3D Printer Knowlege and advice for upgrading

Hi,

I got into 3D printing fairly early on, I got a RapMan from bits from bytes. The printer is getting a bit old now, its discontinued along with the software. I have heard/hope that current generation printers are much more reliable and fail on prints much less often. So I am considering upgrading and buying a new printer in order to savetime and frustration trying to tune up my old printer to just about get prints working.

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What printers do you guys have and what printers would you recommend?

Roughly speaking I'm looking for 50-100micron layer hight, ABS printing. Build size minimum of 150mm cube (but ideally bigger). Also I live in the UK if that makes any difference.

I've done a bit of research, but there is such a vast selection and massive range of prices that actually finding which ones I might want out of 100s is a bit daunting. Form my research so far these seam to be cropping up as.

• MakerGear M2
• FlashForge Creator Pro
• UltiMaker 2
• Lulzbot
• Zortrax M200
• Spiderbot
• XYZprinting Da Vinci 2.0 - price looks good but have read prints are bad

First: The technology hasn't REALLY changed. You still melt plastic, and squirt it out a nozzle, hopefully at a correct flow rate at a correct position.
The fact that nobody's making that particular model anymore isn't, in itself, a real problem. It'll still do the same thing it did yesterday.

Now, that being said -- fused deposit manufacturing is unlikely to survive long term as a 3D printing technology.
I'm still using a Printrbot Junior (plywood, 100x100 mm build board, PLA only.) However, it works for the kinds of prototype bits and bobs I make. For "real" things, I go to Shapeways (using selective laser sintering of nylon powder) or mill it out of aluminum.

In the research I've made, I've come to the conclusion that DLP-based resin-based printers are likely the next big thing. There are some resin-based printers that use lasers (Form 1, for example) which have bigger build area but run slower than DLP. Give it a year, and DLP will be mainstream (it's already quite available, although the existing offerings have some teething problems.)

So: That's my advice. Stay with what you have for as long as you can, and then go with a DLP/resin based solution.

Btw: What kind of "print failures" do you have? For me, it's adhesion to the build platform; once I clean the nozzle and calibrate the Z and wipe the blue tape with alcohol, mine prints just fine, and when it's going to fail, it will going to fail early, so I can check it for the first minute to make sure, and then leave it.

I have a Formlab resin based printer. In general, I would not recommend this type of printer for creating any final robot parts - at least not yet. While they have a new "tough" resin that I have not tried yet, I can say from experience that all of the previous resins will warp over time. It's great for rapid prototyping of parts that will be sent to Shapeways or milled out of a better material. It's really bad for final parts that you will be using for any amount of time.

Super-duper linky found via birdman's recommendation of 3dhubs for local prints: https://www.3dhubs.com/best-3d-printer-guide

DLP/laser cured resin printers have been around for a while, but mostly in the form of big and expensive commercial printers because of patents and resin costs. While it is an awesome technology, I'm not so sure it will be quite so popular as FDM because filling the print area with resin gets really expensive. There was a university research printer 10+ years ago that used syringes of quick cure epoxy instead of plastic filament to print, but again really expensive consumables and limited continuous print capacity (had to pause while swapping syringes).

I hope reliable granule extruders are the next widely used development since it would mean that many more commonly available materials (virgin plastic pellets, recycled plastic shred, InstaMorph, sugar, chocolate, wax, etc.) could be used with existing printers (even if only making your own filament for existing extruders) instead of buying new machines with expensive specialty resins. One of the many things I still have not gotten around to doing is an attempt to build a cheap granule extruder for printing with granulated sugar and/or baker's wax for making molds. Have both wood and carbide-tipped masonry auger bits in 0.25", but not sure I have anything on hand to use as the housing/chamber. Seeing as I have a big spool of solder and bigger spool of crap 20~22AWG solid wire, I might try making a chamber by wrapping multiple layers of bare copper wire around a form then soldering it into a fairly solid block of copper, tin, and a smidgen of silver (1~2 layers of longitudinal strips with 'hook'-like bends on both ends to solidly grip outer layers and mounts, then one or two helical layers along entire length for radial strength). Which brings to mind several awesome metal-based FDM technologies that are used instead of casting where it is not feasible to make a mold or using a material not suited to casting; often still have to be machined for finishing, but still less wasted time, end mills, and material than milling from a solid block.

