Waiting to hear how well the Dremel 3D printer is holding up after hearing most of the 3D printer...

[G+_Rud Dog]

Waiting to hear how well the Dremel 3D printer is holding up after hearing most of the 3D printers Padre used could not stand up to the frequent use.

If the Dremel printer survives rigorous use under Padre's ownership then I could find room in the budget for my very own 3D Printer!

[G+_Todd Barnard]

Me too, and I see Monoprice has some branded as their own too. Could be its someone elses re-branded printer, but if not I would be cool to see a review of it as well!

[G+_Rud Dog]

Really looking forward to getting one but have to be absolutely sure I am not beta testing the unit, tried and true is what I am looking for and padre seems to be the source for all good things tested.

[G+_earlsquareling]

I bought a monoprice maker select (rebranded wanhao i3) for $350 and it prints good out of the box. its meant for the person who doesnt mind tinkering around with modding it. There is a whole google group community around it (search wanhao on google groups) and its great bang for your buck. (You might be spending $100 or so on parts and tools for your mods though). I like the printer a lot though. At $350 you wont find another printer that has a heated bed a decent build size and low amount of assembly out of the box (unless you include mods).

[G+_Larry Havenstein]

I am interested in how it is holding up too.

Durability seems to be an issue with all of them.

[G+_Rud Dog]

Yup and can't help wondering of all the players which will drop out leaving you holding the bag. At bare minimum dremel has its name as back up. Not sure if that is a good place to hang your hat but so far its all I have.

[G+_James Hughes]

I bought an xyz davinci on his recommendation and it had a few issues that I was able to fix after many emails to xyz and some videos by Chuck Helibeck (sp?). It is used quite often and works great. Most 3d printers are going to require some tweaking. IMHO

[G+_Rud Dog]

Would really like to hear from owners of 3D printers related to quirks echoed on the show like; Platform moving as opposed to head doing all the moving, items not sticking to platform during printing and any thing related to mechanical soundness.

[G+_James Hughes]

I tried the leveling function on the davinci and didn't find it too helpful. I bought a $10 dial caliper and had much better results. I also made a cartridge resetter thanks to some people much smarter than me. It also allows you to change the bed temperature, extruder temperature too.

[G+_Rud Dog]

Leveling the bed sounds like it should somehow incorporated in the initialization of the printer how common is it to have to manually level the bed?

What does the cartridge resetter do?

How would you know t adjust th bed and extruder temperature?

Do most 3D printers have these functions carried out by the printer automatically (Dremel)?

[G+_earlsquareling]

Many printers dont come with automatic bed leveling. And from what i hear, the ones that have it dont usually work well. Different material (such as abs and pla) melt at different temperatures. You will have to experiment with temperatures for your environment and materials. You can usually find a broad temperature range for your material to start with but you will need to fine tune it for your specific setup.

[G+_earlsquareling]

Carson Black i dont think there are a lot of sub $1000 printers out there that arent prone to problems. My mentioning of the monoprice was because it had a lot of bells and whistles for the price and if you did ever run into a problem monoprice has been good in the past about refunds. But also there is a very knowledgeable community around it to help you troubleshoot it wheter it be a factory issue or user error. I have learned a lot about printing just by browsing the google group. You will learn a lot about the ins and outs of 3d printing.

 

You could also buy the original brand from wanhao that comes straight from china or local distributors, and they will likely have updates that the monoprice one wont have. They check into the google group to see problems and make updates at the factory based on what they read there. There are a couple of guys in the community (search for jetguy or james armstrong on YouTube) who have built their own custom printers made their own firmware etc who are very knowledgeable.

 

Im not sure if there are currently any better candidates in the price range.

 

You suggest the geeetech prusia i3 which i assume is a kit. Im not sure about the geeetech variant but i looked a lot at reviews for prusa kits and people were saying it takes 20 hours of building in which things might get hooked up wrong and many people complained about getting wrong parts or missing parts and having to wait. Some sellers would not respond to customer support emails.

 

What i liked about the monoprice is it required 10 minutes of assembly (just 3 pieces to assemble and some connectors to connect) and it came with a heated bed for $350 (about the price of prusa i3 kits). If i had any problems i knew monoprice had good customer service from past experience so i had no reason to believe i would have a problem returning it.

 

Disclaimer: i have not had to try customer service in regards to the printer so im not sure if it would differ from customer service from other products.