My experiences 3D Printing
A few years ago I became very interested in 3D printing. It was about the time that the cost of an entry level printer because very feasible. I bought myself an Ender3 whih is the small entry level one from Creality. Now you can pick this choice apart, list all the cons for it, etc. But, it was a very good first learning experience for me.
I did all the mods or upgrades to it, upgraded the springs for the print bed. Put in modules to make it change direction smoother, etc. It will never be the best 3d printer on the planet. But for a printer you can pick up for $150 new and a $100 used, it is a good entry point. There is not a reason to go drop 2k on a top of the line printer and then find out it doesn't turn out to be something you are even interesting in pursuing. There is a lot of work, a lot of learning, and a lot of software to pick up and learn. I will try to start with some of the basics on what you need to get.
One program you have to have in order to print is a "slicer". This is a program that you use to take the design files and output them to the printer. The one I have used, and continue to use is Ultimaker Cura. Below is a screenshot of it opened and a file open in it so you can see. It is very similar to most CAD packages, and if you have ever used any of them you will pick up Cura pretty easy. Cura is an open source project, so free, and widely used. If you get stuck you can find ton of people online to help you.
Speaking of CAD, you will need a CAD package if you want ot design your own things from scratch.
- FreeCAD
- QCAD
- OpenSCAD
- LibreCAD
- kiCAD
- BrlCAD
There is an awesome place to get and to share design files for 3d printing. The website is named ThingiVerse.. If you go to that site you will find literally thousands of designs. There is a good chance that anything you want to do a design for can be found there. Or at least something really close that with a few tweaks. Save yourself some time and work and use this free resource to download files.
The other thing to do is to look around local to yourself and see is there a 3d printing group on meetup or on Discord. I belong to multiple 3d printing groups on there. The fastest way to get help and advice is to belong to those groups. Below is a few pics of things I have printed, some of them praticle, some of them, like my tiki pole, cause I could.
