Need help choosing a 3D printer

I am wanting to find a sub $1,000 3D printer that will allow me to:

1. print custom project containers for various electronic projects. I would like to get away from the usual rectangular project boxes for some items that will be visible in my home.

2. print small lighting grip devices for use with photographic lighting

3. print small props that will be used with my photography

One of the cases I will need to print is a disc type shape that is 6.5 inches at the largest part of its diameter.
One of the prop items I am currently considering would fit within a 7 inch by 4 inch rectangle.
The various pieces of the lighting grips will all fit within a 4 inch square form factor.

I have been looking at printers for a couple of weeks and when I started it looked like there were many solutions, but the more I have read the more it seems that most of those printers don't really work.

Are there any printers in this price range that are at all dependable and semi-ready to use "out of the box?"

Thanks for any assistance.

http://deezmaker.com/store/#!/~/prod...=0&id=23715420

A little over your budget but the designer was a videographer in Hollywood for years before creating the Bukobot. His machine looks like quality stuff and I'm jealous of them.

Asking for advice on a printer is dangerous as you'll get as many answers as there are printers...lol...

I am biased because I love mine, but look at Makerfarm.com. The printers are under $1000 and print beautifully. And, Colin (owner) gives some of the best support you'll ever find. He'll answer questions at midnight. Has done that many times for me. The build area is about 8"x8"x8" (approximately...see the site for exact numbers). The Makerfarm printers are "self-build" but I tell you, you learn so much by building a printer. I have a friend who bought one pre-assembled and the first time he had a problem he was lost. He couldn't figure out where to start to get bad parts off. I think by building the machine you get a printer that is worth twice as much and learn a lot.

Bad thing with a kit is all the time you're going to have to put into it working out all of bugs.

I'm not sure I'd call that bugs. It's really working out calibration and you need to know how to do that anyway. I didn't have any bugs that I know of but I did learn how to flash my RAMPS, adjust my Z-steps, fine tune my E-steps, etc. I know there are two camps, Buy Built VS Build. Both are valid. I just think that if you are at all "handy" you'll enjoy the build process and will learn everything about your printer. Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate spending $2000 on a nice, fancy, shiny printer and getting prints off of it from day one.

Either way, the important thing is to just "get one" and get rolling. It's a fantastic experience and one that's not a fad. It's going to be around awhile. It's exciting to be part of something that's still in its infancy. I can't wait to see where we are in 5-years.

Another vote for the Makerfarm kits. I got a usable print the first time I used my 8-inch i3v. Note that they ship the RAMPS board preflashed with firmware, and Makerfarm provides default configuration files to use with Slic3r for the combinations of filament and hot ends that they offer. Both of those were key to my getting the printer running without having to work through countless settings I wouldn't have understood at the time.

I have to mirror what Kevin said. I have the same printer and I too got a decent print the first time I fired it up. When it came to tweaking and calibrating, I was already ahead of the curve because having built it, I knew what every part was.

Kevin, how do you like that Hexagon on your printer? I'm thinking about a new head. I have the Magma .4 and JHead .5, both Wade's Extruder and I find it very reliable but hard to work with when changing hot ends.

I'm liking the hex hot end, but I don't have experience with anything else to compare it to. I picked the hex since it seemed like it was getting the most positive feedback from what I was reading.

Cool. I'll put it on my radar. Thanks.

I will take a look at the Maker Farm models. Most of the sub $1000 kits I have seen seem to use MDF, acrylic, or just the support rods for structure. I have constructed a CNC router before from a wooden structure and I was not impressed with its ability to maintain calibration.

The Makerfarm kits use veneered MDF. I was also leery of that, but the i3v series is different than most in that it utilizes aluminum v-rails. I think the v-rails add a lot of robustness to the printer.

Build kits have been there a long time now for some and they have a huge community. If you buy a built machine, pay attention to support, community and maturity. There is a new project or machine advertised at least once a week, true, but when you pre-order an upcoming project by a brand new start up you might end up having much more than calibration issues.

