Questions about 3D Printers...

[AlGoreRhythm]

Questions my family has about 3D Printers. I feel so close to getting one, it’s been my goal for months!

-Can you make the money you spent on a 3D Printer back with 3DHubs?

-Does melting filament release harmful fumes?

-We’re considering either an Ultimaker 2 Go, or a Printrbot Simple Metal. Are these good choices?

-Where should we keep a 3D Printer? (Bedroom, garage, basement office…)

-Will these 3D Printers be obsolete in the next three years?

-Is getting a 3D Printer a good investment?

Thanks in advance!

[Pot8oSH3D]

Hey Ryan,

Well, it’s certainly an investment for a young person. 3D skills are very useful if you’re creative or technically-minded. The world is turning 3D and owning a printer will give you an advantage in your career. As for whether you can recoup money you’ve spent on a 3D printer, that all comes down to what you print and how much you sell it for. If you design your own products, you’ll have more chance of that. By all means take in printing jobs on 3DHubs but don’t rely on that to pay your printer back.

If you’re concerned about harmful fumes, you should try to avoid using ABS material and stick with PLA. ABS does give off fumes when it’s melted and also with ABS you’ll probably need access to Acetone, which isn’t exactly healthy stuff.

Both of those printers are good choices. I’d go for the Ultimaker but then, that’s just me!

I wouldn’t keep it in your bedroom, although it would probably be healthy enough, you may find yourself getting up in the middle of the night to start a new project you just thought of! Depending how lightly you sleep, it might keep you awake too! A basement office or garage would be fine. Find yourself 4 square feet and a shelf. That should be enough for you.

Obsolete? Hmm. That kinda depends. Is an iPhone 4 obsolete? In 3 years time, you can expect that anything you buy now will be somewhat outdated but it’ll probably do what it does as well then as it does now.

Welcome to the Wonderful World of 3D printing! Just promise me one thing: If you get a printer, don’t let it gather dust. Use it every day and show your family it was money well-spent.

Cheers!

AndyL

Pot8oSH3D

[MB3D]

If you get enough customers you can refinanciate the 3d printer. In the best case you advertise your hub to your friends and familiy, also you should invest at least 1000-1500€ to get a decent quality 3d printer, if you get one for 200€ or so the quality will be too low to attract customers.

Depending on the material that you’re printing with, you shouldn’t stay in the same room with the 3d printer for too long.

Harmless filaments are:

PLA

PLA/PHA by Colorfabb

XT by Colorfabb

T-Glase by Taulman

(usually) all kinds of PET, PETG and PET+

most foodsafe materials don’t release toxic fumes

Stay away from the fumes of:

ABS (abs is oil based and releases very toxic hazards and fumes, don’t stay for too long in the same room, keep the room ventilated and store ABS away from inginition sources, it’s easily inflammable)

Nylon (not that problematic)

Composites including one of those

All those statements are based on my knowledged and shouldn’t be taken granted, some manufacturers might rate their PLA as not harmless or some may produce harmless Nylon. This is just a general overview.

Both the Ultimaker 2 Go and the Printrbot Simple Metal are very good choises to start with, they both feature a large community and produce decent quality for a fair price. I’d go for the UM 2 Go due to the more solid build and if you want you could upgrade to a normal UM 2 or UM 2 extended while having some base knowledge about the UM products.

In no case you should place your 3d printer in the kitchen, bedroom, bathroom or living room. A workshop, garage or basement is recommended.

PS: keep the printer in a dry room and the room temperature shouldn’t vary too much throughout the year to ensure long-living mechanics.

I’m pretty sure, that Ultimaker will bring out the version 3 in the next 3 years or sooner, but the printers have a fairly long lifespan if you treat them right. You might need to replace a bearing or spring after a year or so, but that’s it.

There are still thousands of people that use their original Ultimaker 1 to great success, even today.

Due to the big community of the Ultimaker printers, there are a lot of modifications available to 3d print, like fittings for new hotends or extruders, to keep your printer up to date.

For me getting a 2.5k€ 3d printer was all worth it, although I needed some time to get it to work properly, it produces very nice quality prints and with increasing experience the fail rate minimizes. I’m currently modifying my 3d printer to be able to print with more different materials and in higher quality. The 3d printers will get better over the next years, but the main 3d printing aspect that is expected to explode is the filament market.

A year ago nearly all 3d printers could either use PLA or ABS and that’s it. Today good printers can produce large parts in up to 20 different materials, to get the most out of the 3d printer.

What’s a 3d printer good for, if it can produce high quality, large prints, but the material is too rigid / soft / weak / has a too low melting point.

There are many fields of use in which PLA or ABS are just inconvenient and therefore you (as a 3d printer owner) need to have the right material for the right job.

