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Home 3D printers? Best of the budget ones...?


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That Hips stuff I know about. It's the disadvantages I'm interested in mostly as I have read in a few places some see disadvantages and that a single can be better for some things.

 

Can't standard support material do the job and clip it? I thought Hips was more a luxury than a need.

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If you get large voids or delicate overhangs it can be very difficult to remove support material without causing damage if you are using PLA. Not impossible but difficult.

 

Cheers

Dave

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I'm a bit unsure if PLA is a suitable material for what I currently do. ABS or something else I think would be in the long run better.

 

The fastest way to find out might be to buy a printer and do some tests.

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Isn't the fastest way to me. Collective opinion is the fastest way for me to come to a conclusion as I'm thinking of buying a Raise3D N1 or N2 (or maybe a cheaper Robox) but I haven't the money yet and their models come in single or duel extruder options when you buy them so I'd need to know before I buy.

 

I'm not bothering to waste a few hundred experimenting on a cheaper printer either!

 

But no worries, I appreciate your thoughts on it all, there's just a lot to think about and hopefully get right.

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Just as long as you are aware that a lot of the stuff posted on forums is a complete load of cobulars ;)

Not to mention some YouTube "reviews".

 

Al

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Forum postings are going to be a mix of truth and error because people type their views and people have an amazing way of disagreeing with each other.....so of course a lot of what one reads will be percieved as tripe in some cases...but not all.

 

Collective opinions are not always wanted for majority vote! Rather multiple angles on any given subject gives the best chance of corroborative crosshairs.

 

 

I think most the YT reviews are too generic to tell between most of them much difference. None of them have really for the most part done much testing. Usually they print the same things as others goo.

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The other thing to bear in mind about various opinions is that people have different abilities and patience. One person will be unable to get a particular printer and material to work, and announce so, whereas somebody else might persevere with the settings and find a way to make the same model and material work, but the first voice to speak often sets the minds of the readers to the point where any dissenting view is treated as exactly that, rather than as evidence that the original opinion might have been too early.

 

Personally, I have two things to say here, I think it's better to do the learning on something cheap and simple, and secondly, don't believe everything you read. Especially if I've had anything to do with it.

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Good post that, very good points, seems this thread is morphing into social science so better get back on track. Who ran off the trap point!? Eeh.

 

The only thing about your post I disagree with is buying a cheaper one to experiment with. With many things I would agree the advice to be sensible but for me at least I see a 3DP as being in the same category as a computer. You would be better off buying a good one to begin with rather than coming to limitations and then having to pay more for another. This is another preference thing again though, a converse view is buying a high end one then finding it isn't suited also means you waste your money potentially. As either option lacks perfection I'm going with the latter and looking to get a good one once I have the wonga.

Edited by Knuckles
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In the case of 3d printers cost and ease of use aren't necessarily correlated.  You can get robust, easy to use 3d printers with plenty of user support for a fairly low cost.  Equally you can get fiddly, fussy and poorly documented printers for a high cost.

 

If you want a good starter printer I would look for a well respected name (such as the metal Printerbot simple or a good Prusa i3 kit).  You can keep the cost down by compromising on print size, speed and skipping features such as a heated bed while still getting a reliable machine.

 

But then, for model trains in smaller scales, I probably wouldn't be buying an FDM printer quite yet.  I'd make do with shapeways/imaterialise for another couple of years until the quality gets a bit better.

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  • 3 months later...

I am thinking of buying a Prusa i3 3D printer. They sell for $280 here in Australia. Has anybody bought one of these machines and NOT been happy with it ?

 

I don't think too many of us here have printers. I have a Prusa i3 although I did modify it a bit. Nothing very dramatic.

 

I added a fan to cool the filament and modified the Z axis zero reference micro-switch to improve Z position repeatability.

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  • 4 years later...

Recent articles in Railway Modeller have spiked my interest in 3D printing.  This is quite an old thread and I imagine technology has moved on.  Can anyone advise what the current situation is with go to budget 3D printers?

Thanks in anticipation.

 

Regards,

Brian.

