Is this the right printer for me?

I am thinking about getting into 3d printing, possibly using it as a way to express my creativity and merge that into business to sell the things i create for profit. this seems to be a good way to do so. my wife suggested to get an inexpensive printer to get familiar with the machine and all its details and see if i can actually make this work before dropping 2500 or more into a void that cant make a return. i found this printer (supposedly $100) and was wondering if it would make a good intro printer for me to get into the field?

i am a bit of a techie, so while im not exactly a programmer or hacker, i know my way around a computer more than most, and while i have little experience in actual graphic design, i have used cad programs before, so the concept is not foreign to me.

i guess what i am looking for out of this intro machine are as such:
cheap to buy: i dont want to spend more than a few hundred bucks on something that may not end up being something i can do
cheap to run: this is more important for the 2nd machine i buy, the one i will actually use to try to make a profit, but the cost of each individual printing needs to be low so as to keep competitive pricing
good training machine: there needs to be enough about this machine that is similar to the type of machine i will likely be getting for my craft that i can actually learn about it from this (ie the method it uses to print, the software used, etc)

i would love some feedback/suggestions on whether this is a good place to start, or if there is a better machine to get me into the field.

i hope i dont sound like a dopy noob, but i tried to do some research on different machines and got completely overwhelmed. i just need to dumb it down a bit and see what all the smart people say lol

Much of what you would learn using the peachy printer would be knolage that would transfer to most other 3d printers.

skills like:
- 3d cad modleing
- sliceing
- materials


The peachy printer puts down layers like other printers so many of the concepts will translate well.

If you wanted to learn how to fix 3d printers ( like be a 3d printer technician) then thats where the peachy printer would introduce some very unconventional concepts, and likely be a bad but fun choice.
For example You wouldn't be able to use your skills in fixing a driper on any other printer.

Cost wise the peachy printer is very inexpensive to run, its powered of just a single usb port, and prints are ( update coming on this ) very inexpensive.

There is probably just one problem, if you decide you want a peachy printer you will have to wait to get one because they are only available for pre order at this time.

Shapeways is another great place to get started with 3d printing, I recommend you give it a try too. Its pretty Great.

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Originally Posted by rylangrayston

Much of what you would learn using the peachy printer would be knolage that would transfer to most other 3d printers.

skills like:
- 3d cad modleing
- sliceing
- materials


The peachy printer puts down layers like other printers so many of the concepts will translate well.

If you wanted to learn how to fix 3d printers ( like be a 3d printer technician) then thats where the peachy printer would introduce some very unconventional concepts, and likely be a bad but fun choice.
For example You wouldn't be able to use your skills in fixing a driper on any other printer.

Cost wise the peachy printer is very inexpensive to run, its powered of just a single usb port, and prints are ( update coming on this ) very inexpensive.

There is probably just one problem, if you decide you want a peachy printer you will have to wait to get one because they are only available for pre order at this time.

Shapeways is another great place to get started with 3d printing, I recommend you give it a try too. Its pretty Great.

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TY for the quick response. I would love some other opinions, but you did address pretty much all the points that matter to me. I recently purchased a pair of dice from shapeways, but will have to look into their printers. Do you know when the Peachy Printer is supposed to be released? Also, if there are more than one shapeways model/model options, is there one in particular i should be looking at?

The peachy is still a work in progress.
Got to say, a fair amount of progress has been made in the last 12 months or so.

But it's still a ways from ready for retail.

The best way to start - particularly if you don't mind building your own - is to buy a kit. These are available from around the $350-400 mark.
The iprintr simple series are extremely good value for money as are the flashforge and equivalents - though these are fully built machines and correspondngly more expensive.

But basically you need a printer. Sitting around and playing with slicers and cad packages is okay - but until you've actually printed stuff you really don't get the whole process properly. Or really understand how to design for the printing process.

The peachy is starting to look pretty good. But alas, you can't buy one, yet !

I've had a few things printed by Shapeways and I've made a few pennies from people ordering my designs too. I second that as a great place to start. If your designs are not going to print on their printers they will also give some feedback as to what you can change too which is really cool.

You might find there is a hackerspace or such near you where someone with a printer can let you have a go to see what you can make too

does anyone have any suggestions for free programs that are good for drafting my designs? i would prefer one that is more cad based than graphic design based (i'm sorry if that sounds dumb. i dont know how much of a difference there is, but i went to school for mechanical engineering, so i am more familiar with utilitarian cad than artsy stuff. i want to learn it all in time, but i figure unless there really is no difference, start with what you know, right?)

most of the 3d cad programs CAN output 'stl' files that most(if not all) the slicing software can read, but a bit less common in the slicing is the 'obj' file type, but as far as CAD software, as long as it supports 3D and can output either stl or obj and you can get the results you want from the software then use it as it can supply te files for the printer(s)

A new program from the Solidworks people is in Beta: Onshape. It looks really good for free.

My favorite is openscad http://www.openscad.org/ . It's a text based drafting system where you say things like cylinder(3,5,8), and union etc. The reason I like it is because it's more like programming. You can update and add at any level, make modules to do part items, and combine them as you want. You don't end up with the 0 width walls like some other cad systems do. Another one is meshlab, which I've used for importing and exporting various formats. Blender is also good but you need to be careful with it.

openscad is the only thing that works like my brain works. Brilliant bit of kit.

But just buy a printer and start.
Wasting money on shapeways is pointless. As you can't afford a laser sintered powdered nylon system, so what's the point learning to design for one ? The print parameters are completely different to a filament based printing system.
Just get a cheap fff machine and start making stuff. It's addictive.

ty for all the input! i will def try this openscad. i also found another free one. that beta one sounds iffy for me for the moment. i dont want to get roped into having to give feedback while im trying to get my 'C-legs' under me ;-)

The trick with openscad - and ryan uses it as well (guy who's printers forum we've hijacked lol) is to break things down into shapes.
If you can look at something and see it as simply a collection of squares, triangles, cylinders, cones etc - then openscad is definitely for you.

i should be able to do that. can you bevel and trim and curve edges and such?

