Pretty sure I'm going to get myself an entry-level 3D printer to play with.

I've downloaded TinkerCAD and am wading through the tutorials so I can draw the necessary models.

Any advice as to sources and models of printers appreciated. At the moment, I'm leaning toward the Creality Ender 3

I have an Ender 5, Paul. I’d recommend it.

quote:

Originally posted by vthoky:
I have an Ender 5, Paul. I’d recommend it.

Nice! How much do you use it? Do you have any samples of stuff you've printed?

I got a cr10 V2 and have been running the hell out of it. For the last month it has been running 24/7 .

Very easy to use, was inexpensive and cheap parts. Have it hooked up to a raspberry pi so I have control over it from the web.

quote:

Originally posted by PHPaul:

quote:

Originally posted by vthoky:
I have an Ender 5, Paul. I’d recommend it.

Nice! How much do you use it? Do you have any samples of stuff you've printed?

It comes and goes. Sometimes I run it all day and all night; right now I haven't printed anything for a month. I have a job lined up for it tonight.

When I first got it, I felt like I wasn't creative enough to come up with things to print. Then I started surfing Grabcad.com, and chatting with a few people here at SF. I printed some comb-like gadgets to organize the pistol magazines in the drawer, custom-fit per magazine. I made a few for myself, and for friends and family. Nothing fancy at all.

Shortly after, Tha Rona came along, and I got involved in printing a pile of frames for face masks. That was fun, useful, and a job I could set up and walk away from for a few hours. I printed a couple hundred of those, I think. There was a dry spell, and then a friend asked me to print a magazine holster for her. That took off! I probably made a hundred or so for her business. I've got about ten different models now, and can print on a whim. A couple of members here have gotten hold of those and done some testing for me, giving valuable feedback.

A friend brought me a part from his kitchen cabinets, broken. "Can you print me one of these?" Yes, I can, once I get it measured well. I printed some pieces for a friend's small drone. I printed cup-holder sized cylinders, with openings shaped for the standard hand sanitizer bottle, for use in the cars.

I printed some visor-mount holders for SimpliSafe key fobs. Lesson learned: use ABS, not PLA, for things that will see in-car temperatures. PLA doesn't "set" quite as well, and will drop your gear in the floor unexpectedly.

Yesterday I saw a picture of a 3D printed "2020 dumpster fire" Christmas ornament. I've got one of those in the works now. Blue material for the dumpster, black lids, and orange flames. Hoping to have that finished mid-day tomorrow.

I have a bunch of fun with it. It's great to start a print job and then go to work, knowing it'll be finishing just as I get home. That fun is tempered, of course, with events like "coming home to find out you'd have had enough material to print nine of those instead of ten, but now you have ten incomplete pieces and get to start over," and "oops, one of those eight pieces fell over during the print, so now you have seven and a pile of plastic spaghetti." But those things happen, and it's all part of the learning process. I've printed enough things for "paying customers" to pay for the machine; I'm probably way in the hole after we figure material purchases. But that's what makes it a hobby and not a business, right?

quote:

Originally posted by nshumway:
Have it hooked up to a raspberry pi so I have control over it from the web.

That's way cool! I've thought a number of times about putting an X10 camera or such over mine, so as to be able to check on prints during the day.

One of my son's is printing a Chevy LT1 engine, one piece at a time. Its a model, so not real big. Lots of friends (racers) that are following it, the pieces, at each monthly meeting. I'm an old pervert and would prefer he print nice breasts, but what do I know.

^^^^^
It's hard to find material in the right shades....

I ordered my second one, a Prusa Mini+. My first was a big ender3 clone. It is a nice value, but the babysitting and constant tweaking and leveling got old, so I sold it.

We use prusa MK3Ss at work. No tweaking, no manual bed leveling, just nice prints.

The Mini is about double the cost of an Ender3. The time savings are worth it to me. Enders are great if you like tinkering and can deal with how fucking chinese they are. I think they are toys. Nice toys, but MEH for workhorse duty.

I'm probably going to take shit for all I just said. Im ok with that.

My Ender is totally frickin' Chinese, can't argue that.

My grandkids run their Ender 5 constantly and never have had a problem in about a year.

@DoctorSolo - Points well taken but I'm just dicking around at the hobby level and price point is a major factor for me so I'll deal with the tweaking and Chineseum.

Thanks for your input.

I've got a DaVinci 1.0 - don't recommend that brand if they are even still in business. The 1st thing I did was re-flash the software so I could use shit that worked. I've swapped basically everything but the motors & control board. It has printed a shit-load of plastic in 6 yrs, though.

I also built a D-bot to replace it. It has been fiddly, but that was the point of doing it myself. It's sub-$600 even with all I've re-done on it and much bigger than most of the low-end chineseium crap (300x200x300 build space, I'd go 300x300xwhatever if I was to do over)
2018-06-21_11-58-33 by Andy Snider, on Flickr

The one I'm looking at has what appears to be an SD card slot.

Can I take that to mean I can load the design on an SD card and the printer can work independently of the computer?

Also, just idle curiosity: How do you print multi-colored objects? Print each color separately and assemble, or are there printers capable of multiple nozzles/colors or whatever?

There are printers with multiple hot-ends that will do different filaments in the same print. That is extra tricky though.

