Thinking about getting into 3D printing?

Emp_Fab

The only things I've ever seen people make with 3D printers are plastic animals, small boxes that could be bought in a pound shop and little tool holders for the 3D printer itself.

Before anyone jumps in to attack, it's just my personal experience.  That's not to say other people don't make motorbikes or banjos with them, but all I've ever seen are cats and little boxes.

digitalscream

Emp_Fab said:

The only things I've ever seen people make with 3D printers are plastic animals, small boxes that could be bought in a pound shop and little tool holders for the 3D printer itself.

Before anyone jumps in to attack, it's just my personal experience.  That's not to say other people don't make motorbikes or banjos with them, but all I've ever seen are cats and little boxes.

https://thingiverse.com/

Search for anything. Those are all things people have made to solve problems.

All depends on where you look

guitargeek62

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6090621/comments

Sporky

There are 3D-printable upgrades for my tablesaw - the fence can move out of square if you don't pay attention, and they solve that. Might be handy for tool holders for the pegboards too - at the moment I machine them out of Duropal and mount with little steel brackets and cage nuts, which is a lot of work. 

Emp_Fab

digitalscream said:

Emp_Fab said:

The only things I've ever seen people make with 3D printers are plastic animals, small boxes that could be bought in a pound shop and little tool holders for the 3D printer itself.

Before anyone jumps in to attack, it's just my personal experience.  That's not to say other people don't make motorbikes or banjos with them, but all I've ever seen are cats and little boxes.

https://thingiverse.com/

Search for anything. Those are all things people have made to solve problems.

All depends on where you look

I just had a look there and picked the 'most popular of all time' designs....

A tiny model boat, a whistle, some updated bits for a scanner, a headphone stand and a mini octopus.

Just sayin'.   

Actually, it's probably best if I leave this thread now....    

Sporky

Those are five of the top eight. Not the top five. If you have to misrepresent things to prove your point it's not a good point.

Not to mention that your claim was "plastic animals, small boxes... and tool holders", only one of which is even in your edited list.

Iamnobody

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:698317/comments

How about a capo?

digitalscream

Emp_Fab said:

digitalscream said:

Emp_Fab said:

The only things I've ever seen people make with 3D printers are plastic animals, small boxes that could be bought in a pound shop and little tool holders for the 3D printer itself.

Before anyone jumps in to attack, it's just my personal experience.  That's not to say other people don't make motorbikes or banjos with them, but all I've ever seen are cats and little boxes.

https://thingiverse.com/

Search for anything. Those are all things people have made to solve problems.

All depends on where you look

I just had a look there and picked the 'most popular of all time' designs....

A tiny model boat, a whistle, some updated bits for a scanner, a headphone stand and a mini octopus.

Just sayin'.   

Actually, it's probably best if I leave this thread now....    

The boat is the "benchy", which is kind of a benchmark for most of the difficult things that a 3D printer would have to do. The whistle is similarly difficult if your printer isn't set up correctly, and the octopus is one of the original examples of a print-in-place articulated model (ie it's got joints, but doesn't require any assembly - it's printed so that all the functional joints are ready to go when it's finished).

Basically, those are models designed specifically for testing and calibrating the printer. That's why they're the most popular - they're the first things everyone prints to get their machine set up correctly (although newer printers have far better automated processes for a lot of this stuff now). The other two are just useful things.

EDIT: The "updated bits for a scanner" you referred to is actually a printable mechanism for turning your phone into a 3D scanner. Incredibly useful, if you want to duplicate existing real-world objects. You'd probably have to spend about £800+ to buy one.

I know you're really trying to paint 3D printing as a pointless endeavour that never works unless you're printing useless stuff, but...here are some actual useful examples.

My server:


My desktop PC:


Wife's desktop PC:


Masks for a friend's stage show:


Could I have built the PCs without a printer? Sure, but it would've been a major pain in the ass. All the fittings, PCIE brackets, drive caddies, fan adapters, switch housings, most of the motherboard standoffs...printed. Could I have just bought cases for the PCs? Yep, obviously, but then they wouldn't fit my requirements. To buy drive arrays, for example, would've been hellishly expensive (more than the entire budget of the machine!), would've taken up way more space, require buying a rack, and would be noisy as all hell. As it is, they cost me pennies to make, fit neatly in a small space, and have perfectly adequate near-silent cooling.

That's the point for me. Making things that exactly fulfil my requirements, rather than having a collection of expensive stuff that almost does but not quite, which means I'm just creating difficulty for myself further down the line and spending a ton of money I don't need to.

My first printer, in just one year, paid for itself almost 10 times over.

The main difficulty is one of mindset - identifying the problems and minor annoyances that you've been working around and putting up with for years and thinking, "How could I solve this, if there were no constraints at all?" then working backwards.

chillidoggy

I’m left trying to think of something I need that I could use a 3D printer for.

TTony

chillidoggy said:

I’m left trying to think of something I need that I could use a 3D printer for.

