I'd like to dip my toe in the water in regards to a 3d printer.
I'd like to spend less then a grand
I'd like it to be compatible with multiple types of software. Sketch up, solid works, whatever I find is the most user friendly to me.
I'd like to be able to use bulk generic filament. Nothing proprietary.
I'd like to be able to print abs and the other common materials.
I'd like a print surface that is fairly large.

Passed that I do not know enough to know if i want anything else.
If you guys have any experience in this field I would love to hear it.

Thanx

 

Open to just about anything as long as I am able to stay the "guy who uses a 3d printer" and not become "the guy that spends all day trying to make his 3d printer print"
I'm just coming at this from 95% ignorance.

 

How big of parts do you need to make?

 

1'x1'x1'? Not really sure, just would like to not get future fucked as much as possible. In my experience you buy bigger then you think you need at first.

 

Well I ended up with a cr-10. Amazon had a flash sale for 325 shipped and all my research told me the limiting factor on this machine would be me. Just the way I like it.
I got it unboxed and assembled in about a half hour and was trying my first print. I had a2-3 failed first prints do to being an inexperienced operator but once I got the bed leveled properly and the machine setup correctly my first print went great. Since then I have had the thing running pretty much non stop for the last 2-3 weeks and gotta say I absolutely love it. The build size is about perfect and the ease of use is awesome. The one I bought was pretty upgaded from the factory in a full metal hot end, 24 volt OS, updated fan shroud ect. So I havn't had to print many upgrades.
I will say the keystone for me was building an enclosure. Open air I did ok with PLA but once I tried abs or hips it was just not going to work out. My first enclosure for the sake of proof of concept was some mylar backed styrofoam and a bunch of towels. That just kept the beds heat inside but used no external heat source. I found that by reunning the bed at the target temp for twenty minutes or so ahead of time yielded a fully serviceable part in HIPS and almost one in ABS.
I built a 24x30 enclosure lined with foam, a pair of 150watt 12v heaters, a generic 12v powersupply from a dead computer, a generic thermostat kit from amazon, and an led light bar for the light. In all the thing worked out killer. Couldn't be happier. The last few complaints I had were all taken care of with the enclosure, they were:
The printer was a bit loud before. With the enclosure and some rubber isolator feet i printed the thing can run all night and not be heard.
I used to have some warping and de-laminating issues before the enclosure. Even with the styrofoam and towel cover. Having auxiliary heat fixed these problems
The extra heat also lets me run the print at a fair amount faster pace. About 75% faster so far with no issues, like layer adhesion or bubbling.
In the room I had the printer, light was not great. I found myself struggling sometimes to see wtf I was doing. The big led lightbar absolutely eliminated this issue. In fact the light is almost too bright.
I had some issues with bed adhesion in the past. In order to solve this I was using glue to hold the part to the bed. This led to a few issues where I lost prints while trying to remove them from the bed. Ripping out large chunks and killing my print trying to get it off the table. With the extra heat I have been able to go back to just hairspray, even with abs and have great luck while making print removal super easy.
I have been able to lower my bed temp twenty* C as well and not lost any prints since. This has been really nice from a time point of view as before I was needing to let the bed run for twenty or so before printing, and I was needing to run almost 100*C of bed temp to get a good HIPS print. This took around an hour and a half to make happen. This cuts down on a bunch of time. Now with the enclosure at a consistent 38*C it only takes about 10 minutes to go from 38* to 80* and only about another 10 to get to 100*
In all, my entire setup has me around $500 for the printer, some extra filament, and the parts for the box.

While I do not have anything to compare it to, I would think anyone looking to do any printing would do well by this printer and setup.

led light


power supply switch


switch panel


heaters


t-stat controllers


Power supply is a generic 360w supply. Think regular printer or PC
A standard 4 pin 30amp load reduction relay. The generic chinese ones would work fine. I stole mine from the junk yard.
The box materials i didn't have I got from the home depot which wasn't much.
The plexi which is usually the stupid expensive part I got from walmart in a poster frame for ten bucks.
Most of the box hardware like hinges and handles and such were all printed on the machine.

 

That is great, I really want to get something like this eventually but I want something with more bed area than most of the current home owner ones have without spending big coin. I don't care if it's a rectangle or not.

I also want to get an aluminum smelter going again too, I think that you would have something insane coupling one of these with some casting.

