Large portion of my spare time is consumed by 3D printing.
Most of the people actually involved into the hobby would wonder why – as seemingly once you’ve got your setup configured, printing is just a matter of dropping in a new spool and making minor adjustments to the print settings.
Nope, this is not the case.
Actually, this is not even my personal printers that require attention: being a 3D printing evangelist that I am (hell, I even managed to persuade my wife this hobby is worth investing your time in), through years of printing I’ve had a chance to troubleshoot numerous printers – and since then, they’ve been running fine.
As of my personal choice, I am keeping it cheap and sticking to the following printers for personal use:
- Creality Ender 3 kitted out with a custom driver board from BigtreeTech for the sake of 32bit and silence. This one is a workhorse that’s been up and running since Day 1 without any serious maintenance or malfunctioning. Very capable machine for the price – no wonder it’s a now a printer that’s a default suggestion for any workshop.
- Tevo Black Window that’s recently started drifting towards becoming a portable/foldable printer that I’d flip open when I need to print something really big and crude.
- Prusa i3, initially an acrylic framed creation of chineese origin. Once you’ve built one and finished setting up one, you’d know how to solve every single 3D printing flaw on earth.
- ZBOT FDM-01: this Makerbot knock off miserably failed in terms of sales in Russia, so I managed to get myself a new one for less than a quater of the original price. Totally worth this, still running almost stock, even though is severely limited when it comes to experimenting with materials and nozzles.
- Anycubic Photon Mono – for all my SLA needs like model railroad or other extra small detailing needs
Also, from time to time I use the following comuter-controlled CNC machines:
- NEJE DK-3000 laser engraver – a child of two floppy disk drives and a laser from a CD burner, this device proved to be exceptionaly useful and mobile, working even using a powerbank as a power supply.
- Silhouette Cameo 1 cutting machine – utilized mostly for vinyl sticker cutting and pepakura endeavours
- DIY Low power laser engraver – just a fun project that i came up with as soon as changed my mind about adding a removable laser diode to my Ender3