Start a thread asking for suggestions ...

digitalscream

Well, that was short-lived. My Neptune 4 printer has died - the extruder stepper motor burned itself out and developed a short, which has destroyed the driver on the mainboard.

Seriously considering doing the boring thing and just ordering a Bambu P1S - it's crap that they're so closed-source about everything, but their support is good and their reputation for reliability is solid at this point.

roberty

Oh mate that sucks, sorry to hear that. No warranty?

digitalscream

roberty said:

Oh mate that sucks, sorry to hear that. No warranty?

There is, but it kinda looks like it'll involve shipping it back to China. Given how cheap it was, and how heavy it is, I'd probably end up spending half its value just on shipping. Not really worth it

Kittyfrisk

Bummer, it all sounded so positive.
Is there no value in replacing like for like & keeping the original as spare parts?
Or are the 'likely to fail' items the ones that have gone already ?

digitalscream

Kittyfrisk said:

Bummer, it all sounded so positive.
Is there no value in replacing like for like & keeping the original as spare parts?
Or are the 'likely to fail' items the ones that have gone already ?

Yeah, it's a proper shit. Unfortunately, buying another one now would mean about a 4-6 week wait, and I've got lots of stuff I need to print. I've got a support ticket in, but it's all done by email and they're not particularly good at communication; if they can't ship me a replacement or spares quickly, I'm going to have to buy another printer.

Of course...if I buy another printer and then they ship me some parts, it could be the start of a high-performance print farm...

roberty

Yeah that is a shame. I hope they can sort you out somehow 

m_c

Support and backup is why I'd nearly always suggest a Creality printer.

The factory support is typical cheap chinese (slow and almost non-existent at times!), but there are far more of them in use, so there are far more users who can give advise, and spares/aftermarket options are far more plentiful.
It's why I have two Ender 3's as my workhorses.

I also have a Voron 2.4, but that was very much a case of, because I wanted it. It makes absolute zero business sense!

digitalscream

m_c said:

Support and backup is why I'd nearly always suggest a Creality printer.

The factory support is typical cheap chinese (slow and almost non-existent at times!), but there are far more of them in use, so there are far more users who can give advise, and spares/aftermarket options are far more plentiful.
It's why I have two Ender 3's as my workhorses.

I also have a Voron 2.4, but that was very much a case of, because I wanted it. It makes absolute zero business sense!

The problem with Creality is that they don't have a credible answer to the new wave of fast printers - the K1 is an absolute dud, with near-unusable print quality and ridiculously locked-down firmware. There was a way to unlock it so that all the functions of the Klipper firmware could be used, and...they completely locked it out with the next revision.

I think I'd rather have closed-source than open source but with the most useful features locked out. Utter madness, and it shows total bad faith that I don't really want to support with my money.

I'm at the point where I want something that's both fast and reliable - it's increasingly looking like Bambu is the only game in town for that. Especially since Prusa wet the bed with the Mk4 - it's as slow as the previous gen on release, and will still be slower than the Neptune 4, K1 and Bambu P1P/P1S even when input shaping finally makes it out of beta...at twice the price

It kinda feels like the K1 and Prusa Mk4 are beta releases rushed out to combat the Bambu machines, and they're nowhere near being ready for retail. The Neptune 4 is an oddity, and I do genuinely think I've hit a one-in-a-million problem with mine - it's so rare that the Klipper error code is a Googlewhack.

<posted a few days later because I just found this in my drafts>

digitalscream

Update: my Bambu P1S is here, and holy fuckballs it's fast.

It's also...3D printing on easy mode. It really takes care of most of the difficult stuff for you, and the whole process is mostly hands-off. Hell, it even cleans the nozzle for you and snips any dangling filament before it prints. The bed levelling process is entirely taken care of, and you don't have to do anything for the input shaping (motion compensation) to work, it just...does.

The only things that suck are a) the user interface (although once you've got it set up in LAN-only mode, rather than cloud mode, you can do most things from the slicer software), and b) the camera.

Honestly, the camera is so unbelievably shit. I don't understand how I can have a £230 printer that can use any camera at 30 frames per second, but a £630 printer which can only use one own-branded camera and runs at 2 seconds per frame (I'm not kidding).

digitalscream

The latest creation:



Decided my old crappy set of desk drawers needed replacing, so quickly knocked up a stackable set in TinkerCAD. Took about 15 minutes to design the sleeve, drawer and handle separately, and about 25hrs of printing. It would've been much less (probably about 16hrs), but I've only got 0.4mm nozzles for the new printer and I was being conservative with the speed settings. Great thing is, if I find I need more space, I can just stack more on top or at the sides.

As a test of the new printer, it was great - didn't have to babysit it at all, it just did exactly what it was supposed to and told me when it was done. The only bit of intervention was to change the filament for the drawers (different colour, obviously) and to swap out the black when it ran out - which is something none of my other printers have ever managed gracefully, I always had to chuck away the piece and start again.