3D Printer Building Workshop - October 8 & 9 6pm-12am

3D Fabrication
#1

Last year I hosted a series of “How to build a RepRap 3D Printer” classes. Mendy was born and has actually been a pretty good addition to 3D fab:

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I would like to do it again, only this time, the students would be building their own kit and will come out of the class with a working 3D printer. The kit would be about $550-700. I did a feeler for something like this last year but it fell through: Gauging Interest - RepRap 3D Printer Build Class V2

The logistical issues I have with this class is:

  • I would like to have one standard kit so that we can focus on the building challenges and documentation of a single design.

  • Myself nor a committee like 3D fab could afford to front the money for kits. The students would have to order the kits at least 2 weeks ahead of time for the class.

  • Choosing the most affordable kits that would actually be good reliable long-term printers, instead of buying a cheap Chinese clone that will need a lot of upgrades to get working right. The goal is to have a working printer within 2 x 4-5 hours sessions (basically a whole weekend, like HAAS training).

The kits I’m looking into are:

I have seen a lot of success with a similar workshop in Seattle recently, http://eastside3d.org/
Here’s a recap of how it went: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3qoY4SdIt0

I have gotten interest as well from @Ebony_Jackson and @Eric_Brunner for building a printer for Science committee, that we could also use for bioprinting. Which is totally doable with these kits (they’re all standard RepRap Prusa X-carriages)

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#2

Yea we could use it for

bioprinting: http://biocurious.org/projects/bioprinter/

graphene printing: https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/what-can-we-3d-print-with-graphene-filament-56303/

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#3

If you and I give classes in effort to raise money through honorarium money, science will buy it? does that sound good with you. You just tell me the number of classes you want to give and i’ll pick up the slack. Let me know if you don’t agree or what not.

The only reason I’m going this route, is because we aren’t sure of how much our committee has because of our finances being switched over.

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#4

Came across this one on youtube and it had all the right words in it. I’d teach one or two classes to help fund raise for something like this

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#5

There’s really cheap kit available from China that seems decent because it has a strong facebook user group for support. Not sure about it though for this class.
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2016-Newest-TEVO-Tarantula-I3Aluminium-Extrusion-3D-Printer-kit-printer-3d-printing-2-Rolls-Filament-8GB/32596996503.html?s=p

#6

Aside from not being a fan of Ali express, it looks like all 3 axis are plastic wear surfaces on bearings, riding in the slots of standard 20/20 extrusion. I’m not sure how well that will wear over time, and seems like the build surface could have a lot of wobble being on a single rail. Also while it simplifies some things, I’m not sure I like only having one Z screw. I like only one z motor, but think I would rather see two screws driven by a timing belt.

#7

@themitch22 I expressed interest when you did the feeler last year. Personally I liked the way that discussion was going at one point. Setting on the Makerfarm, but leaving the specifics of the kit up to the purchaser. If I am going to have a printer at home, I would want options that aren’t currently available at MakerSpace. Namely, I would want the 12" and dual extruders.

#8

Yeah the Tevo Tarantula is meant to be a really cheap printer kit. Roller bearing actually work fine for 3D printers, and are cheap to replace. The single z-screw is not ideal if the x-axis isn’t stable (the velleman k8200’s biggest issue IMO)

@apparently_weird I’d be fine at least ordering from makerfarm so we get similar kits but different models, I just want to make sure we’re on the same page. The electronics and mechanics are practically the same. Dual extruders will add more complication, I highly recommend the E3D titan extruder/E3Dv6 upgrade. I would like to see how the 12" Pegasus kit works.

It would be a Saturday and Sunday coming up after open house. Probably last weekend of September, or beginning of October.

#9

Hey guys!

Mitch, I think the class sounds like a great idea. Getting buy-in from a group of people ready to shell out serious money on a printer, and all agreeing on which one to make will be challenging, but I think it will be the most rewarding experience for new builders.

I’m happy to bring my Wilson II to a meeting and talk about what I like and don’t like about the particular design. I also think the new Prusa Mk2 is a great option, although I haven’t seen it in person or read reviews yet.

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#10

One challenge with the Wilson II is how few kits are in stock.

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#11

The more I look into it the more I think the Prusa i3 MK2 is the best option for a kit for the price.

The issues I have with the Makerfarm for this class is: 1.) RAMPS Electronics suck, @frank_lima can tell you why. The Prusa has US-based Rambo mini boards, also no soldering required. 2.) the aluminum extrusion and wood/metal plates, while probably are sturdy, just don’t look good, take up a lot of extra space, and also aren’t easy replaceable as printing replacement parts 3.) Multiple upgrade options would make each kit different, it also doesn’t come with a power supply or glass plate so that would be more logistical challenge of sourcing.