Go through any tutorials you find on it. I think you will find it can do anything you need, including curve edges etc.

thx. i will do that. one more question, and if this should go in a new question in a different section, i can repost it:

as i am planning on eventually going into business selling the things i produce, are there any legalities i will need to deal with selling anything i draft myself that may be affiliated with major franchises, such as harry potter or hunger games? or are they likely to just write me off as a small time business selling logos?

Depends on the company. DC takes a hard line, as well as Disney. I've seen people get away with selling custom wood signs, but as a rule intellectual property laws come into play with any logos. It's against the law and you're putting yourself in a risky position selling those items. Selling similar items works, but don't put their logos on them. Business layers call it IP for short (Intellectual Property) and lately there seems to be a big push to protect it. We've had to take classes from the company lawyers where I work teaching us to find ways to protect the IP of the company.

how would i go about getting legal permission to produce things like that? try to contact the owner of the rights and get a royalty agreement or something? is there much chance of that working?

You should contact them directly for sure for permission, I don't know how costly the process involved to get a licensing agreement is though.

You'll probably find that those rights have already been licensed away. If you wanted to recreate the wands from harry potter for example then it would be http://www.noblecollection.com/ that come after you as they have that licence. If you wanted to make a range of wands so that people could cos-play as Hogwarts pupils but you were not making any specific ones from the books or movies then you would be fine. The concept of a wand is suitably vague I doubt anyone could do anything to you over it.

I'm not a legal expert and you should possibly contact one if you want to do this thing seriously.

I have some Mass Effect inspired items on my Shapeways store, I'm not sure where I would stand if Bioware ever noticed me but if I had to remove them from sale I'd not lose any sleep.

basically do what the chinese do and make wands that have nothing to do with harry potter - they just look like they do ;-)

hahaha aardvark. i will definitely do that with the more generic things. i was more thinking of logos for the popular things. such as maybe the mockingjay symbol made into a pin or pendant. im sure theres no way i could do that genericly, so i would likely need to contact the author of the books or producer of the movies.

Good luck - but I think they'll all say no.

Do you want to spend more time printing and designing or more time tweaking and fussing?

A 100-300 machine is going to have you doing the latter more, spend more like $600-$1000.. The Printerbot Metal would be an exception, that is actually a pretty solid little unit.

As far as designing things, if you want something that's free and has a massive support base (and a million youtube tutorial videos) try Blender (blender.org) A little odd at first but if you want a good program that is a mix between being nerdy like openScad, and one that's noob friiendly like zbrush, Blender is a great choice, the only thing it doesn't do is repair meshes but that's what netfabb is for.

I use Blender for 3D modeling for printing. It does have an add-on for checking your meshes called Print3D. All you have to do is go into the preferences and click a box.

Once you do a few tutorials about the Interface and how to model, I think it is pretty easy to use. The interface is very customizable, which is intimidating at first, but the flexibility is great once you get comfortable.

Its default settings are for animation. Blender is a versatile tool.

Blender is also able to be used to precisely model things to the size you want, but you have to do some set up first. I had to figure most of this out on my own, so I will give you a brief explanation of how I get started.

Go into a Properties panel, scroll down to the units section and click on Metric or Imperial. Then to get the scaling right set the scale to 0.001. In your 3D view, you will probably have to change the clipping to be able to see your model. That's all you really have to do to start modeling for 3D printing in blender.

Blender's default ui is pretty horrible, if you are used to 2D design... At least it's customizable, but the documentation on what everything does is pretty much nonexistent. It took me the better part of 2 hours to get the ui customized to where I could do basic things, like scroll around the object, and move the object with my touchpad. I tried it out in 1996, and again in 2004 and again in 2013... It's come a long way, but most of the functions seem to be for animating. It would be nice if it had a 3D printing mode where all those extraneous things (camera angles, frames, light sources, etc) went away.

I also use Blender for my 3D-Models and I have to admit that sometimes it is really annoying to get some stuff to work...
When I build up my Object from multiple meshes and try to do some boolean operations to join them I often get an error (It seams that BoolOPs dont like to join two Objects with partially the same faces...)

Probably you could say it like this:

When you're trying to make "mathematical correct" Objects use something like OpenScad
When you're looking for natural forms like humans etc... Blender ist probably your way to go. (Thanks to the Sculpt mode)

BTW:
Usually the first step after creating a project in Blender: A -> Entf -> Enter (Delete Everything); then start adding (SHIFT A)
Also probably a nice feature for working with meshes: 3D-View -> right Settings panel (Click small + on right Edge if not visible) -> Display -> Ambient Occlusion (only available in latest version)

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Originally Posted by 3dspider

Blender's default ui is pretty horrible, if you are used to 2D design... At least it's customizable, but the documentation on what everything does is pretty much nonexistent. It took me the better part of 2 hours to get the ui customized to where I could do basic things, like scroll around the object, and move the object with my touchpad. I tried it out in 1996, and again in 2004 and again in 2013... It's come a long way, but most of the functions seem to be for animating. It would be nice if it had a 3D printing mode where all those extraneous things (camera angles, frames, light sources, etc) went away.

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Blender is very powerful but it is a nightmare. Trying to find the right function or part of the interface can be difficult. Its very easy to get lost in its UI.

I like http://www.wings3d.com/ it's a very natural feeling modeler. I export to Blender to scale to the right size and do any bool functions.