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3D Printer Owner's Network Puts Together Buyer's Guide
Lucas123 writes: Thousands of 3D printer owners who are part of a distributed online network were tapped for a buyer's guide, rating dozens of machines from tiny startups to major manufacturers. Surprisingly, the big-name 3D printer makers were nowhere to be found in the top picks. More obscure companies, like Makergear, a 12-person start-up in Ohio, or Zortrax, a Polish company that began as a Kickstarter project, took top spots in the reviews. The buyer's guide, put together by 3D Hubs, contains five different categories: Enthusiast Printers, Plug-n-Play Printers, Kit/DIY Printers, Budget Printers and Resin Printers. In all, 18 models made it to the top of the user communities' list, and only printers with more than 10 reviews were included in the buyer's guide. 3D Hubs also added a secondary "Printer Index" that includes 58 3D Printers that didn't make it to the top of their categories. Printers with more than five reviews are displayed in the index.
You know, following that amazing study that said 3D printers pay for themselves after a year?
Those guys really need an editor to spell check their article. It's simply painful English with missing words, misspelled words.
They take the time to make a great looking page and don't bother to proof their English. WTF?
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Still waiting for my nanoforge. :(
This is exactly the kind of resource I want when starting a new hobby; And it just so happens to be one I was considering.
Wait. Wait because 3d printers are still, for the most part, garbage. Wait and you'll get a better, less expensive product.
what Normal, Usable thing can be produced by 3d printer? and less expencive than the same thing from Walmart ?
While a good guide, the interesting question will be, how well does it represent the needs of markets that 3D printers (specifically the 'big names') are expanding into? One thing I found lacking in reviews a few years back was that they came from the perspective of people who were interested in the devices for their own sake, which put certain weights on issues like calibration and tinkering that would be very different from hobby to hobby. This made them great reviews for some segments but less helpful for others. These reviews and discussions tended to mark the 'big brand' (in so far as there are any) devices poorly since ease of use 'ready to go'ness was not a priority while difficulty in tinkering with said devices (which is less of a concern to other hobbies) was a heavily weighted drawback.
Can I print a 3D version of the buyer's guide?
I work for schools. We don't have a huge budget, but a 3D printer is a good "show-off" item. The kids can make something in Google Sketchup, throw it to the printer, and take it home at the end of term after we've used it on a display for parent's evening.
We bought the Cubify Cube3D. It does the job. It's robust enough, cheap enough, works well enough. For what most people would ever use a plastic 3D printer for, it fits.
All we need is the price to come down to inket-printer costs and people will start buying them for home.
Problem is, quite how many people want to print out large Christmas-cracker toys at great expense?
Nothing, really. The only viable scenarios are industrial stuff, where you need a staff of engineers and technicians to keep the thing going.
For the home it's more like a hobby, and a cult object for a certain type of person who thinks we're a week away from Star Trek now.
Perhaps not yet. But since you can print anything, the value isn't what you can pick up at Walmart, but rather printing the thing you can't pick up there. Printing the 3D plastic clip you just broke on some older thing you own, and having it that day, instead of throwing the old broken thing away is worth something, even to you. I can't tell you how many plastic clips I've broken and tossed the old broken thing away, that I now can fix and have it remain useful.
Not to mention, the creative types who are prototyping new and interesting inventions that weren't cost effective if sent to milling houses.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
the early days of PC
anyone remember what happened to all those companies before there was HP/Dell/Acer/ASUS/Toshiba....
HP is, supposedly coming out with a new one that will blow all these guys away
PS: am i the only one who finds these new iphone designed websites a big down grade ?
Not to metnion the crappy quality of the reviews, full of weasel words...
The way to do this is send the same file to diff printers, the put the printed objects on a CMM
There is this great product called super glue. It allows you to repair plastic clips without having to print a new one!
what Normal, Usable thing can be produced by 3d printer? and less expencive than the same thing from Walmart ?
My daughter uses mine to make furniture for her dollhouse.
I play D&D and plan to get one to print custom game pieces / figures. Maybe even dice.
It seems the main proponents of 3D printing are people that break a lot of stuff. OK, everybody breaks stuff, but most people just tape (or glue) the broken thing back on, which is way cheaper and quicker than printing a new one will ever be.
I am still waiting for the 'killer' 3D printing idea, that would make ordinary people care at all about 3D printing.
Doesn't exist. That didn't prevent me from getting banned from Fark.
Here's another idea:
www.Dungeonstone.com
I'm sure someone already has an open-source version of this idea for 3D printers somewhere on the Internet.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Yeah, going to Maker Faire makes you think the only thing anyone ever prints are tchotchkes from Thingverse.
