3D Printing Issues - PEBKAC or Low Quality machines ?

Hi guys,

New member and have been reading up on 3D printing for months now, while I watch a buddy's 2 RepRap machines he build personally. (single and dual extruder).

My History
US Airforce Jet Avionics
I'm a handy guy who fixes everything in my house myself within reason. Electronic fixes soldering new capacitors in my NSX etc, Built all the family computers (fix laptops, and PC's with RAID0 SSD, program in Unreal Engine 4, Zbrush, Unity3D, Cinema 4D)

That said sigh, i wonder what percentage of the problems we are seeing are from people 3D printing that are not tinkerers, and are newly intro-ing themselves into DIY projects like 3D printing. Looking at all the settings, and calibrations that should be done regularly, potential pitfalls etc. I can readily see that it's not a fire and forget process where you load a STL file and hit one button, go get coffee, or fill out a mortgage application...(hours), and come back to Perfection.

Am I wrong in how I'm reading many forums? Of course there are some problem brands with some new releases, but it seems like the complaining is overboard with no mention of what users have fixed or worked around for themselves. I plan on being constructive and if I come across a problem, I plan on listing it, and describing workarounds if I've found them, or ask others for a workaround. Not just logging complaints only due to a perceived issue and expecting the vendor to hand me the fix on a silver platter. (That said you should get the expected base level of quality from the manufacturer, decent wrapping while shipping etc, but i think again some go too far, in complaining about this type of hobby).

Anyways I talked too much in my first post, and look forward to the dialogue with the global community. :D

Ghoxt

I think that perhaps there is a lot of enthusiasm and people loose sight of the fact that it IS a complex process. Most of what I see I put down to high expectations / low knowledge.

In my engineering school we had the chance to have very experienced people coming from the industry and the practical works were really instructive. While I've never actually worked in that field they passed down a lot of manufacturing experience.

So when I started to consider buying a printer I knew I wanted removable support, controled environment, at least semi integrated levelling ... because that's the basic of manufacturing whatever the mean involved.

I intend to write down a checklist of stuff I usually look at before pressing print... You can find bits and pieces here and there but I think we should try and summarize a bit.