Lucked out on my eBay snipe on a Flashforge Creator X. (~$1k)
It arrived with a few spade lug wires disconnected (shipping /shaking?).
Most printers aren't going to run "out -of-the box", expect that.
Been running the FFCx for ~2-3 months now & am really happy with it.
They ALL need a bit of tweaking..and playing with the software..
My 2 cents..
Cheers.
TD

Craftbot on indiegogo, i got mine from there and Its cost like 400-500 bucks Its like a makerbot rip-off but from all i can see Its a fine option. Also, im an engineer and photographer, do you want to make your Own ring flash? Cheers.

Just as long as you don't expect your Craftbot to ship this year, I'm sur eyou'll be okay... If you actually need your printer before December, get something "off the shelf" rather than via crowdfunding.

Why steer the guy away from the Craftbot ks project. Sure the company and printer has no track record as of yet but the marketing sounds cool. Yes, there are a lot of printer companies out there with products already on the shelves and in peoples hands. Maybe he likes to fund people's pet project and help out the little guy? Delays of 6+ mos are common on ks, I'm sure he already took that into account and is not ready for his printer for another year.

You have a point that he hasn't specified a time that he needs the printer. It just seems like because people expect delays from KS campaigns these days that it leads the people putting them out to make more and more unrealistic timelines (has anyone asked for evidence of Craftbot sticking to the timeline they have? According to it they've already started production, but all I see on their page is renders.)

I wish the Craftbot team the best, I really do. But not calling them out on their promised delivery dates just feels like rewarding bad behavior.

And hey, they could come out with news that completely changes my tune on them. I was a pretty hefty sceptic of New Matter's MOD-T in the beginning, but they convinced me enough to pledge for one.

I guess I could reccomend the MOD-T just as much as many of the other crowdfunded reccomendations, but their Indiegogo campaign ended yesterday I think. (by the time they're "on shelves", I'll be sure to have some kind of review written.)

I think this forum/website should do more to steer people away from KS 3D printing projects.

I really think Craftbot will deliver first batch off 100 in August or September. I guess we have to wait and see.

I don't think it's our job to actively steer anyone towards or away from anyone's products really. An open discussion may sway people but we can't be picking sides. That unfair as moderators. Sure, we all have opinions but we really can't actively "steer" anyone away from something that on some level might be a good product. Much of what is talked about here is subjective so we have to be careful what we say. You can feel free to discuss it but "The Site or Forum" (moderators that is) really should not actively "steer."

You have a very good point Rob. I've seen the pitfalls of Mods taking sides in subjective debates before (oh man can it get ugly) and I know to stay clear of that kind of behavior.

I'll take a bit more care to tone down my opinions in the future (though that won't be terribly easy for me).

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Originally Posted by Feign

I'll take a bit more care to tone down my opinions in the future (though that won't be terribly easy for me).

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I hear ya, you should see all of the holes I've bitten in my tongue. There was one recently where equality of the sexes came up and a user said we should not treat women and men the same. I fired off about 5 paragraphs from my soapbox and then had to delete it all because I knew it was more professional to just "walk away" from it. I almost got way, way too far off topic...lol....

So, I feel your pain my friend...

Well, someone needs to step and warn people of the train wrecks above. They come here looking for info and they have the marketing team incognito waiting for them or already here. Theres not enough active users here to counter.

Some Craftbot threads below. I have nothing against them, they're just the flavor of the month.

http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.p...light=craftbot

http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.p...light=craftbot

http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.p...light=craftbot

Crowbar, you are doing a fine job of throwing up flares. Carry on, I won't stand in your way. As a user you are free to express anything you wish as long as you stay professional, as you have. It's just not wise for we moderators to appear to take sides and tout one developer while criticizing another. That would harm the credibility of this forum. We aren't paid, we are just like you. But we have to have a different demeanor. We are here to nurture, help and steer and not be too opinionated. I'm sure you can understand.

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Originally Posted by crowbar

Well, someone needs to step and warn people of the train wrecks above. They come here looking for info and they have the marketing team incognito waiting for them or already here. Theres not enough active users here to counter.

