Author Topic: Nicely priced 3D Printer  (Read 16658 times)

Offline cfellows

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Nicely priced 3D Printer
« on: June 06, 2016, 05:55:53 AM »
For those of you who might be considering a 3D printer, I just ordered one of these:

http://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=15365

I have no affiliation with these folks, but the printer is only $200 + $13 shipping (for my zip code), and it has some pretty nice features for such a low price.  It's all metal construction, factory assembled and calibrated, and it has a heated bed so will print ABS and other filaments requiring the heated bed.  The build volume is 4.7" x 4.7" x 4.7", which is somewhat larger than other 3D printers in the same price range.  It also has a fairly small foot print and looks rather tidy compared to many of the cheaper 3D printers. 

Just my 2 cents worth.  Will let you all know how well it works once it gets here.

Chuck
So many projects, so little time...

Offline b.lindsey

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Re: Nicely priced 3D Printer
« Reply #1 on: June 06, 2016, 11:53:58 AM »
The specs sure look nice Chuck and the price is unbelievable!!  You must have gotten the last on as the website is showing "sold out" as of this morning. Will be looking forward to your review of it.

BIll

Offline Alan Haisley

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Re: Nicely priced 3D Printer
« Reply #2 on: June 06, 2016, 08:24:23 PM »
I was just there for a look and it appears that they restocked.  :shrug:


Alan

Offline cfellows

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Re: Nicely priced 3D Printer
« Reply #3 on: June 06, 2016, 08:27:27 PM »
Yeah, I got a little concerned when I saw they were out of stock.  But I checked UPS this morning and the shipment is in transit with a scheduled delivery date of Wed, Jun 8.  I also show that they are back in stock at this point.  I think they just needed to get their web site updated... probably nobody home over the weekend!

Chuck
So many projects, so little time...

Offline Pete49

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Re: Nicely priced 3D Printer
« Reply #4 on: June 07, 2016, 04:53:54 AM »
It seems good value for a mini printer but I find the build area too small but that's just me. At the prices shown for them it won't be too hard to go the bigger size if you out grow it. Enjoy it and best of all it allows a variety of filament types to play with. PLA is a good option for casting aluminium. Chuck if you can do 3D cad  the possibilities are endless especially if making a engine as you could print and prove the fit  :Lol:
Pete
I used to have a friend.....but the rope broke and he ran away :(....Good news everybody I have another friend...I used chain this time :)

Offline cfellows

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Re: Nicely priced 3D Printer
« Reply #5 on: June 26, 2016, 01:52:25 AM »
So, it's taken me a while to get this thing dialed in.  So far I'm using PLA and I've had to play with the extruder temperature and filament feed rate.  Unfortunately, the customer support folks weren't much help.  But I finally got the feed rate figured out at 110 steps per millimeter.  Looks like the extruder stepper is microstepping at 1/16th steps giving me 3200 steps per revolution.  I'm also running the hot end at 230 C which is about 20 degrees C hotter than recommended.  But it makes the filament stick to the bed better and improves the inter-layer adhesion. 

I'm getting some good prints with it now and I feel like it's very much worth the price I paid for it.  By the way, I'm building a much larger printer, 8" x 8" x 10" build envelope and I should have that one up and running in a month or so.  Here's an earlier picture of the one I'm building...



And a picture taken today showing the latest progress...



The dimensions on the frame are 14" x 14" x 20 tall.  Mechanically it's pretty much all done.  Just need to connect up the electronics and wiring...

Chuck

So many projects, so little time...

Offline b.lindsey

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Re: Nicely priced 3D Printer
« Reply #6 on: June 26, 2016, 02:38:24 AM »
Thanks for the update. That price is unbelievable. Once you get things dialed in, would love to see a printed part from it.

Bill

Offline Flyboy Jim

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Re: Nicely priced 3D Printer
« Reply #7 on: June 26, 2016, 02:56:41 AM »
Thanks for the update. That price is unbelievable. Once you get things dialed in, would love to see a printed part from it.

Bill

Bill............. it looks like he's already printed a pop can!  :lolb:

I didn't have the slightest idea how one worked or what it did until a guy here in the airpark set one up.  Pretty amazing!

Chuck I'm interested to see how you use yours.

Jim
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"You can do small things on big machines, but you can do small things on small machines".

