Life expectancy of 3D printers

[kgg]

As some of you know I do a what I would consider a fair bit of 3D designs and printing so I figured I would share my experience of the life cycle of my 3D printers.

The first 3D printer a Prusa MK3 which was a kit that you had to put together. I was too cheap to pay the $500 + for a fully assembled machine. It did take a few choice words and about 40 hours to get it assembled. That unit came with a 1 1/2 " thick manual which had a couple of major assembly errors. The machine was overall very good for it's time and Prusa support was also very good back then. We pushed over 500 km of filament through that machine over a in four years period and then it had a hissy fit on an overnight print which caused a catastrophic failure that just wasn't worth the cost to rebuild. The 500 km of filament equates to approximately 1500 -- 1kg spools of filament.

The second printer another Prusa MK3 with a Bear upgrade kit has about 40 spools through it and now is dedicated to being a backup machine. So there is lots of life still left in it. Once again a good machine but a bit temperamental. 

We just upgraded to a Core XY Bambu Lab X1-Carbon Combo 3D Printer and the speed but most importantly the print quality is unbelievable. With all the tweaking that we had done with the Prusa's they never gave us the print quality that the new machine now does in it's standard speed mode. An example is a print that would take approximately 6 hours using the Prusia Bear now is done in under 1 hour. Now we are getting closer to what I would consider acceptable rapid prototyping times.

Another reason we went with the Bambu Lab X1-Carbon Combo 3D Printer was we were on Prusa's "waiting list" for their version of their new core XY. To be on that wait list we had to put down a small refundable deposit and we were I figure pretty patient but after 16 months of waiting we contacted Prusa and were basically told we will get to you sometime in the future with no firm shipping date. So enough was enough and we ordered the Bambu Lab X1-Carbon Combo 3D Printer on Wednesday afternoon and it arrived to my door on Friday.

I think anyone could get this machine up and running pretty quickly. It took:

i) about 10 minutes to unpack as it was really well packaged and all the packing screws that needed to be removed were clearly marked with big red arrows and the Allen key was even included.

ii) about 10 minutes to place the machine and accessory parts.

iii) about another 10 minutes to plug the machine in, read the brochure (which is actually 12 half pages), mount the filament roll and connect to their website for registration, etc.

iv) about twenty minutes to let the machine run self testing for things like self leveling and vibration calibration.

v) about 5 minutes to run a sample scraper.

vi) Done. For most users they would be pleased and up and running.

Those factory settings gets you to about 95 percent of it's capabilities and it then did take us about another 6 hours to tweak it to our needs.

As a note I would suggest using the ORCA slicer instead of the Bambu slicer as the ORCA has more fine grain tuning, better calibrations options and offers portable install option.

What are your thoughts.

kgg

 

Edited September 2, 2023 by kgg

[dikman]

Putting that much filament through a machine definitely makes you qualified to comment on them, imo! I too bought a kit to get started, a Tevo Tarantula. There were a couple of reasons, price (assembled units were pretty expensive back then) and I figured it was the best way to learn about 3D printing. Getting it running properly was a long process and it still requires the occasional bit of tinkering. I changed the software, added an additional Z axis drive plus a few other mods. There are obviously much better machines around now but for my simple needs it's adequate.

These days there's not much point in buying a kit, however, as the printers have become more affordable, and simple plug-and-play has a lot going for it!

I also considered getting a resin printer as the final finish is very good but they appear to be limited in the print size they can do. For someone who makes smallish model figures they would be excellent, but not so much for my needs.

[kgg]

35 minutes ago, dikman said:

These days there's not much point in buying a kit, however, as the printers have become more affordable, and simple plug-and-play has a lot going for it!

In the beginning 3d printers in my opinion were tinkers machines like the "Tinkers Delight". Now the new 3D printers have come a long way in a fairly short period. They have become more like an appliance sort like your stove, fridge or toaster. Today it is more about getting a decent item out without having to know all the quirts or the technology and that is a great step forward. Sort of like putting a slice of bread in your electric toaster and getting toast out without having to know anything about electricity. Remember the first microwaves??? It only took two strong people to lift them to the counter.

36 minutes ago, dikman said:

For someone who makes smallish model figures they would be excellent, but not so much for my needs.

Those machines really shine when you want or need to do items with great detail but the downside is the fluid but once again every machine has it's pro's and cons.

I still wish I could get my hands on a machine that had a 24" x 24" x 12" print bed size. I figure before that happens the 3D metal printers will be available at a reasonable cost, so we can build our own sewing machines.

kgg

 

[$$hobby]

On 9/2/2023 at 4:06 PM, dikman said:

I also considered getting a resin printer as the final finish is very good but they appear to be limited in the print size they can do. For someone who makes smallish model figures they would be excellent, but not so much for my needs.

Some relative words being thrown out here.  like many other boards i frequent.

we got 1 of each type at work and have been using them for prototyping and making parts for various projects.

as of this moment i dont have access to the Spool type, but have been using the resin.  Ive only made some small parts with it and am still learning the details.  Since it prints upside-down there are some adjustments.

The spool type is for the "engineering" and they recently made some vacuum manifolds to use on our CNC machine.  They also made the same on our (maintenance) resin machine.  In any case, they did some testing of both and using the same files but made of different materials, they found that the spool material was stiffer than the resin.  Noting that there are different spool and resin materials too.