Quote Originally Posted by Zeeflyboy View Post
Routers don't make good printers, they really have opposite requirements in most respects.

Printers ideally need to be fast and light in the moving parts. It is of course possible to put a print head in a router but it won't make an ideal printer.
I think this statement is wrong and a bit simplified. Yes, printers need to be fast but no, they don't need to be light in the moving parts, why would they? But... hopefully I have first hand experience about this soon because I have just recently started a 3D printer conversion project for my own router and just recently ordered some parts which I think may be needed. I have no experience in 3D printing, but what I have seen is that it is in fact very slow. Just made a model of something which a 22mm tall 70mm diameter cylinder and test printed in Slic3r and according to that, it would take over one hour to print it. To mill it will take about 10 minutes. Of course, that's because all the void must be filled with plastic, but having a look at the G-code, it clearly shows that even most Chinese routers with moving gantry and a maximum speed of around 4000mm/min can easily keep up the pace. My router with 9000mm/min will definitely outrun all the most popular 3D printers in both speed and acceleration. But this is just theory so far. I still need to build the necessary parts together to be able to easily switch between 3D printer and router, since I don't want to permanently convert but want to switch between the two.

The only real advantage of a dedicated 3D printer I can think of is that routers are normally noisier than 3D printers and also much larger and heavier. But I don't think size and weight can be a disadvantage for a 3D printer, except that if you only want a 3D printer then it is unnecessary to make it heavy and large because it only makes it more expensive.

Anyway, this is going to be my autumn project, currently just collecting parts and playing with different software. Maybe I'll start a thread later on about it.