If you don't believe in cured resin, the the other technology is sintering (SLS.)
This is what Shapeways uses for their high-quality low-cost nylon prints, and it is used in industry for metals, too.
With the right setup, you can sinter whatever you want (powdered sugar?) if you're willing to clean up after it ;-)
I don't know of any realible, low-cost sintering solutions yet, mainly because of the materials handling in spreading the powder evenly.

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Originally Posted by jwatte

With the right setup, you can sinter whatever you want (powdered sugar?) if you're willing to clean up after it ;-)

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Indeed. The folks at Evil Mad Scientist built a 3D printer for sugar using a hot air nozzle (think it was named candyfab). SLS is a nice technology, but it requires lasers more powerful than pointers and powders of very uniform size. Lasers with enough output to melt plastic tend to be rather expensive/dangerous and powdered materials can be much more expensive (and messy and/or dangerous) than commonly available pellets.

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Originally Posted by jwatte

I don't know of any realible, low-cost sintering solutions yet, mainly because of the materials handling in spreading the powder evenly.

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If the powder/slurry is sufficiently low viscosity, then you might be able to use an electrostatic sprayer system to just add a new coat to the object and/or build tray. While they were originally developed for more uniform pesticide application, they have been used for uniform distribution of powder-coat/bake-on paints and 'spray on tans' for several years.

Most of my print failures are bed adhesion, either at the beginning, or later warping, which the print head then drives through and rips off the print!!!

The other issue is the software was very basic before being discontinued, so features like changing settings whiles printing dont exist. Automatic compensation for flowrate and speed dosent exist. So I have to manually generate the settings for every temperature and speed combination manually! Which really makes a difference for larger prints as the warping varys with flow rate. So having to guess the right setting is also annoying. I do have a heated bed, but its not linked to the controller as I added it afterwards manually, so single temperature for entire build.

I have just thought, that maybe its the controller that I could swap out. Getting a reprap controller with the better software on PC might help with controlling I would need see if it supports my printer.

I do own a laser cutter and have done some SLS research, there was a lot of buzz around 2012/2013 but it seams to have been given up on. So no easy SLS machines to duplicate and experimenting would take too much time for me.

If it is just four stepper motors, a heating element, and temperature sensor then it is almost guaranteed that you could find a newer controller + motor drivers + extruder/bed controller to interface with it. It might require a bit of rewiring and maybe beefier motor drivers (NEMA23 steppers?), but it looks like it is pretty much the same as every other printer: a frame with at least three bipolar stepper motors for positioning, another motor for the extruder, and a couple resistive heating elements for extruder and heated bed. The printer properties (build volume, steps per mm, etc.) should be configurable in software.


If you are trying to run NEMA23 motors with cheap 'pololu'/allegro stepper motor controllers, then add lots of capacitance to the power lines near the motor drivers or you will kill them with over-voltage conditions (braking/regen). Tried using the pololu boards with surplus NEMA23 and pancake stepper motors without spec sheets that wound up being rated 3~5A each; killed two or three boards very quickly because I had stupidly disconnected the local power rail from the main rail that had all the big capacitors on it.

Another useful thing to add is a bi-directional TVS with a stand-off slightly higher than the supply voltage.
Add it across the motor power outputs (not input power supply) and you'll have much more robust drivers.

On further investigation. I think building a heated chamber is probably the worth a try before buying a new printer.

This example http://reprap.org/wiki/Heated_Build_Chamber uses the same printer as mine and demonstrates the results.

Back in June 2014, when I first built my Printrbot Simple Metal kit, like many people,I had a lot of problems with adhesion of print objects to the bed even when using blue tape cleaned with alcohol. When a heated bed modification became available, I bought one and my print success rate went up tremendously, and now my problem is that I have great difficulty in getting parts loose from the bed, especially if it is something more than a couple of inches across. I have acquired a 3D Print Removal Tool from ToyBuilder that has really helped get stuff loose.

Even with a heated bed, I still had problems with pointy parts of a print wanting to curl up, and sometimes knock the print loose when it would impact with the extruder nozzle. I finally figured out that it was two things causing that.
1. I had a ceiling fan causing a draft on one side of the print bed, but not the other.
2. The Simple Metal has one fan mounted on the left side of the extruder. It's airflow to most of the right side of a print is blocked by the extruder and Z end stop detector. Unequal airflow was causing the unwanted curling.

