3D printer, printing little helpers and more

Hello steemits,

have you ever thought about buying a 3D printer?
Many of us have done this, but most never did it. That is a mistake!
Let me tell you my story.

Many months ago, after reading many articles and reviews, after thinking and duscusions with myself the kid inside me won. I was ready to buy a printer. My maximum budget was set and now the next problem was direct infront if me: my webbrowser. All the websides you can buy printer, all the models of all fantastic printers, special prices, bonus if you buy within the next 5 minutes. the advertising, what i fantastic horrible, loved, hated thing.

Every printer i looked was better than the one before. Should i raise my maximum? If i spend 30 dollars more, i get a lot more 3D printer! Or 50$ or go all in? NO! I had a maximum and that must be enough.

While i live in germany and the most printers are build in china, i decided to look at ebay, not aliexpress or alibaba or somewhere else. On ebay, many china companys are selling from german warehouses. god bless china and german warehouses. No tax problems, fast shipping, all fine. Only the numbers of printers available is a problem.

First decision: Delta or cartesian.

If you are totally new to this a prefer a cartesian. It is easier to understand if a problem is happening. You have 3 axes X Y Z and an extruder for the filament. a mainboard, normally arduino based, power supply and a frame all is mounted on/at. If on the X axes something going wrong, it must on that axe.
On a delta sometimes spooky things can happen.
OK, a cartesian! One step further.

After reading all the specials this and that printer do have. the next decision was made: you need a heated printbed!

With a heated printbed the parts sticking better on the printbed, some materials NEED that heat to avoid things like "warping" , thats a problem mostly on the edges of your print. You print some layers and the edges starting warping upwards and your surface is more looking like a ball not like a shiny flat surface. a big problem on ABS. But i do not want to go too deep into the specials of all materials, but you have to think about this if you want print ABS or nylon or other materials with such problems.

Most things we print, we do in cheap and easy to print PLA. It can be printed without a heated bed but now i know, PLA love a heated bed too. Who not? Isn´t it nice to have a heated bed :) but back to the printers.

Now we know : cartesian + heated bed.

There are different frames out there: aluminium , wood, acrylic. In my case the aluminium frame printers not in my budged. wood or acrylic? acrylic was my choise. and that was ok. Possibly wood is better but i don´t know. my choice was acrylic and i am still happy, so why not.

But still the list was endless. ebay is full of original and fake original + modified original, modified modified and looking like original printers.

After hours of reading and comparing: i bought the cheapest acrylic cartesian printer on the market with a build size of minimum 200mm x 200mm x 200mm. His name was Anet A8.

My maximum was a little higher but after all the specials and fantastic features i run into worries and decided to buy the cheapest. i never printed before. Is 3D printing my way for solutions? i never did it , so i do not know and to spend i lot of money for something i do not know? Not my way!

5 days later, god bless the german warehouses the package arrived.

One big box with ALOT parts inside. Cheap means that you have to build it by yourself!
But don´t worry, if you can hold a screwdriver and read and look on pictures the printer is fast growing and after 4 hours of sometimes disturbing moments the baby was born! MY Anet A8. It looks beautiful.

The magic moment: power on.

Smoke somewhere? NO. The display welcomes me with a "Hello" and then a lot of numbers and "?" blinking.

Everytime a good thing is to RTFM. So do it! Yes i know, we all know it better and don´t need to RTFM, but in this case, RTFM should be your choice. You are new to this, never touched such a thing before, never used it before or or or.

In the manual, which is on the sd card coming with the printer, is a step by step list and she (i hope that the manual writer is a she) says homing the axes is the thing i should do now. ok. pressing the menu button and taadaa, homing axes. the motors start moving.

THE BABY is alive! all axes stop on the endswitches, we mounted before and all looks fine. the baby is healthy and we are ready for the first print. Are we? Wait, material.

Filament is needed. The manual is your friend and tells us: First heat up the nozzle (thats the part where later the filament is moving out to be positioned layer by layer upwards) and after temperature reached load the filament. Not hard, or? On the Anet A8 it is. The hole you have to "find" is somewhere and after unmounting the half hotend it was done. There must be a better solution. And later we find one!

