looking for a good 3d printer

[A_Camera]

Doddy, that's good to hear. I think your climate and mine is about the same....

I had plans on modifying my CNC to be able to use it as a 3D printer as well, so I bought all the parts necessary, together with two large rolls of PLA to start with. After some considerations I decided not to continue with the activity, mainly because I don't want to have a "plastic melter" machine in the house just side by side with my sleeping room. Having a CNC in that room is fine, but I am reluctant to have a 3D printer there also, due to the fumes. So I finally decided today, and actually bought a crazy cheap 3D printer.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Duty-free-Ge...72.m2749.l2649

I know it is a toy... ... a plastic fantastic acrylic machine... but it is good enough to test the concept and see if I want to use it more seriously or not. Anyway, if I want to continue using it, which I guess I will, then I know almost certainly how to make it much better, which parts to change and so on. This way I can move the printer out of the house and let it work for hours if needed. Maybe I'll set up a camera so I can watch and supervise it during the printing. Anyway, I'll get it next week and will see if it was worth the money or not.

Just an update in case someone is interested...

I bought the above printer, it arrived a few days later, no issues. Installation took a few hours with some help from the Geeetech official installation videos found on Youtube. Of course, based on my CNC-building activities, I knew that spending time on squaring and alignment worth every minute, so I spent about a week (not 24/7) aligning everything possible. Here is a short video of the assembly and some initial printing. It is not an instruction video, just showing some steps of my progress.



Printing was fine but slow, so just a week or two after I assembled the printer I made some quick and simple modifications. Actually, some of the modifications were implemented already during the original assembly, like replacing the PSU and the heat bed, but the major work was done during a weekend. I also made a short video of the modifications after they were done.



The printer is now "as good as it gets". It is fast and prints really nice, so considering the money and the time I spent with it, it was well worth the efforts. However, I would NOT recommend to anyone who expects a perfect machine right out of the box and is not ready to spend time on improving it. But it is a very good starter machine for a person who is handy and can make improvements, or a person who just want to have a 3D printer to play with and to learn some principles of 3D design and printing.

So the next step...

Currently I am in the process of building my own from scratch. It is a 100% aluminium frame, very robust and rigid design. Perhaps overkill for a 3D printer, but there is no harm in building it stronger than absolutely necessary.