Makerfarm Prusa Kits - Help Me Decide

[tfast500]

So I am new to 3D printing and would love to get one soon. I am very interested in the 10" or 12" Makerfarm Prusa Kits because of the build volume. Most printers I have found come no where close to the size / costs. Keep In mind I only started looking. I have skimmed these forums and see that there is a decent community for these printers also another plus to me.

Since I am completely new to this can I get some recommendations. I want to know if there are differences in performance between the 10 and 12 inch kits. (What do you have and what would you buy if you where buying a new one? Different brand of printer?)

Also this kit gives me other options to choose from however not knowing anything about each option im not sure if it is necessary or what I need for my prints. I plan to create many things for my RPi and my RC hobbies.

Options:
Interface: Full graphical interface vs standard is this necessary? what about RAMPS vs RUMBA? The price difference isn't an issue if its better.

Nozzels: 40mm e3d-v6 Hot end, J-Head Nozzle, Hexagon Nozzle (no clue how any of these perform I assume I would upgrade this over anything else?)

Extruder: Standard Greg's Hinged Extruder (1.75mm & 3mm Filament) - just going with the standard on this one

Aluminum or Wood Heat Bed Mount - I also assume I should just upgrade this also since I have read about warping wood beds.

Any help suggestions or comments would definitely be appreciated or if you think I am in over my head please reply

[Chadd]

I would have a hard time recommending a 12" i3V. I have easily spent another few $100 on mine to get it to print well, not including the time and frustration of it all.

IMO here are a few things you will need to do at a minimum to make it print well.

1. Get an aluminum Y bed.

2. Swap the mechanical heat bed relay to a solid state relay and enable PID to combat heat bed warping and or replace the entire heat bed assembly with something more rigid.

3. Make alternative mounts for the Axis home switches and mount then with something other than Zip ties.

4. Purchase and print the parts for auto bed leveling, otherwise you will constantly fight with Z homing issues.

5. Reinforce or replace some of the wooden frame parts with aluminum to combat frame warpage/flexing.

The makerfarm experience almost turned me away from 3d printing because of all the issues that I had with it. As I have said in other threads I know that a 3d printer kit will need some tinkering to get it to print well but IMO if you assemble the kit properly based off the instructions you should end up with a printer that prints fairly well using the parts that came with the kit. That wasn't the case for me and being inexperienced with 3d printing it has taken me 8 or 9 months to get this thing to finally produce good prints.

From what others say it seems like the smaller i3v printers don't suffer from many of the issues that the 12" printer does so maybe you would want to go with a smaller version and after you have a good grasp on 3d printing and tuning upgrade to the larger one.

But my suggestion is if you can swing the extra cost would be to buy a pre-made printer that you can pull out of the box plug in, install filament and start printing with. Once you have a working printer you can always use it to start building a larger printer.

So I am new to 3D printing and would love to get one soon. I am very interested in the 10" or 12" Makerfarm Prusa Kits because of the build volume. Most printers I have found come no where close to the size / costs. Keep In mind I only started looking. I have skimmed these forums and see that there is a decent community for these printers also another plus to me.

Since I am completely new to this can I get some recommendations. I want to know if there are differences in performance between the 10 and 12 inch kits. (What do you have and what would you buy if you where buying a new one? Different brand of printer?)

Also this kit gives me other options to choose from however not knowing anything about each option im not sure if it is necessary or what I need for my prints. I plan to create many things for my RPi and my RC hobbies.

Options:
Interface: Full graphical interface vs standard is this necessary? what about RAMPS vs RUMBA? The price difference isn't an issue if its better.

Nozzels: 40mm e3d-v6 Hot end, J-Head Nozzle, Hexagon Nozzle (no clue how any of these perform I assume I would upgrade this over anything else?)

Extruder: Standard Greg's Hinged Extruder (1.75mm & 3mm Filament) - just going with the standard on this one

Aluminum or Wood Heat Bed Mount - I also assume I should just upgrade this also since I have read about warping wood beds.

Any help suggestions or comments would definitely be appreciated or if you think I am in over my head please reply

[tfast500]

Thanks Chad for your response. I don't want to get off topic from MakerFarm, but do you have any other printer recommendations.

I must say I do expect there to be a learning curve, and some tinkering along the way. That is not a huge detour for me as I am pretty hands on, however I do not want this to burn me out or be so much of a struggle I wont enjoy it.

Thanks again for your feedback I am wondering if I should stay in the 10" range with this and play it "safer"

I would have a hard time recommending a 12" i3V. I have easily spent another few $100 on mine to get it to print well, not including the time and frustration of it all.

[Chadd]

The only other printer I have any experience with is an XYZ davinci JR that I bought for my 11yr old Daughter. I literally took it out of the box, plugged it in, installed filament and software on her PC and printed a part within 15 min.

She has printed a bunch of stuff on it and I haven't had to help her with anything and it only cost $340 shipped through amazon.

It's downfalls are.