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Budget resin printers are now capable of producing exceptional quality items but the size that they can produce is still limited. If you want size and budget, FDM printers are still your best bet. FDM quality vs price has improved. 

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4 hours ago, Brian D said:

Recent articles in Railway Modeller have spiked my interest in 3D printing.  This is quite an old thread and I imagine technology has moved on.  Can anyone advise what the current situation is with go to budget 3D printers?

Thanks in anticipation.

 

Regards,

Brian.

Pretty much depends what you want to print - what were you thinking of?

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On 13/11/2016 at 20:44, brian777999 said:

I am thinking of buying a Prusa i3 3D printer. They sell for $280 here in Australia. Has anybody bought one of these machines and NOT been happy with it ?

I have one of the Cura i3 Plus printers sold via Aldi (really a Wanhao i3 Plus) and gotten immense use out of it for all sorts of things - including modelling.   Wanhao (via their AliExpress store) even provide reasonable support for it.  It has met my expectations, although when things go wrong it can take a bit to diagnose.  For someone who is happy to get their hands dirty to maintain one, I would recommend one.

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21 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

Pretty much depends what you want to print - what were you thinking of?

Very much this. 
 

Shamelessly copying this from a post I made on the N gauge forum, forgive me if it’s teaching you to suck eggs, and is obviously biased towards N where resin rules the roost IMO due to the small size of items. Updated slightly on latest models/prices. although the original Mars/Photons are now all but gone. 

 

 

[gross over simplification]There are two main types of 3D printer (actually more, but you can group them into 2): FDM or SLA, aka filament or resin. Filament ones extrude heated nylon a layer at a time, building up the model, whilst resin ones use a vat of liquid resin cured a layer at a time, by either a masked LCD or a laser.[/gross over simplification]

 

FDM printers often have larger build volumes, they're clean and don't smell but the detail is fairly crude. They're ok for scenic items, but I'd not make rolling stock with them.

 

Resin are messier, smellier, more faff and have smaller build volumes, but are far more detailed.

 

There's a bit of an arms race between two main companies in home resin printers - Anycubic (with the Photon range) and Elegoo (with the Mars/Saturn range). Currently you can get a Photon or a Mars for £140/£185 respectively. Go up a price point to ~£275-£300 and you get "monochrome" versions such as the Mars 2 Pro or the Photon Mono X [edit: there’s now a Mars 2 and a Photon Mono at ~£200, replacing the entry level models]. Basically these are faster (about 50-100% faster). They're no better quality (theoretically, there’s anecdotal information they’re very slightly ‘crisper’). Go up again and you get bigger printers - the Photon Mono X or the Saturn, whilst neither are widely available on general release, they're about £550/£420 respectively, the Mono X keeps changing. These are both slightly less detailed actually (0.0050mm resolution versus 0.0047mm), but the build volume is markedly bigger. I can print 3 wagons at a time (at a real push) on my Mars and Photon, but 8-9 at a time on my Saturn. I printed an O gauge bogie wagon in 3 pieces on a Saturn. 
 

Go up again and you get into other brands - Phrozen, Peopoly etc. Peopoly do do a much larger printer - the Phenom L, which is about £2500. The resolution is actually lower again, but it's big. They also do the XXL which is gigantic, and £10k, and lower resolution still. 
 

For smaller items the Mars 2 at ~£220 (on Amazon right now) is a superb printer IMO.
 

These are all printed on my original Mars or Photon. 

 

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49934196373_df546ae115.jpg


https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48931774392_08b2ef90e1.jpg

 

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50161606943_9ea86d3a27.jpg


Sorry, doesn't like the links for the images to be inline, but saves this post being even longer!

Edited by njee20
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18 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

Pretty much depends what you want to print - what were you thinking of?

 

Experimentation initially as I know absolutely nothing about 3D printing.  Perhaps buy a cheap printer and give it a try, if I can't get on with it then straight to flea bay.  I thought I might start with Victorian architectural station roof details (columns, column heads, bracket work scrolls, etc) in 4 mm scale.  I like to think I've sort of mastered simple 2D CAD software (I use TurboCAD) and I would initially try creating 3D models in TurboCAD to 4 mm scale to transfer to the 3D printer, or have I bitten off too much?

