Beginner to the 3D printing world :) Please help !

[jrbettney]

Hi everyone,

I have just joined this forum because i am wanting to enter the world of 3d printing, but have no idea of what to buy and what it actually requires to use one successfully. My background and qualifications are in office type of work and i do not have electrical or mechanical skills. I do enjoy a challenge and do expect this to be a difficult hobby, but im ready for the challenge

Which 3D Printer to buy for a complete beginner

I would like to buy one of the DIY printers from online to build and learn through building the printer, making it easier to fix when things go wrong. I have been looking at a low budget DIY printer : 2016 Upgraded Full Quality High Precision Reprap Prusa i3 DIY 3d Printer. its about £150 off ebay, however i am not sure if it comes with instructions.

Would this printer be sufficient for a beginner or can you recommend a better printer for around £200 ( its a low budget hobby) for a complete beginner ?

What free software for 3d printing

I have a MacBook Pro Laptop and dabbled in Sketch Up and Tinker CAD software previously. Can anybody recommend free software they would again use for a beginner and that is free ?



Thank you for reading my post and hopefully some of you can point me in the right direction. I appreciate any help, advice and Links that people can share with this complete beginner to 3d printing

[Guest]

Welcome to the forum and the world of 3D printing! If you are looking for a really inexpensive kit that also works well and your main reason for getting it is to start learning printing, you might want to check out the Mini Fabrikator.
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/s...t_UK_230V.html

I have no experience with it myself, but several forum members have recommended it recently. It's not the most feature rich printer, but it's very inexpensive and might be a great tool to jump into printing without too much commitment or headache right away. You can get cheaper kits with more features on ebay as you have found, but the instructions will be poor and it will be a very large project for a complete beginner.

For software, the options you tried so far are great for beginners. You can also look at Autodesk Fusion 360 which is free for personal use.

[applekeith]

You cannot go wrong with a Prusa design. There are a lot of them out there. You can get a good price if you DIY and build it yourself. Andrew has a good option for an in built option that is not too expensive.

[GrantB]

Happy to share some knowledge..
In my stable of printers are :

Flashforge Dreamer £795 x1
CTC Dual Extruder £245 x2
Prusa i3 £275 x1 (genuine Wanhao Prusa i3)
Rip-off i3 copy £139 x4
+ a couple more Chinese imports I bought just for donor parts for projects..x2
Happy to share all I can AND easy fixes for some of the issues each of the above machines has.
They are all good in their own ways, but the cheaper they are, the more tinkering you will need to do to get nice results.

If I was starting out again on the small budget, I would go for the Rip-Off Prusa i3 for £139
I added £45 of parts to it... and it works very well - every time.

The Genuine Wanhao Prusa i3 at £275 is far better for the extra £150... and also better then the CTC dual extruder machine too...

I am happy to send pics & take calls to help you get started regardless of what you buy or how much you spend.
If you have little in the way of engineering skills - ie, would you replace the brakes on your car or install a new sound system (properly) ??
If the answer is NO, then a self assembly/budget printer is unlikely to be for you..
However, with support & maybe some one close by to assist, then the knowledge you will gain from a budget printer will be invaluable, as there won't be much you cannot resolve due to the amount you will learn from keeping it going.

Fortunately, I have a wide (hands-on) skills set, and I'm very lucky... but happy to share what I've learned with my handful of machines.
Feel free to Private mail me for more info / pictures of modifications to my collection of toys

Incidentally,
The budget CTC printer, now prints very well... certainly better than it's design intent, as do the El-Cheepo Knock-offs of the Prusa i3 at £139 each...
but believe me when I tell you that they both stole a whole weekend from me to achieve this - but it was worth the result.

The cheepo/budget copies of the i3, are each running for about 15 hrs a week now, and just keep working hard making specialist vehicle parts/fittings I sell....

