[Closed] Cheap 3d printer kits - Experiences?

Like I said up there I’ve had an Anycubic Photon resin printer for a couple of months, and I love it.

I wash prints in an ultrasonic bath of 99% IPA, then rinse under the tap, then cure in a UV lamp thing designed for drying nails. Still can’t quite get to grips with the curing times, I think I overcure stuff, which makes it brittle. For what I want FDM just wouldn’t cut it.

Elegoo are about to release a water-rinsable resin, which will be interesting. Wanhao do one already but it’s expensive.

Resin is expensive, and Anycubic stuff has suddenly leapt in price; I bought a litre for £30 about a month ago, it’s now £38+ everywhere, but it does last quite well.

They do smell, mrs njee20 finds it quite offensive, but some resins are better than others. I’d not want to use mine in the house, but it’s fine in the garage.

The resin isn’t particularly nice, there are horror stories of people needing skin grafts. I wear disposable gloves (must be nitrile, latex don’t cut it), and wash my hands thoroughly and I’ve had no ill effects.

The Photon is about £230. There’s a massive user community out there, I’d get the standard photon over the more expensive Photon S all day long - the advantages of the S are minimal and there are various disadvantages.

These were all printed on my Photon:

[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48931045918_8e55d9934b.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48931045918_8e55d9934b.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2hxSpdJ ]Untitled[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/46244709@N04/ ]njee20[/url], on Flickr

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The lines on the base of these are 0.1mm:

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I really like the idea of crisp details like those njee, but at the same time I know I'd be careless with the resin and probably suffer because of it.

Great looking prints!

Was suffering from resin-envy so I ordered a Prusa SL1 resin printer last week. There is a long, well publicised, waiting list for these & I was hoping to get it before Christmas maybe. It has just turned up this morning! Feel slightly guilty as I seem to have jumped the queue somehow. Oh well, sure I will cope. 😂 Excited to get it up & running.

Look forward to seeing some prints zilog!

Resin is expensive, and Anycubic stuff has suddenly leapt in price; I bought a litre for £30 about a month ago, it’s now £38+ everywhere, but it does last quite well.

Potentially stupid question, is it 100% resin, or is there a solvent? i.e. does 1000ml of resin make a 100x100x100mm cube?

And presumably with better mechanical properties it's possible to be a lot more economical with the material anyway (wall thicknesses ~1mm rather than 3mm)?

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quick print of a file that was pre-loaded onto the printer (so no idea about the settings!) Really impressed though! Cannot see the layer lines. 2p for scale!

Well, I bought slackman’s ender3 pro in the end, so hopefully I’ll have some interesting things to share before long.

Just on the subject of resin printers, there's a revised Mars about to launch and it's supposedly aiming at the same price point, looks like it could be pretty awesome

must not be jealous of resin prints
must not be jealous of resin prints
must not be jealous of resin prints
must not be jealous of resin prints

resin is definitely a faff (got a decent workflow sorted now but I am so glad I didn't get one of these printers first before an FDM one as it would've put me right off I'm sure 😂) - I'm loving the detail though and the fact you can do stuff that's just not possible in FDM (such as dimensionally accurate Lego accessories 😀)

@swanny853

if you get stuck with your ender go here

https://reddit.com/r/ender3/new /

Fantastic community and you'll get a lot of useful advice

Cheers- got a lot of reading up to do. I have some experience using ‘industrial grade’ printers at work, including a metal sintering machine, so it’s really interesting to see where they hold your hand compared to the hobbyist models.

So far, I really miss soluble support that ‘just happens’!

Ender 3 is £126 on Gearbest today with 11:11 sales.
(note that in China 11:11 is 4 times bigger than Black Friday and Cyber Monday so worth looking at all the main chinese sites for sales today)

https://www.gearbest.com/3d-printers-3d-printer-kits/pp_1845899.html?wid=1349303

AlexSimon Subscriber

Ender 3 is £126 on Gearbest today with 11:11 sales.

Gah! Very tempting!
I want a second printer for trying out new settings & experimenting with different materials. That would be ideal. No space for it though & not enough time really for tinkering.

The Artillery Sidewinder's getting some really good discounts now as well- not as cheap as the Ender and lacks the epic aftermarket and community, but has some advantages

@Northwind - I noticed on Gearbest that that had the most sales today out of all of the discounted 3D printers - I hadn't heard of it before - do you have a link to a worthy review?

Cheers- got a lot of reading up to do. I have some experience using ‘industrial grade’ printers at work, including a metal sintering machine, so it’s really interesting to see where they hold your hand compared to the hobbyist models.