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16 hours ago, njee20 said:

Very much this. 
 

Shamelessly copying this from a post I made on the N gauge forum, forgive me if it’s teaching you to suck eggs, and is obviously biased towards N where resin rules the roost IMO due to the small size of items. Updated slightly on latest models/prices. although the original Mars/Photons are now all but gone. 

 

 

[gross over simplification]There are two main types of 3D printer (actually more, but you can group them into 2): FDM or SLA, aka filament or resin. Filament ones extrude heated nylon a layer at a time, building up the model, whilst resin ones use a vat of liquid resin cured a layer at a time, by either a masked LCD or a laser.[/gross over simplification]

 

FDM printers often have larger build volumes, they're clean and don't smell but the detail is fairly crude. They're ok for scenic items, but I'd not make rolling stock with them.

 

Resin are messier, smellier, more faff and have smaller build volumes, but are far more detailed.

 

There's a bit of an arms race between two main companies in home resin printers - Anycubic (with the Photon range) and Elegoo (with the Mars/Saturn range). Currently you can get a Photon or a Mars for £140/£185 respectively. Go up a price point to ~£275-£300 and you get "monochrome" versions such as the Mars 2 Pro or the Photon Mono X [edit: there’s now a Mars 2 and a Photon Mono at ~£200, replacing the entry level models]. Basically these are faster (about 50-100% faster). They're no better quality (theoretically, there’s anecdotal information they’re very slightly ‘crisper’). Go up again and you get bigger printers - the Photon Mono X or the Saturn, whilst neither are widely available on general release, they're about £420/£550 respectively, the Mono X keeps changing. These are both slightly less detailed actually (0.0050mm resolution versus 0.0047mm), but the build volume is markedly bigger. I can print 3 wagons at a time (at a real push) on my Mars and Photon, but 8-9 at a time on my Saturn. I printed an O gauge bogie wagon in 3 pieces on a Saturn. 
 

Go up again and you get into other brands - Phrozen, Peopoly etc. Peopoly do do a much larger printer - the Phenom L, which is about £2500. The resolution is actually lower again, but it's big. They also do the XXL which is gigantic, and £10k, and lower resolution still. 
 

For smaller items the Mars 2 at ~£220 (on Amazon right now) is a superb printer IMO.
 

These are all printed on my original Mars or Photon. 

 

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49934196373_df546ae115.jpg


https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48931774392_08b2ef90e1.jpg

 

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50161606943_9ea86d3a27.jpg


Sorry, doesn't like the links for the images to be inline, but saves this post being even longer!

 

Thank you so much for this concise "3D Printing for Dummies" which is exactly what I was hoping someone on RMWeb would post for me, greatly appreciated.

Whilst I hear what you are saying about resin printers, for a beginner like me this sounds like too much of a faff. If I dip the toe as it were, I would favour the filament type initially.

I also know zero about the human interface with the 3D printer but am vaguely aware that a lot of "prints" can be downloaded from the net.  I would really wish to make my own "prints" perhaps using TurboCAD to generate the patterns.

Thanks again for your detailed reply.

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No problem at all. There’s no right or wrong. I haven’t personally done anything with an FDM printer, so caveat appropriately, but my perception is that the machines themselves are much more sensitive than resin printers - needing lots of levelling and fettling to get the most from them. Resin printers have settings to tweak, but the hardware is fairly ‘stable’ as it were. There’s definitely a bit more effort needed with resin, you need gloves, a solvent to clean prints, a UV lamp to cure them, and a well ventilated work site, but I’m not sure they’re inherently more difficult, if that makes sense. 
 

you’re quite right that there are various online downloads, but they tend not to be all that useful in my experience! Designing yourself is definitely the way to go!

