[Closed] Cheap 3d printer kits - Experiences?

Nice. Good start...

Impressed with the X/y dims on the cube.... Just need to sort the z.

🙂

Well done for getting this far!
I've joined a facebook group for the Creality CR-10 and there is a mix of problems and success stories. I'm hoping that problems are more likely to get posted 🙂

Lots of people talk about the bed sagging in the centre, so the 4 corners can be perfectly level, but they still suffer adhesion problems. Could that be happening to you?

I think the bed just wasn't quite level. Seems better after a bit of fiddling.

Now 2.5 hours into printing a small model boat. I know they said it would be slow...

91191 lines
32446.72mm of filament used in this print
The print goes:
- from 13.07 mm to 186.92 mm in X and is 173.85 mm wide
- from 38.25 mm to 161.75 mm in Y and is 123.51 mm deep
- from 0.00 mm to 35.60 mm in Z and is 35.60 mm high
Estimated duration: 118 layers, 3:02:42
Print started at: 13:02:44

WorldClassAccident - Member

Print started at: 13:02:44

Is it still going? Did it work? Any pics?

The big print for the paddle boat hull was fine, as were the two pegs that pushed into that piece.
[url= https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4311/35482930713_080e4832b0_c.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4311/35482930713_080e4832b0_c.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/W4vi6t ]20170731_152836[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/89686376@N04/ ]WCA![/url], on Flickr

I then started on the paddle and left it printing.

I returned a while later and it had stopped printing without completing the paddle but with the hotend positioned nicely to the side of the bed but covered in a smooth molten plastic shell.

This shows some of the plastic I haven't managed to chip/scrape off. It also shows the thermistor that is now plastic-welded into position and not working. 🙁
[url= https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4299/36287206135_37b936ffa7_c.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4299/36287206135_37b936ffa7_c.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/Xhzqa6 ]20170731_151943[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/89686376@N04/ ]WCA![/url], on Flickr

Replacement thermistors are easy to find but any ideas on where to get a new hotend that will fit?
[url= https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4320/35482899583_fa0d7974f2_c.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4320/35482899583_fa0d7974f2_c.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/W4v8QK ]20170731_151959[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/89686376@N04/ ]WCA![/url], on Flickr

Shame - that hull print looks pretty good!

Best way to clean this up?

[url= https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4314/35483496733_8d78d69dfe_c.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4314/35483496733_8d78d69dfe_c.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/W4ycmr ]20170731_160417[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/89686376@N04/ ]WCA![/url], on Flickr

Can't heat it on the printer as the thermistor is knackered.

Blowtorch perhaps?

What plastic is it? ABS or PLA?

You could probably dip it in acetone and leave for a while...

PLA so acetone won't work but enough heat should unless you can suggest better

Nice to see you are up and running, despite having some problems. Welcome to the world of waiting hours to find it's failed! 😉

Stick it in the oven? Set to about 140°C, it should peel off. I had to do a similar thing to remove my nozzle. 😯

This link may help you to work out what is wrong, or how to improve your prints. [url= https://www.simplify3d.com/support/print-quality-troubleshooting/ ]Print Quality Troubleshooting[/url]

[url= http://www.3dbenchy.com/ ]The 3D Benchy test print[/url] is pretty good, it really gives you an idea of what you can and cannot print and then you can fine tune your settings. In the near future you may find you have different settings, one that's really good at overhangs/gaps and another setting that's really good at all the other stuff.

What are you using on your bed? I have really good success with blue painters tape and that is without a hot bed.

A very thin diamond file in a dremel cleaned out the hole for the thermistor with no fire required.

I have a piece of glass from a cheap clip frame clipped to the standard bed and then strips of cheap paper masking tape over than. Clip frame was £2 and the masking tape was 50p. Seem to work fine.

Still playing around to see what I can do.

I will probably try to do the boat paddle in ABS as I have a test roll. That will also test the heated bed (I think).

I'm thinking about getting one of these printers, what software (free) is best for designing things?

