looking for a good 3d printer

[cropwell]

I printed a couple of dozen shaped washers for a customer/friend and the last two I left to print overnight and went to bed. In the morning I found the print had come unstuck and the ABS just kept extruding, but due to the unstuck component hanging round the extruder, a great mass of ABS had accumulated

So I am just preheating the nozzle and will leave it for half an hour to see if it gets liquid enough to come away without damaging the heat blanket.

I made a couple of mods to the printer. The first one was to fit stainless steel extruder gears, but this proved wrong. The stainless does not have the self cleaning property that the original brass has, so any minor filament jam just grinds a notch in the filament and the dross just stays on the gear and requires disassembly to get to it to clean.

I have also replaced the 40mm M3 bolts that hold the extruder motors, extruder, heat sink and fan on to the bar with the nozzles. I used 50mm M3 studs and wing nuts, so that I can remove the heat sink to get to the extruder gear without having to take the extruder motor off the frame (cos it is a bugger to get it back).

The other thing I did was make a jig for setting the height of the nozzles with the nozzle bar out of the printer. It saves a hell of a lot of hassle later on in assembly, when you can't easily get to the nozzle height clamping grub screws.
.

I think I may have gotten away without having to replace the heat blanket


Cheers M'dears !

[Chaz]

So, IVe got one of my original Mendelmax printers still but its a bit tired.

Can anyone suggest what I'd look at today for a 'decent' budget printer? Dont mind a bit of fettling to get it 100% right as long as things like the extruder work reliably (this always seems to be the main issue on most printers).

Thanks

[AlexDoran]

So, IVe got one of my original Mendelmax printers still but its a bit tired.

Can anyone suggest what I'd look at today for a 'decent' budget printer? Dont mind a bit of fettling to get it 100% right as long as things like the extruder work reliably (this always seems to be the main issue on most printers).

Thanks

Im slowly compiling parts to build a "Voron", http://vorondesign.com/voron2.1

Alex

[Chaz]

Im slowly compiling parts to build a "Voron", http://vorondesign.com/voron2.1

Alex

Thanks, ill look them up, are they good? What type of cost?

[AlexDoran]

Thanks, ill look them up, are they good? What type of cost?

It's a premium DIY build, iirc (probably i dont), the BOM is going to set you back close to ~800, most of the guys building them dont have access to a Mill so i assume you will save a decent amount on having someone machine the bed etc. If you have a discord account they have a good community there.

Alex

[Chaz]

It's a premium DIY build, iirc (probably i dont), the BOM is going to set you back close to ~800, most of the guys building them dont have access to a Mill so i assume you will save a decent amount on having someone machine the bed etc. If you have a discord account they have a good community there.

Alex

Thanks. I have a few machines so can make stuff as needed.

[AlexDoran]

Thanks. I have a few machines so can make stuff as needed.

The main attraction to me is that these guys are printing close to 140mm/s with good quality, and have a decent build volume (350mm2).

[Chaz]

Does anyone sell these as ready to go? I dont have the time to source the hardware and possibly do the build.

[AlexDoran]

Does anyone sell these as ready to go? I dont have the time to source the hardware and possibly do the build.

to my knowledge no, might be worth jumping on the reddit or discord and asking the question though.

[AndyUK]

So, IVe got one of my original Mendelmax printers still but its a bit tired.

Can anyone suggest what I'd look at today for a 'decent' budget printer? Dont mind a bit of fettling to get it 100% right as long as things like the extruder work reliably (this always seems to be the main issue on most printers).

Thanks

I'm reasonably happy with the 2 Creality CR-10S printers in the family. Circa £350 6 months ago. Printing within an hour of opening the box. Only fault we've had so far is the SD card slot can be a bit dodgy recognizing the card, which can start a session with 10mins of faffing taking the card in and out (I probably just need to reflow the solder on the control board) - but easily solved by using a raspberry pi and octoprint.

Otherwise I've also heard good things about the Ender3 and ANET A8.