Offline Pete49

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Re: Nicely priced 3D Printer
« Reply #8 on: June 26, 2016, 03:52:41 AM »
Chuck love the bigger printer. I have a Da Vinci slightly hacked to use a bigger variety of ABS filament rather than their dodgy stuff. My kit printer with heated bed is used for PLA mainly and I found the best setting for filament is 210C and  bed either at room temps or 65C when heated and both stick well though I use the cheapest hair spray as a glue. I have found it to be a good glue whether I use PLA or ABS and the bed is hot or cold. Print area on the kit printer is 200mm x 200mm x 180mm.
I'm good luck with your larger printer and hope its in action soon
Pete
I used to have a friend.....but the rope broke and he ran away :(....Good news everybody I have another friend...I used chain this time :)

Offline cfellows

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Re: Nicely priced 3D Printer
« Reply #9 on: July 11, 2016, 09:21:21 PM »
A further update on this printer.  It's getting a lot of attention on the internet and seems to be a solid printer.  There are, however, some downsides.

1.  Customer support is very weak to non existent.  I was unable to find out the default settings for the filament extrude rate.  I was also unable to get copies of the files on the SD card that comes with the printer.  I, unfortunately, inadvertently deleted some of them.

2.  The print bed is heated, but simply won't go any higher than about 85 degrees centigrade.  This is not hot enough to print ABS filament.  Fortunately, the ABS seems to stick OK to smaller prints and there may be a work around by printing a skirt around your model.

3.  The firmware in the printer seems to be proprietary, or at least there is no information about what it is or how to update it.  I'm hoping the apparent popularity of this printer will motivate some one to investigate and/or reverse engineer it so the firmware can be modified and/or updated.  It would be nice to be able to change default values but so far I've found no way to do that.

On the plus side, the controller board is powered by a 32 bit ARM processor so it is way faster than the more popular Arduino based boards.  Again, I'm hoping an open source version of the firmware becomes available. 
So many projects, so little time...

Offline Pete49

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Re: Nicely priced 3D Printer
« Reply #10 on: July 12, 2016, 03:39:38 AM »
Chuck try soliforum forums as I think there are some users there that may help you with the software and firmware issues. Once you have it up and running here's a working jet engine for you to print. Amazing how the PLA doesn't melt.
Pete
I used to have a friend.....but the rope broke and he ran away :(....Good news everybody I have another friend...I used chain this time :)

Offline b.lindsey

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Re: Nicely priced 3D Printer
« Reply #11 on: July 12, 2016, 12:03:53 PM »
Pete, did you mean to add a file or link??

Bill

Offline Pete49

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Re: Nicely priced 3D Printer
« Reply #12 on: July 13, 2016, 04:05:17 AM »
Bugga yes I did but obviously forgot it. I'll add it now

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X_ctwt8PT4" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_X_ctwt8PT4</a>

and for another look at possibilities for maybe using it for making a casting? There are some clever people out there.


http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1643878

Pete
I used to have a friend.....but the rope broke and he ran away :(....Good news everybody I have another friend...I used chain this time :)

Offline crueby

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Re: Nicely priced 3D Printer
« Reply #13 on: July 13, 2016, 04:18:26 AM »
That is some jet! Some printed parts were used as patterns to cast from. Clever stuff!

Offline zeeprogrammer

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Re: Nicely priced 3D Printer
« Reply #14 on: July 13, 2016, 08:12:46 PM »
Looks like ST is getting into the printer market against Arduino.
For you electronics/hardware people...this is a board that drives 'all' 3d printers on the market including Deltas. (Later in the document it states 'most' 3d printers.
Uses a Cortex M4 (32 bit) processor.
I didn't read through it yet but you might be interested.
Modifying or building code might be interesting. Commercial compilers can be in the thousands of dollars. But there is an open source tool chain available using Eclipse, GNU, and a debugger. I've played with the open source stuff and got it working on a project here at work (not related to printers).

$118.

link to pdf that talks about it...
http://www.st.com/content/ccc/resource/technical/document/user_manual/group0/66/e3/47/bb/0e/6c/45/9f/DM00291039/files/DM00291039.pdf/jcr:content/translations/en.DM00291039.pdf

Link to ST...
http://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/products/evaluation-tools/solution-evaluation-tools/computer-and-peripherals-solution-eval-boards/steval-3dp001v1.html
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