One application is to reproduce plastic parts that are otherwise unobtainable. Example:
I have a turntable microwave oven that was built almost 25 years ago. There's a piece of plastic about the size of a pair of dice that 's effectively the turntable spindle. Somebody turned the thing by hand and snapped that piece of plastic. I have a part number for it but nobody sells it any more. A chunk of the part is missing, but its shape isn't too complicated, and enough of it is still there, that I can make an STL file for it.
That in itself is not enough to make buying a 3D printer worthwhile, but I can contract that out to someone on 3D Hubs to print it for me out of ABS.
They have forgotten my printer, the Ormerod 2. I am quite happy with it. 20cm build volume, bed level compensation, promised option for multiple extruders
what Normal, Usable thing can be produced by 3d printer?
and less expencive than the same thing from Walmart ?
I have a printrbot simple metal and the longer I have it the more use it seems to have.
I have printed shelving brackets, coat hanging hooks, soap bottle and spray can wallmounts, parts for my kid's rc cars (seriously, we have 3d printed wheels on one of the tamiyas because my boy wanted his name cut through the wheel structure), soldering spool holder, tablet wall mounts, picture frame corners (I have some JAMMA arcade boards as hanging wall art using these), a spoon, rapid buckle clips when my dogs broke their buckle, lots of gopro mountings for various applications, a monster tail loom, we just ran off the 8 bit nintendo star's for my kids xmas tree's.
And moving into the shop (I run a load of serious metal cutting machines for my other hobby), I've printed off morse taper tooling wall mounts, digital caliper holders, discharge wire guides for my wire edm, cable ties and a battery strap in ninjaflex, multifix toolholder wall mounting system, etc.
For halloween we had a blast too, I had printed off two animie tentacles in glow in the dark and made them into a headband, printed off a load of pentacles and skulls in blood red pla all sorts, my daughter got a glow in the dark elsa from frozen crown, boy had glowing vampire teeth etc, it was cool and a LOT of fun. And unlike the dangerous potentially fatal machines in the shop, something I'm comfortable sharing with my kids until they're big enough to not loose a finger to a lathe or mill.
More examples, we had a broken washing machine knob, special shape $180 for the entire panel module, modelled it in solidworks, saved it as a stl and printed a new one out, running today still. I printed a new handle for a $100 steam mop when it broke, cupholders and a laptop shelf for our camper van, nameplate badges for the kids school bags, hell even my cup mat on my desk here is our company logo in glow in the dark/black printed out. I have currently got a 3 monitor setup thats wall mounted and the bracketry to carry 3 hannspree 19" monitors is also 3d printed out. USB slots from the monitor mounted pc's come out to wall mounted usb blocks also printed out.
Theres just so much that can be done. You've just got to have a bit of imagination. And enough filament to cope with that.
Just heared it stop, its been printing off "carl the driver" 3d anatomical model from grabcad, at 1/8th scale, so we can have drivers sat in our tamiya boomerang rc car someone gave me in a bag as a pile of bits, converted into a awd monster baja vw camper, with 3d printed wheels and blackfoot tyres.
I do stuff like that all the time (and I'm on 3dHubs (http://www.3dhubs.com/atlanta/hubs/thor)
I've done:
Replacement cover for dirt-devil carpet washer
Dock for my Sony Xperia Z1
Cord winder for the Skylanders Portal
Lots of misc accessories for my Robo3D
Paddle for my Breadman (print in PLA, investment cast to Aluminum)
Emergency Brake holder for 1956 Porshe 356 (aluminum cast)
Anything without overhangs is easy... if you know what you're doing with a hobby knife, overhangs are possible (if you try to do automatic supports, you're in for a tough time of cutting them all out neatly.
yea check on amazon
It seems the main proponents of 3D printing are people that break a lot of stuff. OK, everybody breaks stuff, but most people just tape (or glue) the broken thing back on, which is way cheaper and quicker than printing a new one will ever be.
I am still waiting for the 'killer' 3D printing idea, that would make ordinary people care at all about 3D printing.
Ive posted a bigger comment to the gp, but for me the killer thing was we were mounting something on a wall on a sunday with plasterboard anchors, and as sometimes happens they tore out during insertion leaving a too big hole in the sheetrock and no way to make the mount (it was a sunday afternoon, and we had none of the flip out type anchors in the house) without a load of work to cut a larger section out and replaster with a new insert, which never works out great. I found a drywall sheetrock plug on thingiverse, and printed it off 10% oversize, and it let me recover the ragged hole and get a anchor on it to finish the job. I've used the same trick a couple of other places.
