Complete Newb questions.... (Feeling over whelmed)

I would appreciate thoughts, advice and warnings from those of you who have been down the "My first 3D printer" path. Honestly most of the specs like... MK8, E3D. V6, FFF, PLA, ABS, Moldlay, Mendal, i2, i3, v noth head, 1.75mm, 3mm, is mostly techno garble to me at the moment.

I've been looking at $200-$400 range Prusa i3 printers on Ebay. Being a complete newbie I really don't see a lot of differences between one offer and another. Some have aluminum beds some glass and some pyrex. some have 15A power supplies some 18 or 20Amp. Should I be looking for specific servos, bearings etc... to help me decide which one to buy... which kit is cheap and which is quality.


I am an advanced class amateur radio operator (K4MLW). I work as a tech building custom automation electrical controls. I plan to use the printer to make parts, gears, cases, bulkhead component panel faces for my personal hobby projects. My wife likes to make Jewelry... (wire wrap, beads, charms etc) so we thought about printing wearable items (ear rings, bracelets, charms, necklaces). We both have fineart degrees and thought about possibly doing lost wax plaster molding for silver, gold, pewter. My son is 17 and occasionally is involved with robot projects with arduino, AVR and basi stamp micro controllers... but mostly he wants to make a geared heart for his girlfriend and a POKEMON chess set. I've been playing with BLENDER for the past few days getting acquainted with 3D modeling.... we are about to buy SOMETHING... the only thing stopping me at the moment is I want to make a more informed decision.

I've been leaning towards a printer with the Prusa i3 frame, 200x200x170mm work space, Arduino Mega boards and Ramps 1.4 board. (Cause I'm familiar with arduino) Other than that I am open and welcome to any and all advice.

I'm in the South East USA.. and don't mind buying from China or HongKong... but would just as well buy from USA... and preferably East Coast.... so feel free to point me toward a seller. (providing it isn't against forum rules.)

Thanks for reading my newbie dribble,
Marty in Greenville, S.C. USA

not sure we have any rules :-)
Oh yeah - don't upset Geoff ;-)

on the I3 front best current advice is to just buy a wanhao duplicator i3 V-2.
http://wanhaousa.com/products/duplicator-i3-steel-frame

Covers all the bases, solid construction, easy to enclose, should you want to.
Why piss about with a diy kit - when for silly money someone's already built it for you :-)

Marty:

I also am a 3D printer novice (and an Arduino user). Since you mentioned the printing of jewelry - I have been working on my first project, a model of my wife's 1962 Corvette, with the intention of printing two small models (30mm in length) for a pair of earrings for my wife. The main problem I am having is that when the model is scaled down to the 30mm size, the detail is still in the model, but none of the inexpensive "home" printers can capture the detail. I recently was pointed to the Shapeways.com site and you might want to look at it to print some samples to see what the different materials and printing resolutions will look like. I have not printed anything from the Shapeways site yet, still trying to fix the wall thickness problem with my model.

Good luck,
Charles

for tiny detail you need an sla machine - not cheap, yet !

For detail, with FDM printers, what you will need to do is use a smaller nozzle size than the standard 0.4mm. 0.25mm is generally about as small as they go. Check to see if you can change your nozzle size. Low layer resolution will also allow you to do this but minimum feature size is a product of nozzle size in general.

Otherwise it's SLA printers, the generally accepted tool for such fine scale printing. Then you are talking £1400 and up. I believe that there maybe cheaper versions of SLA out there, probably kickstarter is inundated with them, but beware.

Thanks to all for the replies. The Wanhao machine in Florida is very tempting. I'm currently stuck at work inspecting control panels... But as soon as I can I will be contacting Wanhao to ask a few questions and more than likely make an order. I have to resist the impulse shopper in me.... I could easily end up with a 3D printing factory in my living room.
LOL
Marty

Quote:

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Originally Posted by curious aardvark

not sure we have any rules :-)
Oh yeah - don't upset Geoff ;-)

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That's easy, just don't make 100 spammy posts a day and I'm all smiles. :p

Right now, Buy the Flashforge Pro, $999 down from $1349, and it was $1500 at the start of the year.