Lets say this is my Killer App to get a 3D Printer

[Boildown]

Lets say that this throttle is the trigger that makes me get a 3D Printer, something I've been thinking about for a while now for a number of reasons.

Which 3D printer should I get? Or which features are especially important? I'm just beginning my research into this, as my previous research is now years old.

It seems like they are fairly expensive, over a grand easily. The Makerbot seems to go for 1400 USD for the smallest one. Can you advise some other options, and what prices should I expect to pay?

Thanks!

[zdayton]

It depends, what is your budget? If you want something pre built and ready to go, I think the ultimaker 2 is the best on the market for a reasonable price. Its $2500. MY printer is a mini kossel, but the delta printers can be a bit tricky to get really dimensionally accurate parts. The makerfarm prusa is a decent option for a kit I have heard. But definitely do more research as I imagine things have changed a lot in the last year or so.

[Boildown]

So far in my research I've turned up these as my top candidates:

FlashForge 3d Printer Creator Pro
The MakerGear M2
LulzBot TAZ 4
and the Ultimaker 2 that you mentioned.

Those are more or less listed in order from least to most expensive. I just don't think I can justify $2500 for my first 3D printer. The Flashforge is about half that price, and many models exist that cost half of that (or 1/4th of an Ultimaker 2).

How important do you think it is to have it enclosed? The MakerGear M2 and the LulzBot TAZ 4 are open air, and I hear that's worse for ABS, which I imagine I'll want to use for anything that gets used instead of just looked at.

Any opinions on the four I list? Thanks!

[zdayton]

I don't print ABS, so I'm just going on hearsay here, but my impression is that the enclosure is important for large ABS prints. I think you could print all of the parts for this project in ABS without an enclosure and be fine. But my real advice is just to not print in ABS. Between the warping and the smell, it is worth it to me to pay more for higher end polymers like T-glase and colorfabb XT. Both of which I have printed succesfully without an enclosure.

As far as the list goes, I have never used any of them, but I think they are all pretty good. Best thing to do is go through forums and youtube and see what kinds of problems people are having with each model.

[Boildown]

I think I'm going to settle on the Lulzbot Mini: https://www.lulzbot.com/introducing-lulzbot-mini

It can handle all kinds of alternative materials out of the box, is self-leveling, is big enough, new design, mod-able, and not as expensive as the others (other than the Flashforge). The thing that I'm torn about is if it'll be better in the long term to have a bigger printer like the Taz 4, the kit version is a few hundred more expensive than the Taz Mini. But that size is exchanged for ease of use and some newer features.

[Boildown]

Well I've ordered a Lulzbot Mini, some filaments, and the parts to make the throttle. I ordered some ColorFabb BronzeFill because it looks awesome when sanded/polished and it says that it weighs 3x more than standard filaments, which would make it great for the base material. I just hope its strong enough.

The biggest gotcha so far is that there's no way on McMaster's site to estimate or know the shipping costs before you order. So my $50 order ended up costing an additional $18 to ship to me for two 1lb boxes via UPS ground, which was their cheapest shipping option.

It would be nice to source those McMaster parts elsewhere, Amazon would be especially nice for those of us with Prime (although I have to pay sales tax now on Amazon). Other parts are probably available on Amazon as well, such as the USB cable sourced from SparkFun. Although I ordered it anyways, I plan to see if I can use an old IDE hard drive cable instead of the 10 wire ribbon cable. The good news is that all the other sources had very reasonable shipping, usually using first class mail they were only $2-3 dollars.

I ordered the Pro Micro 3.3V/8Mhz board you had listed, but is there a reason not to use the 5V/16Mhz version? The cost is the same (they are both $20 in individual quantities, not $16 as listed). I played it safe because maybe the potentiometer can only use 3.3V, but in general higher CPU speeds are better, so the 5V version that runs twice as fast seems like a no-cost upgrade if the pots work with it.

[zdayton]

No there is no reason to use the 3.3V over the 5V, except that the 5V version was out of stock last I checked. I couldn't really tell you if the higher clock speed would be better, obviously at the same price it couldn't hurt, but I think it is fast enough as is for there to be no issues with latency.