Quote Originally Posted by dudz View Post
I'm curious to know "after putting everything together" how much setting up and calibrating should I expect to do, to get the system running properly ?
If you think that there is a bit of black magic about getting speeds, feeds and depths of cut right with a router or mill, then you ain't seen nothing yet... There is probably as much art as science in the current 3D printing technology. Admittedly, you will probably have better chance of success in using a commercial hot-end on the extruder (mine is all home-made) but there is a whole set of parameters to tweak, from hot-end temperature to layer height, from printing speed to nozzle calibration. Have you seen how many parameters there are in something like Slic3r, which is a popular slicing package? (That is, the 3D equivalent of CAM and toolpath generation). It's a lot of fun, but I'm not sure that fused-filament 3D printing is quite as straightforward as the current hype suggests. I built my printer about 2 years ago and even though I've printed a fair bit of useful stuff on it, I'm still learning.