I've learned to keep small pieces of paper to use as air dams handy so that I can tape them to the bed to make the air flow evenly over the whole print. At one time I seriously considered building a heat chamber, but now I feel it is unnecessary.

Not sure if it is best to start a new conversation or continue here. so...

I am also thinking about jumping in and getting a 3d printer, so that I can at first print up some of the different parts for the HROS1 and for my PhantomXs. But not sure which one would be a good one to purchase for a first time printer...

For starters lets say for under 1000. If however it turns out that there is one for $1200 that is so vastly superior than...

Example a lot of reviews appear to like: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ag=3dprints-20 ...

I am assuming a heated bed, sort of like the idea of being in an enclosure. Assume it supports PLA. Nice if was not totally restricted to vendors materials only, but not a deal breaker. My guess something like 8x8x8 would be great... single extrusion would probably work to learn with...

I see lots of different lists and reviews like: http://www.lady3d.com/ or http://www.comparaboo.com/best-3d-printers or ...
But hard to know which to trust.

Some of the ones that I have seen mentioned either up here on in searching include:
http://www.solidoodle.com/Press which I am not sure if it is the newer version of: http://www.solidoodle.com/Solidoodle4 ?

or maybe something like: http://us.xyzprinting.com/us_en/Prod...0-Professional

Suggestions?

I have no personal experience with any 3D printers, other than the three models currently being sold by Printrbot. In fact, we have one of each here at my house and think all three are great machines. They are about as simple in design as they can be, but are built like a tank from heavy gauge metal. I really liked the fact that I was able to buy the two smaller ones, Play and Simple, as kits and put them together myself. My larger Plus comes in single and dual extruder versions, but I bought the single one on purpose. If I want multiple colors, I will just use paint. Since I built two of these machines I have no problem with taking them apart to upgrade or fix them as needed, especially since Printrbot has detailed construction tutorials for all three types of machines. Even though I did not build it, I've had the big Plus apart to repair it. The Printrbot company was very quick to provide a replacement belt and pulley (stripped set screw socket when replacing the broken belt) under warranty. It was all handled via email, no questions asked other than order number.

I really like that the company is always working to improve the designs of their printers. I have added a heated bed upgrade to both the Play and Simple printers. I also have the Extended Z and larger heated bed upgrades for my Simple but haven't actually added those two yet as I'm printing every day on the regular size heated bed. It is working so well I hate to take it out of service long enough to do the two new mods.

None of our three machines are inside enclosures. I find that as long as I am careful about making sure there is no air drafts in the room and I run the heated bed, I haven't had any problems with warping.

I do know a guy, over on LMR, that recently bought one of the FlashForge 3D Printer Creator Pro machines and has been building a really nice robot with it. It's worth a look. I'm sure if you asked him he would tell you about his experience with it.

Well beyond the $1200 limit, but worth mentioning the MarkForged printers. They are quite nice and the fiber reinforced nylon prints are strong enough to handle multiple collisions in PRS. Pretty sure I've mentioned the 3Dhubs printer ratings and 3Dhubs printer guide before; basically feedback from customers about the many, many listed printer types available in their network.

Aside from the 3D printer (I own a SpiderBot, great for medium/large ABS prints), keep a keen eye on:
- Proper designing of parts (design with the manufacturing process in mind, printing, milling etc).
- Proper slicing software and skill to use it (or lots of documentation :P ). I have used KISSlicer in the past but these days I only use Simplify3D.
- Proper filament. I steer clear from filament suppliers that do not state their colors in RAL color codes and do not provide datasheets with ISO norms etc. Prices vary, I don't really care.

The most important thing that I discovered after buying my own printer is how good, proper and reliable support from the supplier can be. Some years back I was deciding between my current printer and the makerbot 2X. This was around the time when the 2 and 2X just came out. After emailing back and forth with both suppliers/resellers and asking some pointy questions I had much more confidence in the SpiderBot, which I have not regretted since. :-) Given that you easily invest several thousands euro/dollar's in such a machine plus the huge amount of time in learning the process of design and printing I find it hard to believe that certain suppliers offer "6 months warranty". That's utter nonsense.