So far, I really miss soluble support that ‘just happens’!

We had an ultimaker 2 extended (don't think it was the 2+ that was something else). Which was a £4k machine not so long ago! Still a lot of advantages over a £125 printer, but amazing how quickly they've gone from something niche we had in the corner of the warehouse to the same price as a mid range inkjet!

teachingtech is usually pretty reliable, here's a review:

It's more of a competitor for the CR10S Pro than the Ender but it seems to sit between the two on price.

Ah yes - I'd actually seen this one reviewed by Maker's Muse:

Some interesting points made.

It's not one I'm interested in, but it's always good to have an answer ready for the 'if I were to get one, what should I get' questions I get from time to time.

Well, I’m starting to get twitchy about bed offset! Just comes with the territory I guess...

Tinas- ours is a fortus 400. It’s impressive the degree to which it just cracks on, but when it does have a wobbly moment it’s very much the same sort of process as with the basic machines to get everything sorted again, just with some slightly posher tools to do it.

Another good price, but this time for a more advanced printer.
It's the cheapest it's ever been at £418
Creality CR-10S Pro
https://www.gearbest.com/3d-printers-3d-printer-kits/pp_009343563461.html?wid=1349303

Advantages over the normal CR-10 (and many other kits) are:
Mains-powered bed, so heats faster
Auto bed-levelling
Filament runout detection
Recovery from power failure (this seems to be more common in the US than here from what I can tell)
Higher temperatures on both bed and nozzle (260-degrees on nozzle due to Capricorn tube - which can be installed on a normal CR-10 for about £12)
Touchscreen (don't know whether the interface is actually any good though)
Control box is part of the frame (instead of an awkward-to-carry separate thing)

But I know the price is getting into Prusa territory so worth some research - I guess the 300x300x400 bed is still fairly rare.

Personally, now that I've printed loads of prints on my normal CR-10, I reckon I've overcome a lot of these problems, so not worth upgrading, but if I were currently starting out and was choosing between the CR-10 and this, I'd definitely get this.

my first functional resin print 😃 (2p for scale!)

@zilog6128 Stop it. Stop it now. 🙂

Just on the subject of resin printers, there’s a revised Mars about to launch and it’s supposedly aiming at the same price point, looks like it could be pretty awesome

Any details?

Nope. It was supposed to be out last month but I think they're still clearing stock of the original one so it's been pushed back a bit.

I think this is about the most info that's up there.

More of a big update than a new printer but still enough to be a big deal

A few youtubers have just been offered Elegoo Mars Pro review units, so expect something in a week or two I reckon.

The new Prusa Minis are shipping now & mine turned up this morning! Up and printing in an hour or so, great print quality right out of the box (no tweaking required yet except setting live Z). Only done a couple of prints so far but really pleased with it!

Brilliant - it's almost a shame that other printers have got so cheap - if this was everyone's entry into 3D printing, it would be better for the hobby.

if this was everyone’s entry into 3D printing, it would be better for the hobby.

Managed to get quite a bit of printing done over the last few weeks. Unfortunately most of them were scrapped due to poor quality or being out of tolerance. 🙁 Bearings, bushes and rods need replacing, it makes a horrid noise on small fast movements and its a 50/50 chance of it failing a print. Also wanting to print in other materials and my current printer (Wanhao D5S) is only good for PLA.

Bought the eSun filament dryer box as I was sure my filament was a little wet. Certainly helped, dried it out quicker and improved my prints a little, it also has a weighing feature so you can work out how much filament is left.

It is time for a new printer, tempted by the Prusa Mini, but think I will be going for the MK3S, then add OctoPi with the touchscreen like Zilog. 🙂 I don't think I can wait for the Prusa XL.

Latest project: Peak District Relief map. Printed on the CR10 with Recycled White Matte PLA from Filamentive (my new favourite material).

Greyscale image was created in www.mapzen.com/products/tangram/

Then made into 3D in Blender and turned into hexagons and cut up into 3 CR10-sized chunks in Fusion 360.

Sooo many triangles really slowed Fusion to a crawl, but I got there in the end!

Frame is pine furniture board stained with Liberon Dark Oak wood dye. Cut using my home made 3D-printed Root 3 CNC router.

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This is the bit where I live!
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Look at those layers! I was so pleased when the first one came off the printer.
This is the Hope Valley and Kinder. You can see Mam Tor and Great Ridge.
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Question - should I attempt to paint in the blue water, or should I just leave it?