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Hi Brian,

Well I bought an ender 3 pro a cou ple of months ago. I had zero experience of cad design so I have been on a steep learning curve. The ender prints using PLA fillement and with birthday and Christmas I have about 5 rolls so far. Yes the prints will need some sanding etc and I may have to oversize to ensure that after fettling it’s to scale. Also along with cad software you will need to use slicer program as well. There are several out there again all free. I have three downloaded at the moment. 
 

Doyou know anyone that has a printer or uses cad programming. I bought my printer because my son-in-law has the same one and both my daughter and son-in-law both use cad at work so always a helpful ear. Mind you I am now advising my son-in-law as he has a recent problem printing a P38 in 1/72 scale.

 

Keith

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6 hours ago, Brian D said:

 

Thank you so much for this concise "3D Printing for Dummies" which is exactly what I was hoping someone on RMWeb would post for me, greatly appreciated.

Whilst I hear what you are saying about resin printers, for a beginner like me this sounds like too much of a faff. If I dip the toe as it were, I would favour the filament type initially.

I also know zero about the human interface with the 3D printer but am vaguely aware that a lot of "prints" can be downloaded from the net.  I would really wish to make my own "prints" perhaps using TurboCAD to generate the patterns.

Thanks again for your detailed reply.

 

G'day Brian, while I fully respect your decision to go the FDM route, may I just humbly steal  a few minutes of your time to  present my argument for going the resin way?

 

60km from Melbourne at the southern end of Australias  Great Dividing Range is a place called Mount Disappointment.* and that is exactly where you will feel you are living if you try to use an FDM printer to successfully print small architectural details.

 

Your stated needs are exactly the reason that I bought a resin printer, small architectural details that were fiddly to make using traditional methods and impossible to create uniform multiples of unless I got into casting.

 

Many modellers Holy Grail is a fully detailed exquisite copy in miniature of something they’ve spent hours and hours putting together, mine is being able to push a button and have all the work done for me while I’m sleeping or playing World Of Tanks.

 In order to achieve this a few years ago I bought a diode laser so I could  create my own etched brickwalls without mind-numbingly scribing them and found it great -  basically put a bit of cardboard or ply into it, press a button  and a few  hours later have a finished set of walls all engraved for me.

 But then I found I still had all the details like doors, gutters, chimney pots etc to build up from tiny fiddly of card or plastic which being lazy I found really boring.

I’d been looking at 3D printing as a possible solution but I’d never been convinced given the grainy slightly blurred looking output that FDM produced when printing these tiny things. Then in 2017 someone here posted up a picture of a detailed storage tank that they’d printed on an Anycubic photon. Its detail blew me away and I had to have one.

 

People say that resin printing is messy, but I’ll tell you what messy is – modelling! Especially architectural modelling old school style, sticking brickpaper to card, or using MEK on plasticard, I always end up using my finger as a spatula and them touching my finished wall and getting finger prints on it, then theres all the little offcuts that cover your desk….

 

 Resin printing in comparison is like working in a laboratory. The CAD files you can create on a laptop sitting in front of the telly or out under a tree in the sun, then the printing process is just pour in the resin and push a button. And   now that the manufacturers have invented their wash and curing stations so you just take the finished item off the printer, straight into the wash and cure and it cleans the resin off, and then cures it for you so you just take it off the plate and it’s there for you all ready to paint or drop on the floor and lose if you are me. The one trick is learning orientation of the print, need for supports and so on and that come  with gained  knowledge, advice from others and practice. 

 

Its dark here as I write this and my better prints are in my shed but there are several  Orb Weaver spiders that love building their webs across the path each night and I always walk into them and get 3 inches of  furry spider in my face that freaks me out.  Therefore the only prints I have to photograph right now are some rejects and test pieces in my workroom downstairs but hopefully they will give some ideas of the detail that a resin printer will give you. The knife is there for size indication, since I assumed that using an Australian coin wouldn’t be of much help.

 

PXL_20210127_192917004.jpg.0fab559b55035742d548797877862325.jpg

 

They come from a variety of sources – the figures are from various free sites on the web that offer stl files, some are from the scantheworld site, which is a marvellous project whereby anyone can upload 3D scans of artworks etc, others are produced by me using a process called photogrammetry.

