Dipping my toes in to 3D printing

Diddums

Diddums

Diddums

Caporegime
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Hello folks, I've always been curious about 3D printing and now I've also had a few ideas that could actually give me stuff to print.

A few questions if I may please:

Is it worth me designing something first and getting someone else to print it, in case I suck at it / it doesn't grab me?

How hard is it to design stuff?

Assuming I get to the point of wanting to make more stuff, what sort of budget would I be looking at?

I'd be making items that I'll sell, so the quality will need to be decent. Nothing big, mainly adapters, I'd say no bigger than 20cm cubed to start off with.

Any recommendations for any of the kit / filament?

Thanks all :)
 
How hard is it to design stuff will entirely depend on your capability with CAD/3D software or how you are at learning the same, it's what I am struggling with at the moment due to a lack of motivation lol... at 180cm2 the Bambu A1 (256mm2 print area) would be ideal and can be had to £260 right now, £390 if you want to add the AMS multifilament unit with it. You then need to consider that depending on what you are printing it can take many hours to print so unless you are going to buy multiple printers and start a print farm you will be very much restricted by print speed rather than anything else.

Definitely try to design something and have it printed first if you don't just fancy buying a printer and playing :)
 
An A1 or A1 mini would be a good place to start if you are unsure and don't just have the money to drop on a P1S or X1 blindly. There are lots of other brands and lots of other printers. Owning many of them are a great educational in how printers work, because you'll spend so much time trying to fix them.

Designing is a different matter and will also depend on the application you choose. Fusion is my choice and I didn't have any trouble picking it up, others will struggle more but less with other packages. It will also depend what type of thing you want to make. Adapters and things will be fine in Fusion, busts of your favourite character will not.

One of the above people enters will come with a little filament, pick up a roll of petg and a roll of pla at the time of order. PLA is very strong but gets soft at about 55c and snaps when pushed past it's limit. PETG is good to nearer 80c, and stretches at its limit. It's better for things that need to repeatedly flex a little like a clip or something.

I would suggest you download the free license for Fusion and watch some of Product Design Onlines YouTube context to learn how to start using it. Then find something basic that you want to model like a table or a tap and work out how to do it.

Now do it again using what you learned and try and use the parametric ability of Fusion to allow you to change some dimensions and no lt break the model.

Go from there.

3D printing is great, and for me nothing beats the feeling of fixing something that is otherwise going in the bin with a part that you drew and printed yourself. For me that's included things like a pin for the wheelie bin lid, my shower diverted valve, a hoselock autoreel, and countless others.
 
DBT85 said:
3D printing is great, and for me nothing beats the feeling of fixing something that is otherwise going in the bin with a part that you drew and printed yourself. For me that's included things like a pin for the wheelie bin lid, my shower diverted valve, a hoselock autoreel, and countless others.
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Radiator Valve top for me. It can be addictive once you get going although I burnt myself out a bit doing my arcade cabinet as it was a long project and I've got a 2 player version on the back burner to do next but I've not touched the printer for about 3/4 months. Going to probably do some stuff for my Dad's railway for Christmas.

@Diddums I've had mine over a year and I was a complete novice. There seemed to be 2 types of printer, ones that just work out of the box like the Bambu ones or the Neptune ones and those that need upgrading/tinkering with before you can get anything decent eg Creality so do your homework first which you want. Bambu seem to be the one of choice, slightly more expensive than others but produce good results. Just a note about the A1 mini - the build plate is quite small and some regret buying it as it restricts the size of prints initially.

With regards to design/3D Cad I had a go with Fusion and it just blew my mind for a complete novice for me it is too complicated so I used Tinkercad to learn some basics and watch the odd video. I still use it now because I cant be bothered to learn anything else. For models check out Printables and Thingiverse website you will find 1000's of free models. Also I like to take someones design in something that I am interested in (eg an arcade cabinet) and look at how it can be improved and then use the existing files to create my version (called a "Remix") via TinkerCAD and then publish the model for others once I have built mine. So as an example the 2 Player arcade cabinet I want to do is too big for my printer so I am going to cut the parts down to fit my print bed plus I have improvements to simplify it. You do not necessarily have to do everything from scratch you can improve on other designs or change them for your needs and more than not its complete free to do so. Thats how I learned Tinkercard take a model and play about with it.
 
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Once you get comfortable with visualising things in your head and transposing that idea into Fusion 360, the world is your lobster.

Oh and I strongly recommend getting a decent set of vernier calipers.
 
Cheers all, the Bambu A1 seems to be the way to go.

I suspect I know the answer to this already, but has anyone had any success with used printers?

Also, can the Bambu print all the mainstream filaments?

And whilst on the topic of filaments, any to avoid? Any preferences?

Cheers again all, really starting to like this idea.
 
Eryone filament prints nice, I almost always print in PETG these days. Pla is still good for fast prototyping.

Speaking of, when you've got your feet under the table switch out to a 0.6mm nozzle and print in 0.3mm layers. Dramatically reduces print time for bigger parts that don't need the detail.
 