Just as a minor history lesson, creality got their start by selling a cheaper clone of one of the Prusa designs. I have a lulzbot mini I’ve run for a couple years. If I were doing it again, I would buy a prusa mk 3, and I’d get it pre-assembled. Dorking around with the printer to get it dialed in was fun for a while, but now I’d prefer it just worked.

Also, if I was doing really small, non-structural stuff, I’d get a laser/resin printer rather than filament.

Creality printers aren’t bad, but Prusa still makes them better, IMO.

Edit: and yes, the SD card slot means you load the output from your slicer onto an SD card, and the printer reads the file off the SD card. I don’t like doing that, so I got a raspberry pi and set up octopi on it to let me send files and manage stuff through a web interface.

- Bret

I have been looking at an ender 3 v2 as well. On reddit there is a fosscad group for printing firearms. They say salt annealing is making the parts more durable

Most important two things I have learned-

Whether the print is two hours or two+ days, all it takes is ONE POWER BUMP and it’s all bye bye.
Have a UPS (with a good battery) connected to your 3D printer and laptop or desktop as a power filter and backup.
(We eventually began using a laptop with the 3D printer because the laptop used less power).
Where we live there are occasional power bumps and it became extremely frustrating. The UPS eliminates one potential annoyance-

Next was that PLA, Nylon, and PVA 3D printer filaments are hygroscopic- (that is to say that they absorb moisture from the environment).
Depending on the humidity, the filament can quickly be rendered unusable until the moisture is removed. If not using an opened reel, seal it in a container/bag along with a desiccant which will help preserve it. However, it’s important to know that (to the best of my knowledge) you cannot effectively dry filament out by storing it in an airtight container with desiccant.
And don’t use your kitchen oven to try and dry filament spools. The process produces off gassing. These gasses can be toxic, which can be dangerous to inhale or have anywhere near food.

quote:

Originally posted by PHPaul:
Also, just idle curiosity: How do you print multi-colored objects? Print each color separately and assemble, or are there printers capable of multiple nozzles/colors or whatever?

The 3D printers I have used have only handled one color at a time, so it's build separate pieces and assemble.

However: the robotics team at the high school has an Ultimaker 3D printer that can handle two different-colored spools at once, printing from either as required. That's fun to watch!

Oh, and Rinehart is right: put it on a UPS when you get it.

I’m an Ender fan too with my CR10v2 and 3 Pro. Just a hobby, but need to have the time to get designs and prototypes printed.

To help automate things you may also want a Raspberry Pi and get Octo-Print so that from the slicer you queue up the jobs.

It is a fun hobby, and several DIY attempts to get it setup and printing. Start with the base and get comfortable with the materials you want to use.

There are lots of knobs and dials to tweak (something like a nuclear power plant control room) but using basic settings and getting your prints is mesmerizing and you’ll be watching every print.

Thanks to all contributors. As usual, The Forum is the fount of knowledge.

Huge believer in UPS systems here. Wouldn't be without one not only for power loss, but for line conditioning as our power tends to be a little on the dirty side. Any electronics prone to any sensitivity whatever are on a UPS. (Which reminds me, I need to get one for the upstairs TV)

Seeing as this is my first excursion into 3D printing, and it's just for the odd print at a hobby level (at least initially) I've settled on the Ender 3D V2. Question now is Amazon or direct from Creality. Creality has a significantly better price, but they haven't yet said whether or not the price includes shipping. Prime free shipping may make it a wash.

I have 7 FDM printers and one resin printer. I haven't had the opportunity to play with the Creality brands but they are quite popular and seem to be a great bang for the buck. Most of what I do filament wise is PLA. Easy peasy to work with. PETG is getting popular but can be stubborn sometimes.

I do mostly movie prop type stuff but they do come in quite handy for "practical" stuff as well like replacing broken mount brackets on my keyboard tray for example. Being able to design/draw your own stuff opens all kinds of uses for having one. I've printed Christmas and birthday presents....actually printing gift boxes right now as I'm typing

As far as where to go for models..... alot will depend on what you would be looking to print really.
Yeggi is sort of like google/bing for 3D models. https://www.yeggi.com/

But specific places, Thingiverse is pretty much the "go to" for free stuff. It's buggy as hell sometimes but has a lot of stuff. https://www.thingiverse.com/

Cults is another good one, both free and paid. A bit of a pain to find stuff sometimes tho. https://cults3d.com/en

MyMiniFactory, free and paid. https://www.myminifactory.com/

Gambody, mostly paid but a bunch of neat stuff. Also a bit "overwhelming" trying to find stuff sometimes. https://www.gambody.com/index/index

NASA has a page for stuff. https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/models

Cgtrader, Free and paid, also....a bit of a pain searching sometimes. https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-print-models

For some resources, reviews etc, jump on youtube if you haven't already been doing so. 3D Printing Nerd, Makers Muse, Naomi Wu, Thomas Sanlander, Chaos Core Tech, Uncle Jessy, Punished Props....their are more but those are what I have at the moment...lol

It is definitely a fun hobby. Before you know it, you will be "finding" all kinds of reasons to have one lol. I am actually in a facebook group that is called F**k that, I'll just print it! It is basically exactly what you think it would be by reading the name. You can print damn near anything.