3D Printing

Hey folks. My father in law,and I have decided to chip in together to buy a first 3d printer.

I've gone a bit research blind trying to figure out which one for a beginner.

I'm handy with stuff, he's the brains.

Any recomendations for a printer under £400 ish. For me it will be printing bike bits, mounts and general house stuff/ toys /models of planned furniture builds.

Cheers

I've just bought a new Anycubic Vyper and it has been great for the last few months. Dirt cheap. Bed levelling. Big community. Decent print quakity. Its almost identical to a CR6 which is another one people speak highly of

The problem is that there are so many excellent beginner printers it's impossible to pick the best one really.

my advice is steer clear of the ender 3 s1 pro, it can print amazingly but there's a high number of lemons coming out the factory and mine required another couple of hundred in replacement parts before it was where I'd consider it to be working properly.

also buying from amazon will save some headaches if you need to return it for any reason compared to the manufacturers direct sales sites

Dave Rome recently did a podcast with Chris Heershap all about 3D printing.
In the end Chris gave some recommendations for printers iirc.

Link: https://cyclingtips.com/2022/09/nerd-alert-you-can-3d-print-that/

That was a great podcast. Thanks

The Anycubic vyper seems like a good option for the money. Will probably give that a go.

The foliage of this is 3d printed. Just infill, no walls or top or bottom layers.

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Only actual Christmas thing I made this year.

Made a few gifts too but they’ve been gifted and I forgot to take photos.

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That's great

One from today… pen pot for the missus desk.

Printing in matte black and bronze with a filament change mid print.

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And a cup holder for a 4080 profile sim rig

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Now that I've slagged off the s1 pro a whole bunch is anyone interested in buying mine? lol

looks like 2023 is to be the year we buy a new place and will be dedicating all our money to that so I thought I'd treat myself to a bambu labs X1 carbon before the toys and gadgets money hose gets turned off for good so this is surplus to requirements now (and I literally have no room for two printers).

Ender 3 S1 Pro
Upgrades:

• Creality sonic pad (pi/touchscreen type unit running klipper firmware, improves performance of printer over stock firmware by a lot and allows for linear adv. and input shaping tuning for better prints) (rrp £150-200 depending on current stock levels)
  
• Gulfcoast robotics Linear rail upgrade kit (replaces most of the y-axis assembly which is the root of most problems in the stock s1 pro's) (rrp $140 before shipping)
  
• Gulfcoast robotics heat bed (configured for 3-point adjustment but supports 4, ridiculously flat compared to crealitys stock taco shaped beds) (rrp $90 before shipping)
  
• BondTech CHT nozzle (0.4mm) (rrp £17)
  
• Silicon bed spacers
  
• Metal bed adjustment wheels
  
• all necessary parts for hotend 5015 blower fan mod (just never got around to soldering and installing)
  
  

Spares:
original nozzle and a couple spares
original s1 pro y-axis parts from pre-upgrade
original creality heatbed and buildplate (needs new magnetic sticker)
creality glass build plate and clips
Gulfcoast Robotic cast alu heatbed (was shipped with M3 attachment holes instead of M4, works fine but could be drilled to use m4 for consistency, was getting perfect prints on it but wanted m4 so purchased the one that is fitted when replacing y-axis).
original touchscreen (used with stock firmware)
ender v2 display with dial (needed for professional firmware that doesn't support touchscreen)

machine has been levelled and roughly calibrated since I installed the linear rail mods and it's printing decently but it needs a little fine-tuning to get it back to perfect but you'd want to do those steps again after it's been moved most likely anyways, with the sonic pad the additional

the stock pei sheet has a single scratch that doesn't affect it in any way and it works perfectly printing with no need to gluestick/hairspray anything for pla and petg

would have to be collected from down here in littlehampton (BN17 7BQ) as I don't have the original box and there's so much extra stuff posting would be stupidly difficult anyways. but for the price it's still worth half a tank of petrol and a few hours in the car I think. I'm home all the time so can easily work around your schedule.

and speaking of price I'm looking for £500 for the lot

images: the two card holders in the images are from the printer as it is currently set up, the rest are from when it was calibrated pre linear rail upgrade (orange is petg, rest is pla+) the bookends were three separate prints (39h x 2, 20h x1) which it handled no problems.

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actually I'll throw in the enclosure too as I won't need it. (rrp £70 or so)

can include the logitech c920 webcam for an extra £50 (it's literally new out of the box about a week ago) if you need one for the camera monitoring on the web interface.

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Not interested in the printer but super keen to hear how you get on with the X1.

Nearly bought that over the V400 but didn’t want to spend the extra £££

I'm really excited to try it. once of the pieces of a board game insert/organiser I have on my to-print list is 8.5h sliced in prusa slicer, stock settings in the bambu labs slicer for the X1 is 2.5h. for a project with 38 separate pieces that's a total gamechanger. but that's why it costs what it costs I guess.

Same for the V400; speed is a game changer.

Would have loved to mess around with the multi material stuff with the X1 though, rather than doing an M600 and manually doing it, like now.

Just pre-ordered the P1P we'll see how this goes.

Uuuuh
Big fan of the Berserk ends. Haven't plucked up the courage to take my deluxe editions out of the plastic.

If you need vol #8 I have a spare copy due to waterstones being unable to conduct online commerce with a shred of competency.

Would someone be willing to print a bath plug for me? It's a very old, very large cast iron bath that I've never been able to buy a plug for as it's an odd size.

It'll be hard to make that watertight with plastic. The way to do it would be to print a mold and creating an epoxy one or something like that.

I guess you could also print one then cover that in epoxy but you'd need to get the tolerances right.

Or stick an o-ring groove in the print?

Could you print a mold with a rebate for some kind of silicon ring/gasket?

Sure but the water would still leak between the layers. I guess not enough to empty the bath.

TPU filament should work I think. But harder to get a good print.

You could machine one out of a block of aluminium. Or wood would be pretty fancy.