Diddums said:
Cheers all, the Bambu A1 seems to be the way to go.

I suspect I know the answer to this already, but has anyone had any success with used printers?

Also, can the Bambu print all the mainstream filaments?

And whilst on the topic of filaments, any to avoid? Any preferences?

Cheers again all, really starting to like this idea.
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You can try a used one but support from bambu may be more problematic. I honestly have no idea.

They'll print any of the PLA or PETG you can find that is 1.75mm diameter. Not sure there's anything else you can print on the A1 without worrying about fumes or needing an enclosure. In 6 years I've only ever printed PLA and PETG.

If it's PLA then pretty much anything will be fine. To start with and until you've got your feet wet just get a couple rolls of Bambu as the slicer will calibrate settings to that specific filament.

As said, get some calipters to measure things but don't worry about getting spendy with it. A Parkside set from Lidl will be perfectly fine.
 
Definitely looking at the Bambu A1 combo deal, but dunno if I'll ever print multi-coloured stuff, and it looks immensely wasteful and time consuming. Still, perhaps I should walk before I can run!

The only other concern I have is that anything I print will be sent to Bambu's cloud first, before I can print it. The odds of my inventing a life-changing device are pretty much nil but I'm still not sure I want to willingly hand my designs over to China.

On the plus side, regardless of which printer I choose (which at this point is very much looking like it's going to be the Bambu), all of the ideas I have so far can have jigs printed too for quality control purposes. Ultimately I'd like to print stuff that I can actually sell for a few quid rather than just useless tat.

I'll never get rich from it but the odd extra beer token or two wouldn't go amiss.

And Bambu have their black friday sales on until the 3rd of December :D

One more question, why do some printers need enclosures? Is it the UV effects on the plastic? Fumes? My use case tells me that ultimately I'd like to be printing in ABS, is it worth going straight to an enclosed printer?

Thanks again for all the advice, it's very much appreciated :)
 
There are ways of printing on Bambu printers without everything going via their servers, using the microSD card for example should do it.

Enclosures are needed for some materials, they will warp and and you will have a difficult time printing them if they are not kept at a constant temperature throughout the process, an enclosure will help with not only that but also removes any issues caused by cold drafts, they also give you the ability, depending upon the enclosure to vent print fumes in far more controlled manner than you have with an open printer, again, depending upon what filament you are printing will dictate how harmful it can be to your health and even stuff like PLA (especially depending on what additives it contains) probably isn't good in the long run but nobody really knows for sure at this point.
 
I'm not sure exactly what your use case is, but ABS is something I've never had aneed to print with in 6 years and I've printed everything from parts to fix things to router jigs to shelving parts.

That said, if you have the money and feel that it is worth it, get a P1S.

As for the AMS, be it lite or not, don't just look at it as a multi colour option, though is is very good at that. There is a convenience factor that is underestimated until you have one and with the full AMS there is also the drybox part that is useful. Also multicolour does depend on what you are doing. Today I had to print 12 50mm diameter circles for my Lego Shuttle SRBs and they needed to be half black half orange. Barely any wastage at all and there was something more satisfying than I anticipated popping all 12 off the plate, all in multicolour. That was just a single colour change.

IIRC you can also set the printer to be LAN only and your top secret design won;t leave your network, you can even block it on your router if you like.
 
I've probably used the A1 mini more than any gadget I have purchased before.
I have been printing loads of stuff, desk tidy's, headphone holders, Quest 2 wall holder, coasters for the wife. Electric toothbrush holder.
With the AMS Lite, it's too easy to start a multi colour print and just leave it to run.
Have had zero issues on any of the prints so far.
Now wish I had gone for the A1 instead of the mini, never mind.
 
fullspizz said:
Now wish I had gone for the A1 instead of the mini, never mind.
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I can totally understand that, but you'll likely find that even if you had got the A1, you'd have been able to print 85% of the stuff you wanted on the Mini also.

My feeling is that the Mini is a great place to start if you are unsure if you even want in, the A1 is a great place if you know you want in but have to think about the money side, and the P1S is when you know you want in and you don't have to worry. I'd only recommend the X1 to anyone who can tell me why they need it.

My suggestion after dipping toes with either of the A series, and assuming you wanted something more would be go straight to the P1S and skip the A1 if you started with the Mini.
 
Ordered. Thanks for the advice all, I'm sure I'll be begging for more help when I inevitably make a mess of it all :D

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fullspizz said:
I've probably used the A1 mini more than any gadget I have purchased before.
I have been printing loads of stuff, desk tidy's, headphone holders, Quest 2 wall holder, coasters for the wife. Electric toothbrush holder.
With the AMS Lite, it's too easy to start a multi colour print and just leave it to run.
Have had zero issues on any of the prints so far.
Now wish I had gone for the A1 instead of the mini, never mind.
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useful to have two printers, if you want bigger prints use bigger print bed for that and mini for smaller jobs, or doing multi part print twice as quick
 
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