davinci xyz 1.0 good for newbie???

[icemanfred]

HI all
been fasicnated by 3d printing for a while.

But prices on the printers I had seen before seemed prohibitive. And the print volume seemed restricing.
recently I came across the davinci xyz 1.0.

so Iam wondering what the concensus of this printer is?
Is this a good intro into 3d printing or am I just going to get frustrated with it?

[curious aardvark]

wouldn't be my first choice. You need to fiddle the cartridges to use non- xyz filament and performance seems hit an miss.
there are dozens of 'what is the best first printer' threads. Look thought them :-)

The printers that frequently crop up are:

printrbot
makerbot clones: flashforge, ctc, wanhao
i3 prusa - either kits or the new wanhao i3.
These are all between $300 - $600

If you're prepared to wait then the model-t has promise, but the m3d micro is generating mixed reviews. Build quality seems suspect but apparently when it works, it works well.

[Sebastian Finke]

Flashforge for $300 - $600?!

[curious aardvark]

yep flashforge creator is £400 on ebay in the uk and $500 on ebay in the states (which is a lot cheaper).
They are seriosuly cheap. But great machines.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Black-3D-printer-dual-extruder-Dual-nozzle-W-Abs-or-Pla-Spools-/171167571392?hash=item27da61ddc0

[curious aardvark]

Always make sure if buying from ebay that the printer is sent from your own country.
That way the price usually includes p&p and no import tax.

If buying from china you can generally add at least $200 to the 500 cost.

This one's only $450: http://www.ebay.com/itm/CTC-3D-Print...item35ee53ac28

[Marm]

Listen to what CA says.

The Davinci has been a good machine for me (350 hours now), but it has it's serious drawbacks.

But the simple answer to your question is yes, it's good for beginners. It's got a huge print volume for the price (200mm^3), simple to use, and the software is very user friendly (but very limited).

But if you are looking to do anything beyond, I would look elsewhere.

[breeblebrax]

Also a fellow Davinci 1.0 owner. It just worked out of the box. Has a glass plate over the heated printing surface. Simple scraping routine that gets the junk off the nozzle and
a self leveling feature. It is, pretty hands off. For a newbie, being worried about using their higher cost plastic spools should not really be an issue.

The thing I really like about these guys is that they fix issues with the software and firmware. They make improvements and their deployment processes is hands off. Your load the software, if there are new versions, you simply press install and they take care of it. When I first got mine, in the first batch that came into the US, the computer processing time to calculate the post codes was sometimes longer than the print. Then one day, a new version came and that problem just vanished.

The Davinci is backed by a huge electronics company in Taiwan, Kinpo, who is very serious about being in the 3d printer space.