Even if it had of been a weekday, its a hour 30 exercise to drive the mall and back for one item in a emergency, so I would have been ahead doing it anyway.
Good stuff. Keep adding more models. Wonder how the new HP 3d printer will fare?
Seriously, I'm considering getting a Printrbot to build with my kids, but to propose that people should get a ~$400+ gizmo so that maybe one day if they don't have a wall anchor they can save a trip to the hardware store is a bit much. At this point, it's either something you need for prototyping or casting or suchlike, or it's a toy. Nothing wrong with that.
I'm surprised they don't list more Kossel designs, such as:
http://www.ultibots.com/kossel-250-v-slot-3d-printer-diy-kit-beta-no-printed-parts/
It is only $625.
Or the Kossel Clear:
http://www.blueeaglelabs.com/collections/3d-printer/products/assembled-kossel-clear-abs
$850 assembled and tested.
I've built quite a few Kossel printers and they are faster than Cartesian ones, which is a big plus. I print high quality parts at 90mm/sec with 0.2mm layers, while most Cartesian printers are limited to approximately half that speed.
I'm also surprised that some companies listed layer thicknesses of as little as 20 microns. I don't think printing 20 micron layers with a nozzle which is 500 microns wide is useful, and I suspect it also isn't possible.
Seriously, I'm considering getting a Printrbot to build with my kids, but to propose that people should get a ~$400+ gizmo so that maybe one day if they don't have a wall anchor they can save a trip to the hardware store is a bit much. At this point, it's either something you need for prototyping or casting or suchlike, or it's a toy. Nothing wrong with that.
Thats one tiny incident. Its saved me more than its cost in repair parts for things that would have gone in the trash otherwise. Sometimes superglue isn't the answer. My point I guess is that you get one thinking "well I'll buy this toy" then end up running the thing a LOT more than you were expecting.
For some reason I found reading the title of this article incredibly difficult.
Not to mention, the creative types who are prototyping new and interesting inventions that weren't cost effective if sent to milling houses.
This is the use I'm most interested in. I have a couple of dual head Printrbot 2.1's. personally I rather like dual head printers since I'm no contsrained to print shapes where support material can easily be picked off. I favour ABS and HIPS as the latter dissolves easily.
I'm part of a startup. We're going through a rapid ieration phase for a wearable medical device. We can get a small batch of circuit boards done, then do a bunch of iterations on the case, print out the "final" cases and get that round of devices out and tested.
Works amazingly well.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
What's upset me with these 3d printers is they're not all free software friendly and some even implement digital restrictions now. I shouldn't have to give up control to print 3d objects. It seems counter-intuitive to me to give that control over to someone else. Isn't that after all what this 3d printing revolution is all about?
Unfortunately the only printer that I know of for sure is freedom respecting is Aleph Objects. I know this because they took the time to get it certified under the Free Software Foundation's Respect Your Freedom program. If your unfamiliar with it you can check out the companies and products on the list here: fsf.org/ryf
I 3d print robots. For that purpose they are revolutionary.
What about repairing other broken stuff? I don't break things myself, but I do fix a lot of things. My current coffee grinder was a commercial unit gifted to me because the indexing pin went missing so you couldn't lock the grind at a specific setting. A $1 spring and a 3D printed index pin later and I just paid off my 3D printer in not having to buy a coffee grinder (at least I would have if I had a 3D printer rather than asking a friend to print it).
But the 'killer' idea is not just the ability to replace stupidly expensive bits of fragile plastic, but rather make your own useful stuff.
I converted a $100 GoPro Gimbal from bottom mount to front mount using a 3D printed clip. Lighter than metal, stronger than wood, and front mount gimbals were $300 and up at the time. I also tinker with electronics so I 3D print cases for my projects.
The 'killer' idea is your own imagination. I sincerely hope that your problem is that your imagination isn't worth the cost of a printer, rather than not having one.
What normal usable thing can you produce with a welder?
What normal usable thing can you produce with a sheet of ply and a jigsaw?
Sure you can buy pretty much anything from Walmart but some of us have imaginations that involve making things. I'm just waiting for the price to be right and a 3D printer can find it's spot in my workshop next to all my wood and metal working tools.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/21/makerclub-helps-you-learn-3d-printed-robotics/
Speaking as someone who studied machining for 3 years so they could make their own robot parts I don't really understand why this application isn't more widely discussed. 3d printing has reduced my "concept" to "delivery" timeline from months to weeks(allowing me to take on more ambitious engineering projects at a higher rate of throughput).
Hobby 3D printing is the best thing that has ever happened to hobby robotics.
Avoid Makibox like the fucking plague. They never ship and they don't give refunds.