Very cool. What is the overall size of the piece? It's a shame about the visible lines between the printed pieces, don't know what you could do about that though, maybe print in ABS and vapour join/smooth?

Fusion is awful for processing meshes (assuming that's what you had?) IME, couldn't you have used meshmixer or something? Or done the chopping in Blender? (never used it!)

Kind of looks like a moonscape right now which is cool 😃 Did you consider doing a filament swap when printing so the water was actually printed blue then the land (assuming it's all on higher layers!) came out a different colour?

@zilog6128
Size is 460mm square. 3D printed bit is 390x360

I knew the joins would show which is why I did them as hexagons - they look little more intentional - maybe 🙂 I reckon the whole thing would have fitted on a Creality S4 🙂

Yes, Fusion is awful for meshes, but I hate meshmixer with a passion. I tried it on that first and gave up. Once I'd optimised the number of triangles in Blender, it wasn't too bad, but the first few tries just locked it up.

Filament swap wouldn't work because all the water areas are at different elevations (mostly reservoirs). It would work with an island, but I'm not especially attached to any to bother trying it - maybe Westeros 🙂

That's very cool, I've done some relief maps but they've always been much more triangley.

Yes, I had to work hard to get the data as I wanted it.
I originally wanted to carve it out of wood (and may still), but each hexagon was taking 3-5 hours to complete and unlike the 3D printer, you can't leave a CNC Router unattended.
I created one out of Beech of Kinder Plateau.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/VkhSBwRy1pUovvSdA

The lines are from a conservative stepover on the ball-nose bit. It took 3 hours like this, but would have taken 5 if I'd reduced it a bit. I actually quite like the look and would accept it as a compromise.

I reckon the whole thing would have fitted on a Creality S4 🙂

Yes, I've got my eyes on what Prusa do with that. A quick look suggests that the S4 is discontinued and the new CR10 MAX at 450x450mm is the latest. A good size, but as you say, they are expensive for a chinese printer and all the associated ups and downs that entails!
Especially when the Ender 3 is very good at £139.

Has anyone used Posca pens on 3D prints?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Posca-Colour-Marker-Surface-Plastic/dp/B00MX2B7SW/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=posca+pen+blue&qid=1583159940&s=officeproduct&sr=1-5

nope, never heard of them! A quick google suggests they work though, and look pretty cool! https://www.shapeways.com/forum/t/spray-paint-effect-with-uni-posca-markers.2256/
Might set up some amazon price alerts!!

The metallic Sharpies (gold, bronze, silver) also work really well on most surfaces and all colours (even on black)

They're just a (reliable) brand of Acrylic pen afaik. My wife uses them a lot for marking-up while proofreading. I've used the white on projects a few times, but not on plastic yet.

I really like that Peak District relief map.

I keep meaning to fiddle about with something like this. I have prepared various map locations & saved the stl file, but then never followed it up with a print.
I've also done one of the 24:12 course map from a few years ago, with an idea of printing it out & mounting it on the garage wall.

Regarding those pens for colouring 3-D prints - I don't see why it wouldn't work, but please tell me you'll make a test print before attacking that map?!
Most painted 3-D printed projects I see are sprayed with a rattle can, or airbrushed.

I have prepared various map locations & saved the stl file

Surely that's the hard part out of the way!

please tell me you’ll make a test print before attacking that map?!

Why!? ok - I know - I've got all precious about it all of a sudden. I've got a test hexagon of a bit of Ladybower all set up ready to go and I've ordered 2 sizes of light blue pens. I'll report back!

AlexSimon

I have prepared various map locations & saved the stl file

Surely that’s the hard part out of the way!

I know! Terrible, isn't it?! Just finding time to get all of my projects done. I've got stuff from last year that I want to really get moving with, that just sit there!

I used your RootCNC BOM ages ago to plan my own RootCNC, but that has not got anywhere, as of yet.
I then decided the dremelCNC would be a good starting point to learn the principle, especially as I already have a decent dremel. I spent ages pricing it all up & creating my own BOM, but that's also not got anywhere - it stalled around Christmas time & now.....erm, life.

One day I'll find the time...

Definitely report back with the acrylic pen thingy...

Yes a cheap entry to CNC is good - then you'll realise how amazing it is and want to spend a few thousand like I do! (but can't).
What I really want is a laser cutter, but I missed out on a kickstarter (Beamo) before christmas through indecision and now keep kicking myself now that the price has doubled. I'll probably end up with a K40 laser from china at some point (it's all I can fit).