A very nice alternative to the UM 2 Go and the Printerbot Simple Metal would be the e3d BigBox which is currently on kickstarter.

e3d is a very popular brand for hotends and their all-metal hotends are capable of pushing the absolute limit of 3d printing. The all-metal hotend allows for higher temperatures, up to 400C and this enables you to print in nearly all plastics that are out there. The BigBox has a very large build volume, looks very sturdy and has some nice features, like automatic bed leveling, that make life a lot easier.

The BigBox should also be in your price range and is featured in a few different versions.

I’d go for the Cheapest one, with the e3d LITE hotend. The LITE hotend isn’t capable of insane temperatures and can’t extrude material that fast, but it’s enough if you just start to get into 3d printing.

Once you have more experience you can upgrade to an e3d all-metal hotend, which enables you to use more materials.

Cheers,

Marius Breuer

[Constantine_1]

Please do not finance or buy anything that you cannot pay in the long run. Just save up for it and pay it off as soon you purchased it. Think of it as an investment, then start learning your 3dprinter and the software that came with it first. After that you can start signing up for communities like this one or makexyz.com. Then you can start making cool stuff for people, and dont concentrate too much on the money you spent on the printer just concentrate on the Quality of your prints and the money will come after. Quality over Quantity wins every time in my opinion.

[Constantine_1]

And for the 3d printers there’s alot of good ones out there, my preferred ones are from MakerGear M2, Ultimaker 2 is good too. And i dont think 3D printers will be going away soon, actually the industry is just starting to love it more. Many of big names companies now are using 3D printers to prototype there stuff, companies like Locheed Martin using this technology for prototyping some of their top secret stuff. Its all cool stuff and im glad that i invested on one early and bought my second one after. In addition to that i would suggest NOT to buy the printers from Makerbot, sure people have Pro’s and Cons about their printers but its all problems for me. Thats why i decided to purchased a MakerGear M2 after, but have fun printing.

[sherif]

Hey Ryan, I’ll try my best to answer your questions

-Can you make the money you spent on a 3D Printer back with 3DHubs?

I think you can, it take quite some time though, I’ve been on 3dhubs for about a year and I’m almost there. There are a few factors to get a hub successful, I believe:

1- you should build a strong profile, get some orders through with 5 star reviews, make sure the customer is VERY satisfied. If they are then you will get several orders from the same customer\

2- you should properly calculate your pricing, look at equivalent hubs, your cost (include electricity, heat for 3d printing takes some)

3- you have to account for some time to maintain your printer. I had to do a lot since I chose to use an open source printer design that I built myself, on the flip side I learned so much that I can do things quickly without much maintenance

4- focus your options, don’t offer too many variaties at the beginning, get proficient in printing with a single type of material first (I prefer PLA)

-Does melting filament release harmful fumes?

it does if you overheat ABS plastic, that means >270C (which is something you shouldn’t normally do). I prefer to stick with PLA, I rarely print nylon, and I don’t do ABS (it takes so much power to heat the bed to 100C, not environment friendly)

-We’re considering either an Ultimaker 2 Go, or a Printrbot Simple Metal. Are these good choices?

The secret to 3d printing is the slicing software you use, all 3d printers have very similar components and probably the same firmware base (reprap). Unfortunately open source slicers (such as slic3r) are not there yet, it may be worthwhile to pay extra for a commercial software suite

-Where should we keep a 3D Printer? (Bedroom, garage, basement office…)

I keep it in my washing room, mainly to keep it away from the kids

-Will these 3D Printers be obsolete in the next three years?

I don’t think so

-Is getting a 3D Printer a good investment?

it’s a great learning experience, you have to be passionate about making new things

hope that helps …

Sherif

[AlGoreRhythm]

Thanks you so much for your amazing and thoughtful response! After months of trying to convince my family that a 3D Printer is a good investment, your response and one or two others ended up being what finally convinced them to take the plunge. (We decided that the Printrbot Simple Metal would be the best printer for us right now). I just found out about 5 minutes ago, and am still in partial shock that I will be able to print my designs by myself! I still have a lot to learn, but I feel comfortable knowing that I have this community to fall back on. Thanks again!

[AlGoreRhythm]

Thanks for your awesome response! Your response helped convince my family to make the final plunge and purchase our 3D Printer, (We ended up going with the Printrbot Simple Metal), their two biggest concerns were toxicity of melting plastic, and that the printer would be obsolete in a few years, but you helped them dismiss those! I just got the news about 10 minutes ago, and am still in partial shock. After months of debating and working hard trying to prove that a 3D Printer is a good investment, I honestly can’t imagine actually owning a 3D Printer.

Thanks again for your help! It really means a lot to me!

[Pot8oSH3D]

Hey Ryan. That’s awesome! Please do hang around on 3DHubs. Feel free to ask any questions, post your projects and let us all know how you’re getting on. Right now, none of us know how 3D printing will change your family but rest assured, it will and it’ll be great!

Cheers!

AndyL