looking for a good 3d printer

[Desertboy]

Some of the cheap ones are not even plastic, but thin plywood.

Nothing wrong with a I3 Graber ;)


I bought the frame for one because they look good especially when varnished.

They print very well mate has had one a few years working many hours day and still produces excellent prints.

most grabers are 6mm ply but if you have a router working you can easily cut a 12mm version with minor alterations in cad.

When you start worrying too much about rigidity in the printer then you need to ditch the shit 8mm smooth rod lol and go hiwin route. But for home printer stupid overkill.

Nearly all Prusa I3 based builds I've come across print well it's a good design there probably better stuff kicking around now but Prusa I3 printers are certainly not a bad choice.

I've seen Acrylic, aluminium & ply builds and the box frame works just as well made with a table saw lol.

[charlieuk]

I used a cheap clone one while I was away and it was a pain in the butt trying to get the bed level and messing about with setting and glue stick and lifting prints and ...........

when I got back I ordered the genuine prusa and within 10 min of turning it on it was printing faultless prints. if you put a price on your time the extra cost of the genuine will pay for it self almost instantly and with a lot less stress plus you get a 250 x 210 x 200 actual build area a proper Rambo and e3d extruder. down load slic3r and all the settings are all ready tweaked by prusa and can go down to 0.05 layer hight

[magicniner]

When you start worrying too much about rigidity in the printer then you need to ditch the shit 8mm smooth rod lol and go hiwin route. But for home printer stupid overkill.

Understanding the engineering and physics involved will show the elegance of the Prusa design, this is that the 8mm unsupported rods are not loaded dynamically the way they would be in a router or mill, the carriage acceleration loads are transferred by the drive belts, motors and motor mounts to the frame with the rails simply supporting carriage weight.
Failure to understand this might lead to over engineering the rails and under engineering the frame when it is the frame which supplies the required rigidity for this style of machine, if you sensibly move to a tube feed system with the reel off the machine the only significant loads experienced by the 6mm Aluminium plate upper frame are in the + & - X travel directions where a planar frame performs extremely well indeed.

- Nick

[A_Camera]

Nothing wrong with a I3 Graber ;)

I bought the frame for one because they look good especially when varnished.

They print very well mate has had one a few years working many hours day and still produces excellent prints.

most grabers are 6mm ply but if you have a router working you can easily cut a 12mm version with minor alterations in cad.

When you start worrying too much about rigidity in the printer then you need to ditch the shit 8mm smooth rod lol and go hiwin route. But for home printer stupid overkill.

Nearly all Prusa I3 based builds I've come across print well it's a good design there probably better stuff kicking around now but Prusa I3 printers are certainly not a bad choice.

I've seen Acrylic, aluminium & ply builds and the box frame works just as well made with a table saw lol.

I have no doubt that it can be made to work, especially for printing toys, but I was referring to the thin simple designs. The one you show is really large and is more like a CNC router than a 3D printer, at least as far as the base and the beam is concerned. Also those rods look more rigid, something like 12mm (1/2") in diameter, not just 8mm. Then again, it depends on what you want to use it for. Personally I see no reason for using wood or anything similar, but I know some people disagree.

[Desertboy]

I think it must be perspective because it's 8mm smooth rod, standard prusa build size.

I have the same printer it's not particularly big I had a mendel and just bought the ply frame and swapped the parts over.

Was a massive upgrade from the original mendel lol.

This was the mendel


One of the early FDM 3d printers for the home

[Boyan Silyavski]

Original prusa would have been the kill with Hiwin bearings and sturdier bed. I dont believe square supported bearings are overkill for a printer, i believe they are a must for a machine that moves non stop. My Prusa growlingly agrees from the garage. My wife will tell you that too.

[Zeeflyboy]

The Cetus3d looks really good but resisting the urge to say "I have all the parts to build that...."

the only down side is that it will only do PLA. Do you guys use nylon much or is it really difficult to do the engineering plastics?

In my personal opinion, a heated bed is a huge plus. I'm not a big fan of ABS but there's a cornucopia of options out there and most are much easier with a heated bed.

My personal favourite material for functional parts is XT-CF20 but it's a bit of a pain in some ways. Simply the best material I've ever used for strength, layer adhesion and lack of warp. As a cheaper option for normal use I am getting on very well with e3d's edge.

[cropwell]

Understanding the engineering and physics involved will show the elegance of the Prusa design, this is that the 8mm unsupported rods are not loaded dynamically the way they would be in a router or mill, the carriage acceleration loads are transferred by the drive belts, motors and motor mounts to the frame with the rails simply supporting carriage weight.
Failure to understand this might lead to over engineering the rails and under engineering the frame when it is the frame which supplies the required rigidity for this style of machine, if you sensibly move to a tube feed system with the reel off the machine the only significant loads experienced by the 6mm Aluminium plate upper frame are in the + & - X travel directions where a planar frame performs extremely well indeed.

- Nick

I bought the Wanhao 4DS because of the steel frame, everything else is Makerbot, which has been cloned a lot, so it must have some plus points. The filament reels are on the frame, tube fed to the extruders. The machine has a heated base, which I have a borosilicate plate on. I only print in ABS and on glass I find a thin wash of ABS solution in DMK (acetone ) or MEK (methyl ethyl ketone) gives me good adhesion and easy separation when the bed cools. The other thing it has is a hood to maintain the temperature in the enclosure, which reduces (but not always eliminates) corner lifting. There was mention of a £259 Makerbot clone, and if this has a steel frame, I would consider it a good buy, if I were looking for a 3D printer.

I haven't seen many Hiwin railed machines, probably for a good reason

Cheers,

Rob

[Ross77]

Thanks for all the advice, starting to get an idea of what I need. certainly lots of choice.

Is there any advantage of a 24v system? I'm assuming lower current so less stress on the heater and faster stepper motors?

Thanks again for all the input

[Zeeflyboy]

24v better all round. My printer was originally 12v, they later changed newer models over to 24v and I upgraded - steppers happier, bed heats up much faster, hot end a bit faster.