Looking for to buy my first 3D printer. Budget upto $500…. Looking for something which is easy to use and is upgrable.
Any help or advice is highly appreciated
3D printer purchase, advice needed
Lostud on 23/11/2018 - 18:54
Comments
DO NOT GET TEMPTED BY THE EL-CHEAPO ANET A8
I've got one of those (well, the TronXY clone) and it's fine. There's a lot of group-think bandwagon-jumping-on hate around these printers.
The main problem is the firmware may have safety features disabled, specifically where it detects a failure in the temperature sensors. Without this they keep the heaters on, and that's what causes the fires. Not just an Anet thing either. Probably fixed these days.
If you're building a kit because you like building stuff, re-flashing firmware shouldn't be too much of a challenge. Besides with the latest Marlin you get neat stuff like recovery after power loss, auto power off, etc.
If you are building to save a few dollars, maybe don't. Besides the price difference between kits & ready-to-go printers had dropped so much the kits aren't that economic these days.
The real problem with most 3D printers (not just the cheap kits) is they decided to run them on 12v rather than 24v. Now you have a heated bed drawing 10+ amps (which is quite a lot!) rather than 5 amps if you went with 24v. High amps causes all the problems like wires melting, MOSFETs blowing, connectors overheating and all that. It's easy enough to convert, the beds can run at either 12v or 24v, you just need to replace the hot-end heater cartridge.
I was rather impressed with the quality of the prints from the TronXY. I figure those getting poor performance don't know how to build stuff, and watching their YouTube often shows they don't.
The Anets may be fine with safety upgrades yes, but for someone's FIRST printer I'd still stay well clear.
It was my first (& only printer) and my house it still standing. Mind you the lasers have tried to burn it down previously, so I am a bit wary of a rather hot bit surrounded by plastic.
When I found out about the thermistor thing I checked mine, and it was ok.
I think the plastic framed Anets et al have had their day when you can get the Ender 3 (as BradleyDS2 mentions) for a similar price. I note that they've moved to a 24v power supply which should solve the bulk of the "OMG it's on fire" problems.
The Ender 3 is pretty much universally recommended as a good starter printer. Cheap and great prints for the price.
It costs less than the Cocoon Create and has a larger build area and better print quality, along with a heated bed.
Shame you didn't ask yesterday though, as with the 15% off eBay code and 5% off gift cards it was $202.
It's easy to use and very popular, so there's a lot of possible upgrades. You can even add automatic bed levelling.
Putting it together is easy as it comes with all the major parts preassembled, so it takes about 10 steps to connect everything then you're up and running. It also comes with some test filament, basic tools, microsd card (with test files and build instructions + video) and microsd adapter.
Completely open source too, so you can put updated merlin FW on it if you want, you just need a $5 arduino or similar from Aliexpress and to follow a YouTube tutorial. Worth it just for the mesh bed levelling.
If you're able to wait, you can wait until ALDI sells their Cocoon Create Touch 3D printer again. Alternatively you can get it straight from their supplier (but refurb units only).
https://cocoonproducts.com.au/shop/clearance/cocoon-create-t…
If I were the guess, the refurb units should be fine, and are just from people returning their stuff to ALDI because they realised 3D printing wasn't for them.
These Cocoon Create are re branded Wanhao Duplicator i3 Plus units which cost around $500 if you were going to import them yourself, but they have Australian warranty. There's a fairly decent community around them. Alternatively you can jump on Gearbest and take a look at some of the Creality units.
A word of advice: DO NOT GET TEMPTED BY THE EL-CHEAPO ANET A8 FOR YOUR FIRST 3D PRINTER as they are, out of the box, ridiculously unsafe and are known to burn houses down, especially without safety upgrades https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/8531l5/how_i_al…
N.B. Aldi somtimes also sells a smaller printer called the Cocoon Create Model Maker. I'd recommend going for their larger Cocoon Create Touch instead since the Model Maker has a tiny build volume and no heated bed. Otherwise it's a good first printer too