Framing is done... ...and this is where it will be going Still got to close it all in and make drawer fronts but I like it. Costs, so far: Used about 2kg of filament (including waste for test prints), but I got it dirt cheap ~ £10 total Drawer slides were ~£21 for three pairs I had the rest of the hardware on hand - M3, M4 & M6 bolts/nuts and ~ 3m of 2020 Alu.
The bit above the brand name is just a PETG & acrylic cosy we've both printed to enclose the top after fitting the multi-colour addon. Shorter ones are now available, some of which move the colour switcher on the right a bit lower too.
Yeah, mine is large. I will miss the large plate. But will hopefully offset that with better consistency with a coreXY heated chamber printer. If my motorbike flippin’ sells.
I'm thinking of getting a new printer. Some opinions/advice would be really useful as my experience up to now is using a Creality Ender2 and nothing else. I'm thinking £300-£400 price range - there's some offers around at the minute too Multi-colour is a must I'm leaning torwards a full enclosure but not completely essential as I expect I'll mostly be printing PLA and PETG The options I've seen so far are: 1. Anycubic Kobra 4 Combo £329 https://uk.anycubic.com/products/kobra-4-combo-3d-printer 2. Anycubic Kobra S1 Combo £399 https://uk.anycubic.com/products/kobra-s1-combo 3. Bambu A1 Combo £319 https://uk.store.bambulab.com/products/a1?from=navigation&id=578778130929197064 4. Creality K2 Combo £429 https://store.creality.com/uk/produ...utm_source=official-website&utm_medium=banner 5. Creality i7 Colour Combo £319 https://store.creality.com/uk/produ...utm_source=official-website&utm_medium=banner 6. Elegoo Carbon 2 Combo £349 https://uk.elegoo.com/products/cent...-RL84qZMtP25tkYIZOoS7iX2csDUPLLvDucb6GPK0Z5Pb
The Carbon 2 has had a lot of good press, from what I gather. And that’s not a bad price at all for a printer & MMU. I’ve also seen a lot of good things about the K2. I think the only other one I could comment on would be the Bambu printer, and that’s to stay the hell away from it. And that’s mostly because of Bambu being Bambu, not necessarily because it’s a “bad” printer per se. Though I will say that asking £320 for a bed slinger without an enclosure is a bit rich; the base price of £210 is better, but asking a £110 premium for the AMS Lite is a bit bloody cheeky. The difference between the base K2 and K2 Combo is exactly the same at £110, but Creality’s CFS is enclosed
This aligns with my initial thoughts of Elegoo looking like a good deal and Creality because I'm familiar with them. The Kobra sits price wise between these two (for an enclosure) but I've seen mixed reviews. I don't know anything about Bambu but did see positive reviews for their print quality. If there's other issues I'm happy to stay away.
I believe it’s, while Bambu have good print quality and are very much ‘plug and play’ I think people would call it, They try to lock you in to their ecosystem, and the apparent dodginess of the company. I’ve not looked into it myself much, as the only Bambu I’d want is the H2C… which is over £2k. And there are cheaper alternatives which do similar. I’d definitely go for an enclosed coreXY one, rather than open bedslingers now.
The Elegoo centauri carbon printers are bloody good value. I have the CC1 with the multi colour kit and it's been great. I think I have around 800 hours on it. However, you will eventually need to invest in a filament dryer and/or dry boxes if you plan on pushing beyond PLA. That will likely bring the cost more in line with the other enclosed models.
Basically… “I have altered the deal, pray I don’t alter it any further.” The start was locking down printing to their proprietary cloud-based authentication mechanism, blocking third-party applications, such as the popular Orca Slicer. Their response to that backlash was to introduce a “LAN only” mode that allows printing from third-party applications, but locks you out of their remote printing capabilities. Then it was crowding out or outright blocking third-party hardware addons. Most recently they issued a very threatening “legal-ish” order to an open source developer, accusing him of reverse engineering their proprietary software when all he did was take the code that Bambu had already published as open source, modified it, and published his modifications in accordance with open source licence terms. Their response to the backlash has been… somewhat quiet… but it was a very strong backlash indeed. There is a good summary at the Consumer Rights Wiki if you want to read more. The short version is that if you just want a machine that makes stuff, their printers do produce good results. But if you have even the slightest concern about vendor lock-in, forced account registration, your rights to do what you want with stuff you’ve bought and paid for being altered, enshittification, and so on, then steer well clear. To be clear: other manufacturers, like Creality or Elegoo, are not immune to these issues. But the usual method of screwing customers from a lot of manufacturers is to “pump and dump” products: release a printer and then totally forget about any kind of ongoing support or updates when their next model launches. Few others go quite as far above and beyond this as Bambu Labs has. If you really care about 3D printing as a hobby, or open source integrity, or “free” and open access to home manufacturing, and so on, then you buy Prusa or you build a Voron. But you’ll pay a hefty premium for that. Everything else has trade-offs. Having said that… My “pumped and dumped” Qidi Q1 Pro has been pretty flawless, even with its complete lack of firmware updates and “at-best-questionably-wired” mains-powered chamber heater. I sure as hell wouldn’t recommend Qidi printers, but I took a gamble and got lucky . Good point. It’s worth drying even some PLA filaments, but it’s basically a requirement for PETG. Filament dryers are relatively cheap these days, but if your chosen printer’s MMU isn’t enclosed then it’s worth thinking about filament storage. There are plenty of designs out there for DIY filament boxes, of varying complexity and material cost, but there are a lot of neat and modular commercial solutions. It doesn’t necessarily need to be an immediate priority, but it’s worth at least thinking about.
I love my CC1, its not perfect, and has some rough edges at times, but for the price and its features its utterly brilliant!
You can get away with some PETG. For example, I haven't dried any of my Elegoo PETG reels and it prints great. CC3D stuff will do just fine out of the box but does do better when dried. The one roll of stupidly expensive Polymaker PETG I've owned also printed well, straight out of the box and, like my Elegoo stuff, was just stored in a dry box with desiccant when not in use. Overture PETG is the polar opposite and is an absolute pig that required several rounds of drying before producing decent results. Sunlu PETG requires drying for a good surface texture - out of the box it produces a finish like an amped up Fuzzy Skin. Dried, it's very nice to use. I have had a couple of lesser known PLA reels that needed drying but anything with a name worth a damn just works without a fuss.
This is for @Pete J and also to torture @pete* because he doesn't have a working printer at the moment. Yeah, that's how much of a nice guy and a dick I can be at the same time. https://brickmaker.slant3d.com
Gonna have a look at that brickmaker tomorrow. . and to add to that, been reading a bit about the FF Creator 5 Pro, and seems they’re trying the same things as Bambu? As far as locking people in to their own ecosystem etc. Don’t know if anyone else has seen anything about it, or how bad/deep the issue with that might be in the long run? @Byron C seems clued in to that sort of thing It’s the only printer I’ve /REALLY/ been looking at, certainly at its price.
California just passed another stupid law that somehow effects the rest of us. Printers phoning home to check if you are 'stealing' or making a gun may become normal. -Or they will just harass the hell out of the open-source community. I had no idea the dild* manufacturing lobby had that much influence.
I'm still raging I spent a ridiculous amount of money for a sheet of veneered plywood, and one side had a 2 foot square print in black paint of the prop. 65 warning.
