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Mar 2015
12 days later

I will echo the sentiment here. I have the 1403 (with heated bed; assembled from kit), we’ve been printing daily for 3 months and are quite happy with the printer. It did take a decent amount of time to properly calibrate - I chalk that partially up to self-assembly and coming up to speed on 3D printing in general.

We’ve also upgraded the printer, driven mainly to be able to get consistent ABS prints, which is far more difficult than with PLA. Specifically, we use Kapton tape with ABS juice for adhesion. We insulated the heated bed with metal tape and a cork cover to get the bed temperature to rise faster and hold its temperature, and we built a heated (terrarium heat lamp) plexiglass enclosure to increase the ambient temperature (as warping was ruining our prints).

So, if you are a tinkerer by nature (as it sounds like you are), I believe you will love this printer. I will also echo that you should buy the Simple Metal if you can, if only because a 4x4x4 build volume just doesn’t take you that far. We’ve been assembling multi-part models lately, and have run into situations where we have had to split model parts in two in order to fit on our bed (good excuse to learn more about 3D modeling programs :)). I guess it depends on what you’re looking to print.

I’m buying it in May when I’ll have the free $$$. Yup, I love tinkering, and without buying it, have already made my plans for upgrading it a ton! Turns out there are a bunch of great mods on thingiverse for the 1405 model, and I have access to a Ultimaker 2 and Makerbot Rep. 2 4th gen at my school, (building a 3d printer for fun/learning experience/dont like lines at school) so I’ll have the space to make all the parts :). I should be able to make it into a 8x8x8?(unsure about height) ABS/PLA printer with double a regular printerbot’s accuracy for under $500! I’m pumped!

Bought it, build it and can’t get it to work. It doesn’t calibrate with Cura or other software. So far it’s only collecting dust. Anyone in the Netherlands that can physically help me to get it working?

1 month later
2 years later