1200 at an auction. IT has a much larger build area, and the entire chamber is heated. The ability to print with soluble support structure is cool, but it always prints with support, even when I'm pretty sure I could build without it. The most striking thing is this sucker just works. Load in an STL file in catalyst, choose a couple options, hit print and walk away. If your STL file is good, you come back to a completed part that is pretty darned accurate. No mess, no fuss.

The build plates are supposed to be disposable chunks of ABS. I've found they clean up just fine by dunking them in the support removal solution, and wiping with acytone. They can be reused again and again. I'm not terribly happy with the cost of the filament and support material, but the material is definately of a higher quality that the hobbyist grade products. ABS runs about $265 for a cartridge. Stratasys has beetr filament grades now like ABS+, but they want $6000 to unlock the options to allow this material. Argyle sells a kit that contains the spool of filament and a new chip that you simply load into a used Stratasys cassette. It allows you to use AMAX, which is their version of ABS+ without paying the upgrade fee.

I printed a couple interesting duct transitions the other day. They were well beyond the scope of a hobby machine, and produced functional working parts. I figure the materials cost was around $80, but it took maybe 10 minutes to draw the part and hit print. It would have taken me the better part of a day to whip out some piece of crap that would have functioned as well.

I'm very impressed with my Statasys. Would I spend the $34k that this sucker cost new... not hardly. But at $7k for a used one, this functions very well.

For what it's worth a replicator dual extrusion version will print a part to a similar quality. It's just nowhere near as plug and play.