 

Actually, photogrammetry is helping me achieve my goal of being the laziest modeller in the world where technology does everything for me.

 But I still have to paint the end result which is annoying.

 

It requires a fairly beefy laptop or PC and a half decent camera (though I have managed ok results with my Pixel phone…) and some software that is freely available.. Basically you take a series of photos of an object, put it through the software and print it off on the printer, job done.

 

Architectural details are much easier now – for instance take these brackets or corbels or whatever they are called – they would be very difficult to make unless carved and I’m not good at that.

bracket.jpg.6a6d4cab2f028fede9df49d550bbfab8.jpg

 

Instead I took a series of 8 photos and the software did the rest.

bracket.jpg.5671f4692ae1aab6dbdf7d0fff0898da.jpg

I haven’t yet printed them out so can’t show you the detail that the resin printer is capable of but maybe these will help.

 

PXL_20210127_193204239.jpg.226136fe7442e7ccd0d2891a64772dc8.jpg

 

PXL_20210127_193321755.jpg.dc938c5d52710f19a16d480bf0bceec8.jpg

 

Actually, I have uploaded these 2 monuments  to sketchfab, so you can freely view them, zoom in and out, spin them around and compare the prints above with the 3D files they were created from. You can also download them if you want to print them on an FDM printer to compare. 

 

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/carved-memorial-rookwood-cemetery-sydney-742961430a2b43c09c722f98b23b6a98

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/gothic-memorial-spire-rookwood-cemetery-sydney-74a9e2267a684d31abbe9001e5577442

 

By the way I have over 100 files there of various tombstones etc if anyone wants to create their own churchyard – not sure how printable some are in their current state there, some may need hollowing.

 

https://sketchfab.com/rookwoodgothica/models

 

With my purchase of the larger Saturn printer I've found that I can print the entire building, walls included so the laser cutter is now gathering dust, but even the smaller printers will print out buildings - to achieve this I make walls etc separately as a kit of parts, and glue them separately - this also has the advantage that if you discover an issue on a wall or something you just need to reprint that bit not the whole lot.

 

PXL_20210127_202442260.jpg.96dc999cabde47e5ce3edd618cf1a994.jpg

 

Finally, as to resin printing being a “too much of a faff”. What great strides has man ever made based on the idea that the alternative was   “too much of a faff”?

Did Winston Churchill say “We could fight them on the beaches but that’s  too much of a faff so we’ll get some signs that say “Please Keep off the Grass” in German instead?

 Did  Edmond Hillary say “I could conquer Everest but that’s too much of a Faff so I’ll go for a stroll in the Pennines instead because I can get a bus there”?**

 Did Beethoven  say “I could write a 5th Symphony in C minor but that’s too much of a faff so I’ll just write the bit that goes Da da da daaaa Doo doo doo dooooo because that’s the only bit people wiil remember  anyway”?

 No they didn’t! They achieved greatness because they did the thing that WAS a faff, and you can too!

 

*Mount Disappointment was named by the two explorers who climbed it hoping to catch a glimpse of the ocean to show they had got to the southern part of Australia but the trees got in the way. Also one of them suffered a groin injury during the climb and they had to rest for 5 days. In response, they named the mountain accordingly – take that, stupid mountain!

** I don’t actually know where the Pennines are or if you can get a bus there.

Edited by monkeysarefun
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For a budget 3d printer this has to be worth a look. 

Resin printer £75 posted. Basic & small but reviews well at its original price. I'd assumed this was coming from China given the PayPal receipt was in Chinese but I ordered it Monday and it's in Bristol now.

Need to get some resin ordered for when it arrives. 

 

https://www.anycubic.com/collections/3d-printers/products/anycubic-photon-zero

 

There's a cure & wash similarly priced too. 

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1 hour ago, 30801 said:

Need to get some resin ordered for when it arrives.

I am sure you will have fun with it. Anycubic can be a bit hit and miss with supplies, you may might be safer ordering resin via their Amazon shop rather than direct, it seems more reliable. I would highly recommend the Wash and Cure - removes many of the reasons I delayed getting a resin printer.

 

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