My Life Today: Finally 3D Printing
I have been interested in 3D Printing for 10 years.
It started when I read the book Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop--from Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication by Neil Gershenfeld in 2007.
source: Amazon.com
First 3D Printer
In 2011, while living in Florida, I ordered a Thing-O-Matic from Makerbot. As I remember, it cost me US$1500.
Thing-O-Matic
source
It was a device you had to assemble yourself. So, I assembled it, but I was never able to make it work. So, I gave up for years on 3D Printing.
In the last five years, 3D printers have made a lot of progress and are now fully assembled and easier to use, so I decided to try again.
Second 3D Printer
Last December, I ordered from Amazon a Flashforge Creator Pro.
It cost me CAD$1200 only, that is less than the Thing-O-Matic that never worked.
However, as I am a "professional procrastinator", I did not open the box for more than eight months!
Box Unopened for More than Eight Months
Finally, I decided last Sunday to open the box and set it up.
This is a beautiful piece of machinery.
Flashforge Creator Pro
This 3D printer has two extruder and two spools of ABS, one red and one white.
It is easy to set up and to use. The programs to make things may be stored on an SD card.
I have not yet tried to print directly from a computer.
Here are the small things I have printed.
Things I Printed
The six chess piece on the right are part of a chess set that I found on Thingiverse.
I have ordered and received four more spools of ABS: black, blue, yellow and green.
I will print the whole chess set. I am sure that my grandson Nathaneil ( @naru-celier ) will be interested with another chess set, as well as with 3D Printing.
I will enjoy this 3D printer and will wonder for a long time why it took me so long to open the box!!
The Story of My Life So Far:
Summary
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8
Part 9 - Part 10 - Part 11 - Part 12 - Part 13 - Part 14 - Part 15 - Part 16
Part 17 - Part 18 - Part 19 - Part 20 - Part 21 - Part 22 - Part 23 - Part 24
Part 25 - Part 26 - Part 27 - Part 28 - Part 29 - Part 30 - Part 31 - Part 32
Part 33 - Part 34 - Part 35 - Part 36 - Part 37
That's awesome! Don't forget to teach @naru-celier how to castle both king side and queen side, in addition to "en passant"
Wow 8 month. I think it took me less than 8 minutes from i got the package with my printer till I was doing my first print.
You must be a busy man.
Doing stuff from thingiverse is fun but the real fun begins when you start doing your own designs, or at least modifications on designs. I use Blender for my design process (because its free and opensource) but there are many good programs out there, both free and commercial, and some of them takes a lot less effort to learn. Dual extrusion is really cool. does it take different materials too, or just different colors? I have my eyes on the new ultimaker 3 which has dual extrusion. It supports using different materials which means you can have much more complicated designs since one of the materials can be watersolluble and used as supportmaterial.
anyways good luck with your experimenting. Looking forward to seeing more.
Yes, I am a busy man, but not so busy I could not have found the time to open the box and install the printer. For some reason, I have been procrastinated all my life.
I am aware of Blender and I already downloaded it and installed it on my Linux laptop. I will have to learn how to use it.
The two extruders take different colors, but I don't think you can mix ABS and PLA, which are, if I understand correctly, the two materials that can be used by this 3D printer.
It is a fascinating thing to be able to print your own plastic things. I have made a couple of figurines and small boxes in Blender and it is quite magic to later sit with the finished result. I do not have a printer though. @evilhippie (Morty) is doing it on his ultimaker2.
I am the Great Cornholio! Would you like to see my portfolio? I have a portfolio in my bunghole, with my óleo!
Hi @cornholio
Piccata? Titicaca! I am Cornholio! I need piccata for my bunghole!
Seems like braille books would be a great use for 3D printers, too!
It would be probably too slow.
Thingiverse has a ton of braille designs including dice, keyboard caps, bluetooth keyboard, etc. I doubt it would be optimal for books but it definitely has a lot of useful applications for the visually impaired community.
Yes, I agree, printing signs that display text and braille is also a good application for 3D printers.
Professional procrastinator, lol. I could print my 3D art with that beast :)
Nice work! Good to know a solid 3d printer is available for $1200. I've been wanting to get one myself but was turned off of it by the $3500 price tag for the Form 2 by FormLabs.
I believe I found it on this web page:
https://www.lifewire.com/best-3d-printers-to-buy-4072290
Runner-Up, Best Budget: FlashForge Creator Pro
On Amazon US, it is currently US$899.
3D Printers have really come down in price within the last couple of years, there is a lot of competition in the budget market now. You can get a fairly large printer (Anet A8) for $150 but you will need to do some work to make it safe. Otherwise, the Monoprice Mini ($199) and Monoprice Maker Select ($299) are still cheap and work great right out of the box.
I wrote a guide on the 10 Best 3D Printers under $800 a couple months ago. Most of the choices are very popular recommendations in the 3D Printing community and have a large user base. You can check out my article here if interested https://letsprint3d.net/2017/06/18/best-3d-printers
Those chess pieces you printed are gorgeous, very nice results! I recommend the Qidi Tech 1 in my article which is the cheaper rebranded version of the FF Creator Pro. These are the only printer under $1000 I am aware of that come with a dual extruder so definitely a great value!
Thank you for this. Very informative for not too rich people that want to start 3D printing.
-- I had to laugh at that.
So you were ahead of this curve too, back in 2007 and 2011, you do not mess around.
Except at box opening LOL.
I finally saw one of these live printing about 3 yrs ago, at a computer club meeting I was invited to.
I got up there and got my hands on everything when the meeting was over!!!!
Great post man!!
Do you think it can 3D print new limbs?
I'm asking for a friend.
If you were wondering where I have been. I sent a transmission about it.
Yes, my Lord, you can 3D print limbs, but unfortunately not with this 3D printer.
Sorry, I cannot help your "friend".
There are prosthetic limbs available on Thingiverse that can be printed on even the smallest 3D Printer. I created a prosthetic hand for a local charity that they assembled during one of their events. Check out Enabling the Future, they are doing all sorts of easy to print designs now.
I dont know how you could resist opening that box for so long.
With such an expensive and exciting toy inside I would have opened it while it was still in the delivery person hands 😂
You obviously are not a procrastinator, while I am a professional one.
You are a even bigger procrastinator than me, which i thought was hardly possible lol No wonder it went down in price so much as they are printing houses now :) I will get my hands on one of those eventually too, i bet it is a real fun to play with. What materials does it take for printing?
ABS and PLA
Do you have any kind of issue of bubbles?
No, no bubble problem so far.