I've downloaded Autodesk Fusion360 (free for hobbiests and students apparently).
Lovely program. Doesn't seem any harder to learn than Sketchup to be honest.
Sketchup is the other obvious answer.

Lots of the things on Thiniverse come with Fusion files and you can click 'play' on the timeline to see how they were made. Very cool.

I use FreeCAD for designing and Cura for slicing as I use an ultimaker and it does 90% of the thinking for me.

Tempted to try Fusion360 as FreeCad is giving me a headache this morning trying to 'stamp' the company logo onto a box grrrrrr.

Cheers Alex/thisisnotaspoon

Looks like Freecad then as my OS is Linux, and Fusion/Sketchup are for Windows or Mac!

Fusion 360 for the browser was on trial for a while and is now in 'preview' whatever that means (alpha/beta?).
You have to apply to be able to use it.

Also look at solvespace. On Windows and Linux. Not as many bells and whistles as freecad but stability is better.

There's also https://www.tinkercad.com/ from Autodesk which is browser-based, but I've never tried it.

Tempted to try Fusion360 as FreeCad is giving me a headache this morning trying to 'stamp' the company logo onto a box grrrrrr.

Thisisnotaspoon, there's a setting in Freecad (edit/preferences, document tab) that you can uncheck [b]'Add the program logo to the generated thumbnail'[/b], have you tried that?

Well my Creality CR-10 turned up yesterday.
Easy build as expected (about 30mins taking it very slow).
Started to print the included test file. Looked absolutely perfect straight onto the glass until the nozzle temp suddenly dropped and it stopped extruding 🙁

Replacement heater cartridge ordered (£2.99) and we'll try again. Not sure I trust my soldering.

[img] ?oh=0b7e5d44abcaf6cf8c2a164b9025380e&oe=59F45347[/img]

Blimey, it looks big!

Shame it's failed though!

I'm trying to forget all about 3-D printers at the mo, having realised I don't have the spare cash to spank on a 'toy' and I don't really have the time to div around with it, even if I did get one. Hmph.

It's not quite as big as it looks in that pic. It's an awkward thing to store though. Haven't really worked out where it's going to live!

I've just got a MarkForged Mark Two. Prints carbon infused stuff. AWESOME.

timnoyce - Member

I've just got a MarkForged Mark Two. Prints carbon infused stuff. AWESOME.

Just caught up with this thread, interesting read. Mildly relieved that WCA hasn't glue-gunned himself to the desk. (-:

I was idly wondering, what's the running cost of these things? I've a few friends who "cosplay" (fancy dress at cons rather than some kinky fetish) and I thought maybe a 3D printer could be handy for printing accessories like weapons and the like. Probably a non-starter if it's going to cost the GDP of a small African country to print anything larger than a Polo mint.

Cougar - Moderator

I was idly wondering, what's the running cost of these things? I've a few friends who "cosplay" (fancy dress at cons rather than some kinky fetish) and I thought maybe a 3D printer could be handy for printing accessories like weapons and the like. Probably a non-starter if it's going to cost the GDP of a small African country to print anything larger than a Polo mint.

Electricity aside, it's basically all about weight- if you're buying in hobbyist quantities you're generally spending somewhere between £10 and £20 per kilo for most filaments. You get a bit of wastage from support materials- depends a lot on the design, most of the stuff I print is very efficient, some cosmetic stuff not so much (frinstance a cosplay helmet might be one humungous piece with a load of supports, or it might be 4 or 5 bits that you assemble after printing, with less supports) Also you would vary the density of printing for strength.

So it depends but imagining how much a part would weigh if it was made of standard lego bricks is a good place to start.

Thisisnotaspoon, there's a setting in Freecad (edit/preferences, document tab) that you can uncheck 'Add the program logo to the generated thumbnail', have you tried that?

Maybe I didn't describe it very well, I have a 3D file of the company logo extruded 1mm, which normally I manage to put onto stuff we print (because stuff like that impresses the boss more than a well-designed part!) and do a boolean operation to 'stamp' (engrave?) it out of the surface.