On the spool of filament is a temperature range printed: 190° - 230°. So 210° looks like a good idea and 3 minutes later the nozzle is heated up and the filament is loaded with some mindfreakin finger acrobatics. But for now the printer is heated up and on the sd card are some testprints. thank you!

First print, first "thing" . It was ok for the first thing coming from "nowhere" but what i have seen on the internet is different. No smooth surface. the edges are no real edges etc.

Again the manual is your friend, and also google etc. : Calibration is the goal!

Sounds easy, it is easy but it takes time. Running XYZ calibration cubes, measure, modify the settings, print again, again. 5 cubes later 10mm are 10mm on all axes. Was it hard? No, only the time.... time is not endless. But in this fast moving world, it was kind of good to focus to this and now the result is amazing! The surface is smooth. edges are edges and the first layer sticking well to the print bed. All good!

And while my sweet baby is printing so great, i printed all the testparts from the SD Card which came with the printer.

And now? The testparts are printed. The calibration is done. The baby is doing a great job and now? There must be more to print!

Also my ideas. And i have a lot. How to print MY things?

Not so easy and fast to handle like building the printer and calibrate it.
But i do have a fantastic 3D printer and want to use it. God bless the internet and websites like thingiverse (https://www.thingiverse.com/) . Go to the website. There are amazing people sharing there projects for free. For free! OK there are also some others but so much things for free. So much things to print without knowing how to design!

All you need is a "slicer". What is a "slicer"? The printer moves the axes following a code. gcode. numbers and letters like: G1 Z40 F1000
G1 is move - Z40 is the axe Z (up/down) 40mm and F is how fast.

The good news: the software is doing the big job for you. it is good to understand how it works but you don´t have to learn and write all the code by yourself. The software is doing that. You do some settings and hit the slice button.

It is a little bit more and you can tweak alot with the right settings but this article isn´t the right place for too much details on slicing. If you wnat know more about slicing etc. let me know and you do my best to write an article about your questions. For now let me give you some examples of slicer i use: slic3r and cura are freeware i use. And simplify3D is my favorite but you have to buy it.

Now we have thingiverse, our slicing software is running and our settings are better and better with every print. We are playing with the settings to understand what is happening. What is if you print fast? Slower? different layer heights? differnet temperatures? Try and error is the goal. Sometimes you try and see after the first 3 layers that is went wrong. No problem. Stop the print, modify your settings and start again. This is learning by doing.

After printing many helper and stupid things, i was ready to go the next step: Design my own ideas

And again, which software or website is the right choice? Every software tells me: i am the best. All of them so who is the liar? This is marketing and there rights. thats fine but we have to do a decision. My decision was Fusion 360.

Fusion 360 is a freeware. Very powerful and for me, after looking some videos, easy to do the first steps. Making a cube. 4 clicks and you have one. Enter the sizes and export to STL, thats what my slicer wants and my first own cube was printed. Proud to printed the first part i designed, sliced and printed! OK, only a cube but hey: A CUBE!

2 months later i was able to design easy things. To print my mother a vase for mothersday, or little kitchen helper. And the smile in her face when she knows that i bring her the next stupid thing, but she loves it. While it is from her son! And mothers love sons, and daughters also :)

And to come to an end: think about 3D printing. Is it an option for you? Look on thingiverse, all the ideas...
I have designed so many things yet. Easy boxes for some project i did before and never had the right box to fit perfect. With 3D printed housings, all looks more valuable. Did some things for friends, and yes i have new friends now i have more than one printer and know how to use them. But thats ok for me.

Think about it. Buy i cheap printer to be part of the business. If the printer runs into problems, there are many communitys. clubs in the next city and over the internet, the next city or country is just one click away!

The most cheap printers have some stability problems and stiffness is everything when parts moving and you want accuracy. But hey: print your upgrades with your own printer. And give things back to the community. upload your things for example to thingiverse, like a do it and many others.

If you run into trouble and i can help, i do. If you need a simple design? Contact me. But understand that my knowledge is not endless. I am no professional, but i try my best at all i do.

Hope you enjoyed the little journey and to see you in the thingiverse.

Best regards
3D Bullett

Feel free to contact me on thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/3DBullett/

DTube:

PS:
Thats new to me, also this article is the first i ever wrote. Thanks for appreciate