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So, a little while ago, Darren pings me and sends a link to a 3d printer that was only 179$. I looked at it, and well, at that price I told Santa that's what I wanted and Santa pulled out my credit card and the rest is history.
Darren must have had a chat with Santa too because apparently the orders were placed in mere minutes from each other.
The printers are are the Anet A8 desktop printer and is a clone of the Prusa I3. http://www.gearbest.com/3d-printers-3d-printer-kits/pp_343643.html?wid=21
You can find these in a lot of places on the internet for a variety of prices. Apparently the price had even been down to 149$ at one point.
Now I don't know what happened, but after we placed our orders, gearbeast claimed something was up with shipping and charged us an extra 16 bucks for shipping. They did ask first,and we could have said no, but we both said yes and got our printers shipped to us in a matter of days, I think it only took like 5 days to get here all the way from China.
I have to say, it does come nicely packaged, if you leave the straps on and pull it out of the box right side up.
Building it is pretty easy, and it goes together quickly if you follow the videos on youtube. The pdf instructions that come on the sd card are pretty worthless though.
One of the biggest challenges though is that all the pieces of acrylic are covered in protective paper and peeling it can be a chore. I found using a little razor blade tool can make that process go a lot faster and smoother.
[video]https://goo.gl/photos/B631TrYNbJyd9CaF9[/video]
I got mine running tuesday of this week (it's friday now) and I've been using it pretty much non stop.
Here are a few successful prints.
A volume knob for my jukebox
a 3/4 cup measuring cup for feeding my starving dog logan who only gets 2 of these a day
A little air duct for the blower on the hot end.
Here's a pretty good picture of a failed print. I was trying to print an Ocarina, and it fell over halfway through.
Unfortunately, today when I was changing the filament color, I managed to torque the filament guide in 2 and break it. I have managed to get it back working and jury rigged. The new parts won't get here until late next week, but It's actually still printing. I'm just not going to mess with changing out the filament until then.
At this point I'm mostly printing out accessories for it to do cable management and clean things up a bit. I've already gotten into designing and modifying parts a bit in Sketchup and I have to say my head is fairly exploding with ideas for things to print. Not to mention there are a TON of things already available out in the 'thingiverse' that you can download and print.
I have to say, This is one of the more fun toys I've gotten in a while.
That being said, 3d printing is not something that is a guaranteed success. Other than my fault in breaking mine, I've been quite lucky in that I've been able to print things pretty easily right out of the box. It seems there are a lot of variations in the materials used and how they stick to the bed of the printer that can cause results to vary.
Ok, I've said enough. Time for Darren to chime in!
Darren must have had a chat with Santa too because apparently the orders were placed in mere minutes from each other.
The printers are are the Anet A8 desktop printer and is a clone of the Prusa I3. http://www.gearbest.com/3d-printers-3d-printer-kits/pp_343643.html?wid=21
You can find these in a lot of places on the internet for a variety of prices. Apparently the price had even been down to 149$ at one point.
Now I don't know what happened, but after we placed our orders, gearbeast claimed something was up with shipping and charged us an extra 16 bucks for shipping. They did ask first,and we could have said no, but we both said yes and got our printers shipped to us in a matter of days, I think it only took like 5 days to get here all the way from China.
I have to say, it does come nicely packaged, if you leave the straps on and pull it out of the box right side up.
Building it is pretty easy, and it goes together quickly if you follow the videos on youtube. The pdf instructions that come on the sd card are pretty worthless though.
One of the biggest challenges though is that all the pieces of acrylic are covered in protective paper and peeling it can be a chore. I found using a little razor blade tool can make that process go a lot faster and smoother.
[video]https://goo.gl/photos/B631TrYNbJyd9CaF9[/video]
I got mine running tuesday of this week (it's friday now) and I've been using it pretty much non stop.
Here are a few successful prints.
A volume knob for my jukebox
a 3/4 cup measuring cup for feeding my starving dog logan who only gets 2 of these a day
A little air duct for the blower on the hot end.
Here's a pretty good picture of a failed print. I was trying to print an Ocarina, and it fell over halfway through.
Unfortunately, today when I was changing the filament color, I managed to torque the filament guide in 2 and break it. I have managed to get it back working and jury rigged. The new parts won't get here until late next week, but It's actually still printing. I'm just not going to mess with changing out the filament until then.
At this point I'm mostly printing out accessories for it to do cable management and clean things up a bit. I've already gotten into designing and modifying parts a bit in Sketchup and I have to say my head is fairly exploding with ideas for things to print. Not to mention there are a TON of things already available out in the 'thingiverse' that you can download and print.
I have to say, This is one of the more fun toys I've gotten in a while.
That being said, 3d printing is not something that is a guaranteed success. Other than my fault in breaking mine, I've been quite lucky in that I've been able to print things pretty easily right out of the box. It seems there are a lot of variations in the materials used and how they stick to the bed of the printer that can cause results to vary.
Ok, I've said enough. Time for Darren to chime in!
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