Sorted it out in the end, setting the angle to 120deg and each axis to 1.0 somehow results in rotating it by 90deg in two axis. I'm sure if I remembered trig better I could explain why that happens.......

Electricity aside, it's basically all about weight- if you're buying in hobbyist quantities you're generally spending somewhere between £10 and £20 per kilo for most filaments. You get a bit of wastage from support materials- depends a lot on the design, most of the stuff I print is very efficient, some cosmetic stuff not so much (frinstance a cosplay helmet might be one humungous piece with a load of supports, or it might be 4 or 5 bits that you assemble after printing, with less supports) Also you would vary the density of printing for strength.

So it depends but imagining how much a part would weigh if it was made of standard lego bricks is a good place to start.

Your real issue will be boredom though. To print out a matchbox sized object with ~2mm walls takes about 2 hours on medium settings. You can run them much faster (XY axis) and with lower resolutions (z) to speed things up, but quality drops off.

Where 3D printing would work well, is small intricate things. So for a sword, start off with one from a toy shop and 3D print a new handle. Or make the blade by another method (plane a bit of wood down?). It's too slow to work effectively on large parts, and the odds of a failed print increases the larger the print.

somewhere between £10 and £20 per kilo for most filaments

Sounds reasonable.

imagining how much a part would weigh if it was made of standard lego bricks is a good place to start.

Sounds expensive. Where are you sourcing Lego from at ten quid a kilo?

Time is a factor. 3d printers are *slow* and I'm not willing to leave mine on, unattended overnight - lots of people do but I'm not going there.

Lots of big prints can be split down into constituent parts but I see some people going for 70 hour prints 😯

Sounds reasonable.

Especially when you consider a kilo is probably 100+ hours of printing!

I bought a 2.2kg drum yesterday for £50*, I expect never to finish it! I also need to rig up a new holder for it as it's too big for the ultimaker!

*you can get really cheap, £6/750g spools from ebay and amazon, but as mines for work it only takes one 1 hour print to fail and the savings wiped out.

Cougar - Moderator
Sounds expensive. Where are you sourcing Lego from at ten quid a kilo?

How much it weighs not how much it costs! But I think you know that 😆

It does depend a lot on how dense you print- a lot of what I do is very solid, for strength and crush resistance. But a cosplay piece usually isn't going to be like that, you'd want it to be durable but not bombproof. So you can set the infill low and have solid outsides but print the inside in a honeycomb or similiar, to save weight (and therefore plastic). Not to mention time.

TINAS is spot on, time is a big deal, for actual industrial printing or for anyone doing it full time it's a real cost (for me, it's not, my printer doesn't run constantly so it's an unspent resource). And that's where having your printer really dialed and reliable comes into its own, too- I can put on a 10 hour job and be pretty confident that if it's printing OK after 10 minutes, it'll produce something decent. But if it's less reliable, there's a pretty good chance you come back and you've printed a massive blob- wasted a load of filament but also time and maybe created yourself printer issues too.

(they say never leave it unattended but I doubt anyone actually follows that advice; I have an old smartphone running as a webcam so I can keep an eye on mine for safety but I very rarely run it overnight (and the room I have it in is pretty fire safe anyway) It's a low risk but, high enough to think about

And you've got to consider mean times to failure too- being able to run for an hour reliably is fine for a lot of the parts I print but if you've got a big job to do, you need a different level of reliability

Got mine working my fiddling with some wires (Creality support wasn't quite as bad as I expected).
Printed a strain relief for one of the wires which people recommend and then went onto a [url= http://3dbenchy.com/ ]3D Benchy[/url] and calibration cube.
All came out much better than I expected:

[img] ?oh=f9b93dd75d6cb3e986307cfa6b4c2f62&oe=5A36EF50[/img]

[img] ?oh=18be6183a948dd413561801be61c7237&oe=59F8B0A2[/img]

Very pleased. Time to start printing some of my own creations!