I had more to say, but after reading the comments from others I think all the wise things have already been said. :-)

Thanks,

I have been looking over the different reviews and the like and it is now getting clear as mud.

The MarkForged look interesting, but probably a bit more than I need right now. The printer bot stuff looks interesting as it is always great to have someone up on the same forum, who likes them enough to buy three of them! Some of the Flash Forge look interesting, but reading some of the comments up on places like Amazon.com, it appears like some love it, and others got lemons and bad experiences with getting things resolved...

The UP ones look interesting as they appear to be easy to get up and running... The Rostock one looks like it could be a lot of fun (maybe pain) to setup and be entertaining to run...

So hopefully soon I may just roll a dice and...

In the end it always comes down to a roll of the dice. What may work perfectly for one person may be a constant problem and headache for another. Just hope that whatever you buy was not "built on a Monday," which is why I really liked being able to build two of mine from kits.

Thanks again,

I went around in circles trying to decide on which one would work well for me. There were some I was tempted to get, but you were either locked into their supplies and/or software, and reading some of the things in their forums, it sounded like if something went wrong, you would have to ship your unit overseas to be fixed...

So I ended up ordering a Printrbot plus. They show a lead time of about a week, so now I need to start learning! Software recommendations?

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Originally Posted by KurtEck

So I ended up ordering a Printrbot plus. They show a lead time of about a week, so now I need to start learning! Software recommendations?

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When you go to the sale page for the Printrbot Plus, there is a link that says, "*For getting started information on your Printrbot Plus, click here." Click that link and there will be a set of guides with lots of pictures that will take you all the way from unboxing the printer, right on to completing your first print. Due to all the variables in printing - software, types of filament, extruder temperature, bed temperature, bed surface prep, etc., I do recommend following their guides to get started as they will get you started making very nice prints.

One other thing that I do recommend you get, is either a 3D Print Removal Tool from ToyBuilder, or any kind of long, thin bladed putty knife similar to it. Sliding the thin blade under a printed item with a large bed contact area, makes it MUCH easier to get them loose from the blue tape without destroying your Kapton tape on the print bed. I have GOT to whittle away the pointy part of the handle though, as, if you are not careful, you will hurt the heel of your hand.
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I print on a thin sheet of glass that is clipped on the heated bed. I found something at home depot and use paper clips to secure the glass to the bed. Using a little bit of glue stick or aquanet hair spray applied to the glass I don't have any trouble with sticking and don't have to worry about blue or kapton tape..

I as r3n33 use the *Hair spay super max hold) trick/technique to reduce miss prints, I do use a very thin, like a razor, paint remover spatula, to remove my prints. (been cut on my palm with gloves on:rolleyes:)

I wouldn't mind trying to print on glass, but it's not really possible with what I have. All three models of the Printrbot's I have use metal beds and the Z axis end stop sensing is done with a metal detector probe. I haven't found a thin enough piece of glass that I think will fit in the small gap between the bed and the Z axis sensor when it is low enough to activate.

huh. Do you mean you can not manually calibrate your print bed to nozzle height?

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Originally Posted by LloydF

huh. Do you mean you can not manually calibrate your print bed to nozzle height?

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I can manually enter a Bedprobe offset to the nozzle height, (M212), but what I mean is that there is no mechanical switch that tells the printer when the Z axis is as low as it should go, so I can't set the nozzle to clear a pane of glass. Instead of a mechanical switch, there is a metal detector that turns on when it gets within about 1.5 mm of the metal bed. If I put a sheet of glass on the bed, the nozzle, which I currently have going to within .4 mm of the bed, would impact the glass before the Z axis limit would be detected. That .4 mm gap is further reduced by a layer of blue tape.

In other words, the gap between the probe and the bed is thinner than a typical pane of glass, so I can't use glass.

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wow, mine is not so complicated . I just calibrate my print head height at different location on the bed but
my printer software pretty much automates the calibration and it even has a sensor for auto calibration, which is finicky.
(UP+) The bed has to be manually calibrated if you want to use a glass or beryllium surface anyhow. But I am betting we
are not talking about the same things, are we?

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Originally Posted by LloydF

wow, mine is not so complicated . I just calibrate my print head height at different location on the bed but
my printer software pretty much automates the calibration and it even has a sensor for auto calibration, which is finicky.
(UP+) The bed has to be manually calibrated if you want to use a glass or beryllium surface anyhow. But I am betting we
are not talking about the same things, are we?