 

I agree. I have done some backyard casting and its fun. I definitely think the two systems would compliment each other.

The cr-105s is 500mm x 500mm x 500mm. That is the biggest bed of any of the home owner, desk top, residential, diy style printers I could find when looking for one. Going rate is just under a grand. Keep in mind on those big prints it takes a loooooong time. Some of the seemingly "normal" sized prints I have done have taken 24 hours no problem.

My cr10 is 300mm 300mm 400mm. wich so far has been big enough. I've had to get creative once or twice with angleing or rotating, but thats no big thing.

 

Have you ever bonded pieces together? I'm wondering about how that'd work out. In the end I'd like to make an intake manifold.

 

Yes i have. There are a few ways. In abs you just acetone weld them together. Other materials may work better with different types of glue or solvents. Or you can engineer conections into your prints. Snaps, press fits, flanges are all doable.

 

So my adventures into 3d printing have been pretty fun. I am finally comfortable enough in its use and in some of the design software to be able to tackle a few kinda cool projects. It has taken me longer then i thought to start getting to the point i am at but oh well. I came into this pretty much a computer and cnc virgin. The extent of my computer skills stopped at youtube and google.
Here are some pics of some of my ramblings in plastic.

My drill press sucked, it was way too fast to effectively cut steal and anytime you tried to dill a hole of any size, the belts would slip on the shivs and either ruin/flat spot the belts, or best case just be annoying as hell. Putting a hole saw in it was an exercise that fell somewhere between futility and patience. Because of this, I have always wanted to run a cog style belt on it, but never found an elegant enough solution. I looked through catalogs for generic belts and pullies, and even the wrecking yard for timing belt components. I ended up building a set of gears in Fusion 360 software and modeling them 3d. It looked good so I printed them so i could measure the belts length.
Unfortunately, the belts I received would not engage properly with my tooth pattern on the gears. Even though i spaced the teeth at 8mm for the given tooth profile I must have missed something. So i modified my gears and reprototyped them, ordered another belt as the diameter had to change a bit and the pictures is what i ended up with.
It turns at 185 rpm now and no longer slips. Even with a 4" hole saw in aluminium. Something that was a pipe dream before. In all the project took too long and I fucked up too many times, but hey, I'm learning. At least it was cheap. In all includeing the belts i ordered on amazon, and the plastic to make the gears, I'm into it about 30 bucks. I Made the gears out of a material called PTEG
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My gutter repair. I didn't have any white abs or nylon. It looks like shit, but works great.
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My printer in its enclosure printing parts. You can see the little switch panel, gauge and t-stat controller i mounted on its face. Also the latches, handles, and hinges i printed.
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Meader/tube modeling peices
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One of my gears i printed for the press. The belt did not engage the teeth properly, I am still not sure how i fucked that up. The teeth pattern are 8mm apart and the belt is advertised as a 8mm tooth profile. I Think it has to do with how the teeth wrap around the pulley but i'm not sure. In all i fixed it but this gear was not usable.
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This was a duct o made to help air through a race car to a heat exchanger for a cooler. I modeled it and printed it to use 4" dryer style ducting and 6mm screws. This one i printed in HIPS plastic. I was trying different materials at this point looking for something that was better, but ended up back at ABS for this part. I like the quality of the HIPS material, but haven't found its niche place in the world yet in terms of application.
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This peice I made and modeled as a bushing for a steering column in a 30's hot rod. It slides over the column and bolts through the holes into the column with a horseshoe shaped bracket wrapping around it.
My friend's hot rod had this bushing that I thinks it was original and made out of wood. It had rotted to the point the column flopped all over everywhere and was generally scary to drive. this i printed in abs, modeled in fusion 360 and was really happy with its fit. This was my first "car part" I was able to make that did a job that would have been harder to do any other way i could think of. I printed 2. the red one was my first, I didn't expect it to work actually but it did. So I had to print another in black. Dammed if you do, damned if you don't
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Another print was to fix my gutter that was broken in a recent storm. I hunted all over for the proper replacement piece but it seems that design is no longer made/stocked/serviced. So I measured the gutter, sorted out the design on fusion and printed it. It snaps in place, and works flawlessly,. (unless you consider the red material looks butt ugly) I didn't have any white ABS at the time, so red it was.

There is also a picture of my enclosure and printer. The enclosure was pretty key for me. It allowed my bigger prints to come out warp free and allowed a slightly faster print speed.