Kindest regards
Grant B

[iDig3DPrinting]

I think for the price you are talking about you will have to resign yourself to getting your hands dirty, in terms of understanding the different components of the printer and calibrating your printer to run smoothly. It is not that complicated and of course there is the internet to help you together with forums like this.

The Prusa i3 3D printer design works. The designs are freely available so the only difference, in general, is in the quality of the parts that come with them. You will not know about this until you receive the kit and begin to learn a bit about the various components and what they do. We have a page which has some detail about Prusa i3 components. As time goes on you may, as @GrantB suggests, want to replace some of those parts or even tweak the design of the printed parts used.

As to software many people use Openscad for cad design, we have been using freecad, they are both free, we think they run on Macs but they are not as user friendly as something like sketch-up or tinkercad but this is because they are more powerful. Lots of people also use Blender, which is also free and not terribly user friendly.

So buying a 3D printer for a complete beginner is a question of whether you want something that is easy to use, off the shelf, that is very plug'n play. If this is the case then £200 is probably not going to cut it. But if you are willing to learn then a prusa i3 model is not a bad place to start.

[Rob]

Happy to share some knowledge..
In my stable of printers are :

Flashforge Dreamer £795 x1
CTC Dual Extruder £245 x2
Prusa i3 £275 x1 (genuine Wanhao Prusa i3)
Rip-off i3 copy £139 x4
+ a couple more Chinese imports I bought just for donor parts for projects..x2
Happy to share all I can AND easy fixes for some of the issues each of the above machines has.
They are all good in their own ways, but the cheaper they are, the more tinkering you will need to do to get nice results.

If I was starting out again on the small budget, I would go for the Rip-Off Prusa i3 for £139
I added £45 of parts to it... and it works very well - every time.

The Genuine Wanhao Prusa i3 at £275 is far better for the extra £150... and also better then the CTC dual extruder machine too...

I am happy to send pics & take calls to help you get started regardless of what you buy or how much you spend.
If you have little in the way of engineering skills - ie, would you replace the brakes on your car or install a new sound system (properly) ??
If the answer is NO, then a self assembly/budget printer is unlikely to be for you..
However, with support & maybe some one close by to assist, then the knowledge you will gain from a budget printer will be invaluable, as there won't be much you cannot resolve due to the amount you will learn from keeping it going.

Fortunately, I have a wide (hands-on) skills set, and I'm very lucky... but happy to share what I've learned with my handful of machines.
Feel free to Private mail me for more info / pictures of modifications to my collection of toys

Incidentally,
The budget CTC printer, now prints very well... certainly better than it's design intent, as do the El-Cheepo Knock-offs of the Prusa i3 at £139 each...
but believe me when I tell you that they both stole a whole weekend from me to achieve this - but it was worth the result.

The cheepo/budget copies of the i3, are each running for about 15 hrs a week now, and just keep working hard making specialist vehicle parts/fittings I sell....

Kindest regards
Grant B

Hi - very useful and informative post - do your rip-off i3s come with print cooling ?

edit: eg looks like it does http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2016-Upgra...3D262417503847

looks like it doesn't http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2016-Upgra...3D262417503847

any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

[GrantB]

Hi again my friend.
The printer with e-bay number above... the lower link is the one to go for in my book, as it has replaceable stepper driver boards..

Current E-bay listing number = 221985481951 this does not have an extruder material cooler, but a CPU computer fan from E-bay is £2:50 & you will find a bracket & duct to print for free from Thingi-Verse web-site, and has the replaceable stepper driver boards & is potentially serviceable.
I've got 5 of these now.. two work hard, the others are parts donors for other projects.
There are a few little tweeks needing doing to these units, but nothing major, such as securing the bed motor with a zip tie, fitting a releasable clamp unit to the filament extruder & a decent spring, getting a 300Watt 12 Volt power supply... other than that & simply assembling it PROPERLY... it simply works.
As Apple-Keith says, the Prusa i3 design is a great place to start & learn & see how these work... be gentle with the build & take your time

Happy to share pictures and talk to you about the little re-works necessary.
Regards
Grant B