Tick
Footballguy
My 13 year old son is a tinkerer, and is always wanting a gear just this size, or a plastic case to modify a Nerf blaster, or some tank treads that interlock just like this. He finally rounded up enough money to get a low-end 3D printer.
We hunted around for 3D printer reviews, and here's what we found:
Doing some research in advance, we chose Autodesk Inventor for the 3D CAD program to use. That's a little aggressive, since there are lesser CAD programs that can be used, but he wants to be a mechanical engineer anyway, so I thought Inventor or Solidworks would be a really good thing to know. Inventor has a free full version for students, so we grabbed that. He'll have to learn it, and I'm planning to learn it with him (I already use AutoCAD Electrical at work). The printer comes with a program that translates 3D models into slices to send to the printer.
It seems that the first thing to do with a new 3D printer is to get it calibrated properly. From what I can gather, you can print a standard part, then look at the imperfections and adjust settings based on what you see. Some lingo here. It sounds like you can also get help on Reddit to sort out your settings based on the problems you're having. I noticed that the printer isn't coming with any filament, so I picked up some PLA off Amazon - that seems to be the most common material for 3DP.
Once you're calibrated, the next step is to beef up the printer by printing parts for it... basically trying to fill in the shortcuts that the manufacturer took to get the price down to $300. In this case of this printer, there's a Z axis stabilizer and a fan shroud that are important immediately, then we can see what other problems we want to solve. Another thing I've seen many mentions of is getting some sort of cabinet set up for it to keep any air currents from messing up prints.
Thingiverse has zillions of pre-existing designs people have loaded - that will probably keep my son busy for a while, then he'll have to start using CAD to make his own. I think this is going to be a lot of fun, possibly with a bit of frustration thrown in.
We hunted around for 3D printer reviews, and here's what we found:
- The good printers start at $600, and most recommendations seem to be for a brand called Prusa.
- There's a price gap between $300 and $600 mostly - those at the $300 and below level have to cut corners somewhere, which leads to them being consistently crappy or great until they break.
- There are lots of 3D printer review sites out there, but many seem shady, like they're run by one of the manufacturers.
- We found a few good review sites from reputable sources: Popular Mechanics, Wirecutter, CNET, PCMag, and one generated by the 3DP Reddit forum. Also, reviews more than a year old often refer to obsolete models.
- Based on those rating sites, we slimmed down to two printers from the same manufacturer: the Monoprice Select Mini V2 ($220) and the Monoprice Maker Select V2 ($300). The Mini has wifi and seems like a slightly newer design, the Select is faster and has a larger printing area. My son chose the Select in the end.
Doing some research in advance, we chose Autodesk Inventor for the 3D CAD program to use. That's a little aggressive, since there are lesser CAD programs that can be used, but he wants to be a mechanical engineer anyway, so I thought Inventor or Solidworks would be a really good thing to know. Inventor has a free full version for students, so we grabbed that. He'll have to learn it, and I'm planning to learn it with him (I already use AutoCAD Electrical at work). The printer comes with a program that translates 3D models into slices to send to the printer.
It seems that the first thing to do with a new 3D printer is to get it calibrated properly. From what I can gather, you can print a standard part, then look at the imperfections and adjust settings based on what you see. Some lingo here. It sounds like you can also get help on Reddit to sort out your settings based on the problems you're having. I noticed that the printer isn't coming with any filament, so I picked up some PLA off Amazon - that seems to be the most common material for 3DP.
Once you're calibrated, the next step is to beef up the printer by printing parts for it... basically trying to fill in the shortcuts that the manufacturer took to get the price down to $300. In this case of this printer, there's a Z axis stabilizer and a fan shroud that are important immediately, then we can see what other problems we want to solve. Another thing I've seen many mentions of is getting some sort of cabinet set up for it to keep any air currents from messing up prints.
Thingiverse has zillions of pre-existing designs people have loaded - that will probably keep my son busy for a while, then he'll have to start using CAD to make his own. I think this is going to be a lot of fun, possibly with a bit of frustration thrown in.