Some Craftbot threads below. I have nothing against them, they're just the flavor of the month.

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Not all kickstarters fail, Zortrax made it and doing pretty good.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...top-3d-printer

I don't have any problem with members and moderators warning people about the pitfalls of kickstarter. I have several years experience in 3d printing and would wholeheartedly steer new folks away from kickstarter campaigns. They are a huge unknown. I went with a well known name in 3d printing on kickstarter and we are 8 months late and communication has been slow as well. We are probably going to get a great printer out of it in the end but my patience is wearing thing. You are also taking a chance whether there will be a growing community at the end of it all either. My advice? Stick with a well known reprap style printer like those from MakerFarm or Printrbot. Make a kit, if possible, as you will learn about all the different components used and how they work together. Take a look at forum activity for the printers you are interested in to make sure that there will be community folks, that have your printer, you can get help from when you need it.

Building these seems similar to building RC heli's. You are going to crash them, so there is no point in buying one pre-made.

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Originally Posted by 3DPBuser

Building these seems similar to building RC heli's. You are going to crash them, so there is no point in buying one pre-made.

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Sorry, would disagree on that one. I am pretty handy (and have built Heli's for over 20 yrs...) and thought I might just for once save myself the hassle of building something and buy something that just works. The cheap dual extruder machines like the one i purchaed, while preassembled are just a simple box with a few screws, replacing or changing anything is easy, and alot less finnicky than rebalancing a T-Rex shaft assembly :p For buying a home built one that does a comparable job to say mine, I would need to spend about $650 - $700, but unassembled about 4 to 500 and then spend a crap load of time building it and setting it up. Instead, I had it out of the box and working relatively quickly (albeit it needed a tension cable holder super glued in place because it was broken in transit) but that's the point, even green and new to the printer I could fix it with some super glue... they are not rocket science and flashing an arduino board is faster and easier than flashing a kk2.0 flight controller.

As far as kickstarters go, I avoid them like the plague.

Today's "mayonnaise" story linked to this thread.

To help any others, I'll point out that it should have linked to here:

http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.p...nnaise-Printer

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Feign

Just as long as you don't expect your Craftbot to ship this year, I'm sur eyou'll be okay... If you actually need your printer before December, get something "off the shelf" rather than via crowdfunding.

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yes i know it will take longer to arrive, it supose it should arrive on september this year 2014, but yet i cant afford a $1000 bucks for a know printer at the moment, and because i want it for comercial use (our wedding logos, personalized items for weddings, etc, etc.) i cant take the chance of getting a printer that needs a lot of work and tweeking, yes i know it would be a heck of fun/learning to get a kit and assemble it, but again my cash and time are way too low at the moment, anyway i see your point of kickstarter/indiegogo campains having no backup at all, afterall anyone can start a campaing and advertice they will send you to live happyly in mars in a mont or so (sarcastic), yet i have no other choice at the moment so lets hope the best. i will post my advances/emo rages once i get my printer. cheers

Sorry, I might be late to the party (being a noob to this forum), but if you're still looking for sub-$1000 printers, maybe look at the UP! Mini from Tiertime. It's an all-around solid printer, from what I've heard from my own network of acquaintances. Octave Systems is one of Tiertime's US resellers, and you can even get a printer bundled with what are basically starter kits for under $1000.

Hi and Welcome. I'm one of the many moderators.

Nothing wrong with being a noob. We all were at one time. Sometimes we forget that. Late to the party is fine too. It's an all-night party. We have lots of liquor left... The only thing you might be guilty of is not searching before posting. But, not harm no foul.

That question is a frequent one. There are a lot of good threads about it here. This was a quick search, (keywords: printer under 1000) and I found these. Read them and others and if you still need help by all means write back.


http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.p...t=printer+1000
http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.p...t=printer+1000
http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.p...t=printer+1000
http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.p...t=printer+1000

Again welcome, there are some very, very talented users here. We'll get you rolling,

Rob

Thank you! I'll take a White Russian, please. ;)

I'll send that UPS.