Cheap 3D Printer Recommendation

[Desertboy]

You're right of course, I'll put the frame together first how it's meant to be assembled and then play it by ear if I feel it's not strong enough.

[magicniner]

That looks like quite a good kit. It'll be good to see how you get on with it, and what you mod along the way.

Shipping from Factory 3D was quick, I ordered on Friday and it was delivered at lunch time today.
Packing is very good with plenty of padding where required and individually packed sets of parts for each assembly stage covered in the instructions.
The instructions are clear and easy to follow and everything goes together with little drama.
I've finished the build but won't have chance for power up and testing until later in the week,



- Nick

[Desertboy]

Looks a nice Prusa, wondered what was going on with the extruder until I realised it was a mirror lol.

You have the mk2 heated bed it takes ages to heat up for ABS but for PLA it's pretty quick. I recommend getting some cork board to insulate under the heated bed, this will really help with heating up times. Another solution is to change to the mk3 aluminium heated bed and power it with 24v but this is more hassle as if you send 24v to the ramps board without modifying the ramps first it will fry the arduino but there are a few ways around this.

If you use the mk3 and 24v heat up times to 110c are ~ 2minutes, if you use the mk3 at 12v you will see no difference in heat up times at all. The Mk3 also has the advantage that being aluminium you can use a cheap inductive sensor. But I bet you already have autoleveling.

[m_c]

Looks good.
Think that will be on my list for sometime after the summer.

[cropwell]

I have had a Wanhao Duplicator 4S for three years now and it still performs well. It is difficult to get 3D prints to dimensional accuracy due to spread. Sometimes the only way is guesstimation. For general purpose though, it is OK.

The main problem, I have found, is bed adhesion. It is a bit of a titser when a corner lifts. I have tried different bed temperatures and bed substrates (Kapton tape, masking tape, ABS washes etc) The current one giving me some success is frosted glass with an ABS wash (thin solution of ABS in Methyl Ethyl Ketone or Acetone (Dimethyl ketone). I now run the bed at 110 degC for ABS and I don't print with anything else.

I bought the steel framed model for rigidity and I feel it was a wise decision. The second extruder has hardly been used, I have never seen much necessity for two colour prints.

I am about to rebuild the RH extruder as there is wear on the feed gear and the plastic frame has a pear shaped hole where the filament feeds, which makes it awkward to change filament.

I always print from SD cards as I can turn everything else off in my den and go to bed, leaving the machine chugging away (all night sometimes).

One last point :- Sam Courtenay, the Agent for Wanhao in UK is one of the most helpful people I know in 3D printing, sending me related parts, in case they were needed, when I only ordered and paid for the primary bit I needed.

Cheers,

Rob

[magicniner]

Looks good.
Think that will be on my list for sometime after the summer.

I'm impressed with many aspects of the engineering, including the all metal Mk8 extruder unit, my first print was the first successful part ;-)

[magicniner]

My second print with the Factory 3D



I don't know enough about what I'm doing yet to be fiddling with any settings, this is just with all the defaults as it came out of the box ;-)

[Desertboy]

I'm impressed with many aspects of the engineering, including the all metal Mk8 extruder unit, my first print was the first successful part ;-)

The extruder is the one thing I'm not changing from the mendel but I did change to an e3d clone hotend (Proper all metal) a while ago so I could print more exotic materials which I haven't tried. I did eye up the all metal mk8 but I have so many things to spend money on that the printer is low down on priorities lol.

Very nice prints ;)

[Desertboy]

Got my frame last week so yesterday I started to strip down my mendel and rebuild in the plywood frame. Immediately there were issues lol but nothing too severe got about 1/2 done.

Issues were
1. No build manual, so we built using their photo as a reference, only after we mostly built it up did we discover their reference photo is incorrect lol (Or they reversed a part in laser cutting) the power supply would be on the outside of the frame lol the way they show it built.
This is the picture they supply


And this is the correct way (See how the power supply mount is orientated)


If I tried to fit it the way they picture the power supply is mounts are in the wrong place and the power supply would be on the outside.

had to flip both the back plate and bottom 180°

2. It's built for 5mm threaded bar for the z axis. I'm using 8mm lead screws needs some modification for it to fit.

3. My extruder needs modifying to fit with the inductive sensor

4. Someone borrowed my soldering iron last week and I forgot to get it back will do today, this is needed so I can wire up my mk3 bed so the inductive sensor will work.


I have 2 inductive sensors one works at 5v but the one that is 12v only has a better range that can detect the aluminium plate through a mirror for autolevelling. Although the plan is to minimise autolevelling by probing the bed then adjusting until as flat as possible in the first place.

I already know the mods I want to make when I get my cnc machine working.

I figure I don't need anti back lash nuts on the z axis as gravity will do the same job but we shall see it will be easy enough to retrofit.

[Desertboy]

Bastard 3 pieces are wrong I've contacted them but they are in Ukraine and took a month to get printer in first place very annoying I might need to finish my cnc router first before I can finish this :(

I might try printing to scale and sticking the correct outline to 6mm ply and cutting out with a jigsaw.

My K


and 2 L's are wrong


they should look like this