How much it weighs not how much it costs! But I think you know that

I didn't, I just misread what he was saying.

you can set the infill low and have solid outsides but print the inside in a honeycomb or similiar, to save weight (and therefore plastic). Not to mention time.

Ah, cunning. I hadn't thought of that, ta.

Presumably for bigger pieces you can make them in modules, like quarters or something, and stitch together? (And that's probably preferable because of possible failure.) Like, if I wanted to make a sub-machine gun prop, I could do it in quarters or something.

That's a pretty good benchy! Here's my first:

[img] [/img]

@Cougar- yep, also means you can make things bigger than your printer too. Design and slicer software can cut up parts pretty easily too so you can make your own splits. And if you print in ABS, you can stick it all together with just a little acetone.

AlexSimon, I just googled the CR-10 and it looks immense. I've got access to an Objet30 and now the Markforged, the resolution is excellent but the build size is limited to around 300x120x150 on both. The CR-10 looks amazing for the money. Totally interested in something like that for home use now!

Looking forward to seeing some more of your prints 😀

Really pleased with how everything is coming out.
That heater cartridge failed again today, but pliers sorted it and they are sending me a new hot end (who knows how long it'll take to arrive). I ordered a cheap cartridge of ebay in the meantime, but I think I'll just make do (don't trust my soldering or want to mess with it too much).

Anyway - printed a few bits and bobs - all look great. Vase mode is particularly impressive.

This is the latest.
It's the [url= https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2238443 ]springy turtle[/url] off the Thingiverse home page.

[img] [/img]

Need some more matt PLA and some different colours. Getting bored of orange and white!

In the meantime, we've been learning Fusion 360 and have been designing our own things.
Really enjoying it, although it's always difficult when you start a project and think "ok - how do I start this shape then".
For example, I wouldn't know where to start with that turtle shell.

Do any of you print while you are out the house? I have a 24 hour print to do (50m of 3mm filament) but I'm not too sure about printing when I'm out the house, it hasn't screwed up yet while printing.. I do use OctoPi withe PiCam to keep an eye on the prints when I'm around the house.

The best bit of advice I was given when learning CAD was there is no wrong or right way of drawing, but there maybe a quicker way.

Do any of you print while you are out the house?

And that's just my shed. Even less likely in the house.

Well after wondering what we were going to print, I have to say that the printer has been running about 8 hours a day whenever we're at home!

Completely sparked my boys' imagination and they are loving Fusion 360 (as am I).

Currently printing loads of bits to make a Nintendo Switch car mount which my eldest designed.

I've been sticking to mostly graphical pieces like these two signs for local clubs I'm involved with.

[url= http://thingswelike.org/reserved-signs.jp g" target="_blank">http://thingswelike.org/reserved-signs.jp g"/> [/img][/url]

The green and white one involved a nerve-wracking filament change at the right layer!

Wow! Missed your turtle update....looks great, as do those two signs!

What is going wrong with the heater cartridge, then? Failing to heat, I guess?
Where do you source a replacement from? Are they standard or do you need the cartridge from the printer manufacturer?

It's just a poor crimp on the connection I think. I can get it working by squeezing with pliers, but it fails every-so-often.
I have a replacement heater here (cost £1.99and are a generic item), but I don't fancy soldering and messing. The whole hot end assembly is £24.
Gearbest have been worse than useless. Creality were helpful with advice, but said I had to go through Gearbest.

I'll probably suck it up and buy the £24 option.

Looks really cool, but I don't think my budget and space will stretch to the CR10. What are peoples thoughts experiences with an Anet A8?

AlexSimon, ta for the explanation.

SammyC - Member
What are peoples thoughts experiences with an Anet A8?

Plenty of reviews on YouTube. It seems to be quite a capable machine.

The A8 is all about the mods. Out of the box it's average - once you print your own modifications and tweak it, it can be great.

If I was buying now, I'd be tempted by the Creality Ender-2 (also rebranded HICTOP). Currently about £135 with codes.
Small print volume, but many shared parts with the CR-10.