1. Small print area.

2. No heated bed so you can only print PLA.

3. You have to use XYZ filament because they have RFID tags on the spools. For me this works well because it configures all the print settings so my Daughter can just put the filament in and not have to mess with anything.

But XYZ has several other printers that have a bit larger print area and can print PLA and ABS. There is still the limitation of having to use XYZ filament because of the RFID tags on the filament but I think you can reflash the printer to work around this. There is a guy on youtube that prints with Davinci printers and I am sure there are a ton of other videos on there from others as well.

https://www.youtube.com/user/beginnerelectronics/videos

Here is an amazon search for XYZ printers

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=a9_sc_1?...qid=1442598535

If I had it to do over again I would have probably bought one of the XYZ printers to start with and used it to build another larger printer.

But that being said there are a bunch of different printers out there so be sure you do some research.

Thanks Chad for your response. I don't want to get off topic from MakerFarm, but do you have any other printer recommendations.

I must say I do expect there to be a learning curve, and some tinkering along the way. That is not a huge detour for me as I am pretty hands on, however I do not want this to burn me out or be so much of a struggle I wont enjoy it.

Thanks again for your feedback I am wondering if I should stay in the 10" range with this and play it "safer"

[tfast500]

Originally I have looked past all of these. However I am intrigued by the XYZ Da Vinci 1.0 AiO

Really like that it can scan coppies...

The only other printer I have any experience with is an XYZ davinci JR that I bought for my 11yr old Daughter. I literally took it out of the box, plugged it in, installed filament and software on her PC and printed a part within 15 min.

[spaceorange12]

If you are going with a Makerfarm, I would recommend a hexagon hot end. It can print at higher speeds and many of the printable upgrades are based upon it. Run it with 3mm filament. Even if you do want to convert to bowden, there are many examples of 3mm bowden systems (Ultimaker).

[Chadd]

If you are going with a Makerfarm, I would recommend a hexagon hot end. It can print at higher speeds and many of the printable upgrades are based upon it. Run it with 3mm filament. Even if you do want to convert to bowden, there are many examples of 3mm bowden systems (Ultimaker).

I haven't used any other hotends than the Hexagon that I got with my kit but I haven't had any issues with it at all.

I have the 3mm with the .4mm nozzle. I kind of wish I had it in 1.75 because it seems there is more of a selection of filament in 1.75mm.

[tsteever]

I love my Makerfarm 12"! That being said, I did a lot to get it to print well and I am still improving it. Wheat you save in the cost of the printer you will definitely eat up in time.

I would recommend the E3dv6 over the hexagon. It can print everything the hex can and in my experience, does a better job. I won't go back. I have a few parts for the hex and a complete hotend that I will never use. The e3d has worked out so much better for me. Also, I would steer you towards the 1.75 filament. Getting the 3mm is one of my biggest regrets. When my stock of 3mm parts and filament is exhausted I will be switching over. I'd sell it but not sure where to even post something like that.

As far as other printers go, I would look into the Maker's tool works Mendal max 3. The build volume is a tad smaller than the maker farm but the support you get from them is second to none. Don't get me wrong, Collin is great at getting you up and running, but when you want to fine tune the printer, he hasn't offered much guidance. The guys at Maker Tool Works have a chat room that is always staffed it seems by a staff member who will not only get you up and running, but get you fine tuned as well. Got Z banding, they will help you every step of the way to eliminate it. My next printer will be from them.

[Chadd]

I know that I dog on the 12" i3v kit but out of the box it just wouldn't produce good prints. But now that I finally have everything lined out it prints very well. I still have a bit of periodic Z axis banding so I still have few things to do it but I am more than happy with the print quality now. Here's a picture of the T-Rex skull I am printing for the kids. This was printed at .2mm with no supports just as shown. It looks much better in person than the cellphone pics suggests.

IMG_20150919_113733.jpg

IMG_20150919_115710.jpgIMG_20150919_113806.jpg

If it would have printed like this out of the box I would have been very happy with it but without replacing major components of the kit it wouldn't. Before my modifications I couldn't print this part at all because I would have first layer issues and major layer delamination because of the Y axis and heat bed warpage.

[tfast500]

That looks awesome! cant wait! After talking with Colin I went ahead and bought the 10" MakerFarm i3v kit.
Hope everything turns out ok and I wont regret it... Do you think the issues you had experienced were do to the larger 12in size?

Note: I also upgraded to the Rumba with standard display, Aluminum Bed, and the E3dv6 Hot end.

I know that I dog on the 12" i3v kit but out of the box it just wouldn't produce good prints. But now that I finally have everything lined out it prints very well. I still have a bit of periodic Z axis banding so I still have few things to do it but I am more than happy with the print quality now. Here's a picture of the T-Rex skull I am printing for the kids. This was printed at .2mm with no supports just as shown. It looks much better in person than the cellphone pics suggests.

If it would have printed like this out of the box I would have been very happy with it but without replacing major components of the kit it wouldn't. Before my modifications I couldn't print this part at all because I would have first layer issues and major layer delamination because of the Y axis and heat bed warpage.