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I don't have to make any bed adjustments at all. My calibration procedure is to setup blue tape, extruder temp, and bed temp, as if I were going to print something. I then manually lower the extruder until the nozzle touches the tape on the bed. Then I slide a 1 mm plastic spacer under my Z sensor probe and adjust its retention nuts so that it snugly touches the plastic spacer. I then do trial prints while changing the Z offset, M212, to get my first print layer like I want it. This is a one deal that only needs to be checked if I take the printer apart, which I did to add a new heated bed. The calibration was still spot on though, and I did not have to make any changes after reassembly.

The major difference to me seems to be that the Z axis lowest limit for most printers is a physical mechanical limit. If you add another layer to your bed, such as a sheet of glass, you have to make a physical adjustment to account for it. For my printers, I can't add glass due to the fact that my Z sensor is activated by how near it is to a metal source and the gap between sensor and metal is always the same and is too small to accommodate a sheet of glass in the gap. One thing I can do would be to lay a smooth sheet of metal on my current bed and the printer would automatically adjust for that. Of course that would have an impact on heat transfer from the bed heater.

By the way, I just got an email from Printrbot. They are having a 15% off everything sale this week. Think I'll go order some more filament.

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Originally Posted by drachels

By the way, I just got an email from Printrbot. They are having a 15% off everything sale this week. Think I'll go order some more filament.

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I received that email today as well. Too bad it probably does not apply to the order I did last week (which they have not shipped yet)

For some expectation management, I thought this was an interesting read a while ago:

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheBas...xperience.aspx

Interesting to note, his experiences come from a Printrbot. But I can tell you that it applies to most 3D printers. ;-)

Once you are actually printing and running in to issues, these two visual guides have helped me tons:

https://www.simplify3d.com/support/p...oubleshooting/
http://support.3dverkstan.se/article...shooting-guide

Thanks, I really appreciated the Blog, first because it lets me know just how many problems I am likely to have. But also there appears to be a lot of great links in it.

Another related question: He found happiness by using a Raspberry Pi connected up to the printer as a way to be able to control the printer over Wifi and also not having to worry about your PC going to sleep, he is using OctoPrint for this. I wondered about this some last week, so I ordered http://www.adafruit.com/products/2391 from Adafruit, which is a new RPI2 setup with AstroPrint. Have anyone tried either of these? The bright side is I know I can try both. (Just use different SDCard on RPI...)

Also thanks for the troubleshooting guides, I know I will be needing them!

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Originally Posted by KurtEck

Another related question: He found happiness by using a Raspberry Pi connected up to the printer as a way to be able to control the printer over Wifi and also not having to worry about your PC going to sleep, he is using OctoPrint for this. I wondered about this some last week, so I ordered http://www.adafruit.com/products/2391 from Adafruit, which is a new RPI2 setup with AstroPrint. Have anyone tried either of these? The bright side is I know I can try both. (Just use different SDCard on RPI...)

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Last year (2014) I set up Octoprint with my printer, back then Astroprint was still a kickstarter and the cloud features were not clearly priced (they seem to be free now). Since then Octoprint has been constantly updated and its really easy to get started with. My printer can be ordered with the Pi and Octoprint built in (link) and it's supported by the supplier. I don't know about any kits you can just order (let me know if I'm mistaken). Octoprint is free, and you can get it running easily in an hour or so. Be sure to get a Pi with plenty of USB ports.

Something that the Astrobox seems to make easy is outside access through the web. For Octoprint you have to do port forwarding in your home router.

The great advantages of running your printer through something like that are that you can switch off your PC, or if it freezes/crashes it won't effect your print. I find the remote camera and the ability to stop the print the most beneficial feature.

Side note/future consideration. I think you can hook up multiple printers to one Octoprint instance, not sure about Astroprint (can't find information).

Quite frankly I'm surprised a lot of printer manufacturers still bother creating their own "autonmous printer" software/firmware/features when products like octoprint, astroprint and printtopeer are availible.

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Originally Posted by KurtEck

Also thanks for the troubleshooting guides, I know I will be needing them!

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Indeed you will, no matter how good your printer, design or filament is. ;-)