My current project is a header/manifold modeling kit. I found the design online, downloaded it and made a few changes to it. I am currently printing pieces for 1.75 inch tube with a 2" radius. Once you snap them all together and get them to fit, its pretty easy to cut the pieces you need out of u bends to get a good header or manifold that clears all the things. It has also shown to be worth every penny in terms of material saved. My local mandrel bender company is basically a shadow of its former self and withering by the day, so i have had to look elsewhere for material which has lead to much higher material costs. I printed this same sort of kit in 1.65" and it worked awesome for a friend of mines project I was helping him with. So much so I no longer own the 1.65" kit LOL. where normally i have a few pie cuts or peices that end up in the "try again later" bucket whenever i do a header, this time i had probably 10 percent of the waste due to the kit.
There are a few things i think i am going to change on it in the future sometime to make it more user friendly, but so far its a huge time and money saver. It takes about 40 bucks in plastic to make a pair of full leangth long tube headers in 1.75" with flanges and collectors. The big limit is its pretty slow. It a week of constant printing on my 300mmx300mm bed to get the entire set printed.
The nice part is, you just get it setup and running and then just drop in once every 8 hours or so to make sure it all looks good and you have not run out of filament.

 

That is something i have found as well. Abs has been kinda my go to for alot of things. Pteg has been a good choice as well, just kinda stringy. HIPS has turned out what i would call my prettiest prints, but it does not hold up particularly well.

 

So as I have figured out what to print, and how to print it I have really started to to be able to take advantage of being able to print stuff.
I bought on a deal 3 more slightly smaller machines and built a tower for them. This has really made larger batch projects a lot faster as you can imagine. I still use my bigger first printer for abs as its in a heated enclosure, and its still my favorite machine, but the three little ones really allow me to be flexible on projects and not have to wait for one to be done before I start another.

I have also started to get the hang of fusion 360 cad software, and its amazing.
I love being able to take an idea, draw it and in a few hours, hold it in my hands.

I bolted a 102mm TB to a TBSS intake and the throttle blade woul hit the manifold during its opening. In the passed i filed a bit of the manifold away and made it clear, but I figured I'd print a little adapter with an intigrated snap fit and a taper from 102 to 95 or so that the opening is. Best part is i can make it whenever i want and not have to break out any metal working tools. i printed it in reinforced hi temp nylon at 350*'s so I do not think temp will ever be an issue. I also built a set of spacers for the rail out of the same material. .7" long made up for the longer injectors.
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This is a press block for taking genIII pistons apart with out killing them. I printed it in PLA, with really thick walls and 95% infill. 95% seemed to work better then 100 for some reason. Maybe allowing a bit of expansion or room for the material to go.
I didn't think it would hold up long. In fact i kinda just thought it would die right away but i was wrong. It will stall my 20 ton press without deforming and I have used it now on over 25 pistons both pressing on and off. The surface has gotten a bit beat up, but nothing to worry about or effect its use. I also made on in 4" for the 6 liter engines that has seen a bunch of use as well with no issues.
The only thing of note really, is i screwed up my first design and didn't make it tall enough by aboyt an eight of an inch so, so the pin would not come completely out without a bit of a spacer or block under it. Nice thing is, its easy to add a half inch or s to the design and now I no longer have any problems with it.
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My 3 newer printers and the tower i built for them. they are a bit smaller, but work really well and were a great price.
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My first machine building a trailblazer SS intake manifold map sensor clip I designed in fusion. I could not find one anywhere, so i drew one up and am working on getting it right. My first attempt was a fail in the design. This one should have better dimensions for the part. I hope.
Fusion is amazing, but i see why that stuff is a career in itself. #ad

 

The little snap fit clip turned out great. Fits the manifold well and does not seem like it will have any issue staying on.
I "cycled" it on and off ten or so times and it seems to work well and survive. It was harder to design then i thought but it did turn out ok.
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And it installed
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I am super jealous of your setup!

 

Thanx!
glad you like it.
Its pretty strait forward and pretty affordable to duplicate though if a guy wanted to. I certainly would change a few things in mine.
But in all it works ok for me and i really enjoy it. I cant say its saved me any money, or done anything i could not have done any other way, but it has put me in the position of learning how to design and 3d print stuff. If you ever want to dip you toe in the water let me know.