I’ve been watching this very long live stream of a Tom’s Prusa i3 MK2 build. For the features they’ve listed this is probably the best 3D printer you can get for under $800.

If I was able to get 5 people to buy in to save shipping, it would be $731.61 for each kit. That sounds like a lot of money but it’s really not for a decent 3D printer (My Mendel90 ended up costing me over $1000 total with upgrades and 3D fab’s Mendy was closer to $700 just in parts)

I am eliminating it the class to the weekend of October 1st or October 8th. That would give plenty of time (estimate 2-3 weeks to get here)

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#12

@themitch22 Science is able to help you buy a kit. But we have upcoming projects coming up and won’t be able to front the money for five other people.

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#13

Hey Mitch,

As we discussed before, I’m definitely in if we can do one of the better quality printers. I just checkout out the i3 Prusa and that does look like a pretty cool model. I would love to have a pretty nice printer to share with folks at the office. I don’t necessarily need dual extruders, but a larger print area, higher resolution would be awesome. The fact that this model makes swapping filament mid job easy removes the need for me to have more extruders because I just won’t do it that much.

I found this page pretty useful in terms of the quality of that printer:
https://filaments.ca/products/original-josef-prusa-i3-mk2-3d-printer?variant=21033759428

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#14

https://calendar.dallasmakerspace.org/events/view/613

The class is now on the calendar! I’m not sure how the payment system works yet on the new calendar. If you have trouble signing up with the paid space, I’ll get a hold of the right people. There’s only 5 spots available for kits, to keep it manageable for our work area, but I can accommodate people bringing other i3 style kits.

#15

OK, I’ve recently had a lot of requests for dual extruders for a 3D printer kit.

Here’s my thought on the current state of dual extruders:

  • While it’s somewhat a product review, this video explains dual extrusion fairly well:

  • It’s still experimental. Modern slicers are just now implementing options for dual extrusion. You have to have two separate STL files that interlace with eachother imported into the slicer software and assigned to each nozzle, which means you have to design the model as separate parts per material.

  • There are different solutions and work around to get dual extrusion to work. There are issues like the nozzles that aren’t active oozing into the layers being printed by the other nozzle. There’s a lot of weight being thrown around when you have two separate extruder heads which reduced speed and quality of the print. The calibration is more difficult because you have to adjust for the offset of the heads and make sure the nozzles are both level to each other and the bed.

  • It’s not something a beginner should tackle until you’ve gotten decent prints with a single extruder. PolyPrinter hasn’t really been successful with dual extrusion yet, @edkman and @frank_lima have done a lot of work with this and they don’t have a perfect solution yet. They can probably tell you more about it.

  • For the Prusa i3 Mk2 kit in this workshop, if you were to convert it to dual extruders, you would need a new controller board ($100+) for a second hotend and extruder, a second hotend (which is $80), a separate extruder and motor. It’s doable but it’s a lot more expense and complexity.

  • There’s ways around needing to do two color or two material printing. You could design your parts to snap into each other or glue together after printing. You could also avoid having to use dissolvable support materials by just orienting the parts in a way that don’t require support. Simplify 3D does customizable single material supports that can be very easy to remove and post processing is just a little filing and sanding.

  • There are plenty of printers available that do have dual extruders such as the Makerbot Replicator 2x, The BCN3D Sigma which uses two separate heads on the same axis, even the Makerfarm Pegasus kit mentioned above. They don’t address the issues well with dual extrusions but they are options.

I just want to have you evaluate the pro’s and con’s of building a 3D printer for dual extrusion and if it’s really worth it to you. I feel dual extrusion is way outside the scope of a beginner 3D printing workshop like this one is. It’s definitely something I’d like to explore in the future with my personal 3D printers, but I haven’t really seen a need for it for the last 5 years I’ve been printing.

#16

Well it seems I’m wrong about multiple extruders and this is kind of a surprise.

Prusa announced an add-on for their kit that allows multiple extrusion through the standard nozzle using a Y adapter and Bowden fed extruders and an add on motor board.

So yes now the prusa i3 mk2 has quad material printing.

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#17

I actually have a Prusa i3 MK2 (after upgrading my MK1). It’s a wonderful printer, though I’m currently having calibration issues with the latest firmware due to a skewed Y axis. Be patient when assembling the Y axis assembly, and especially when attaching it to the frame. Make sure everything is square as you can make it!

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#18

That’s awesome. Yes the y-stage part is tricky. I plan on printing out some
jigs to help people keep it aligned while building. I measured the parts
several times and had to loosen and tighten the main nuts several times.
That skew compensation works wonders though.