The 3D Printer Thread

If you've only got the STL files there's only so much you can do with them as they are the output files that contain the instructions for the final design made up of thousands of triangles. You would need the actual cad files (.f3d for fusion) to do proper editing/redesign.

I have a Wanhao version of the i3, and I'm perfectly happy with it.

You can import and edit stl files in Sketchup, but it can get very messy very fast. Millions of triangles and if you leave just one "hole" your object is no longer "manifold" (sealed) and won't print correctly. There are however plugins for sketchup to check for manifold leaks, and also to simplify (clean up) stl files. They help a lot.

Check out fusion 360. I was sketchup all the way until I discovered 360 (from here!) - it is superbly intuitive and there are a set of fantastic youtube tutorials from some chap (dutch?) who talks you through from the absolute basics. Very good teacher, and 360 is free for home use

How much do the resins stink? I've been itching to get one since the original Formlabs machine hit the market but have to share home/office with O/H and her insanely sensitive sense of smell. I get enough grief printing PLA and ASA...

You've helped cement my decision - I'm even thinking about finding some Fusion classes because out of all of the usual software I use (photoshop, illustrator, indesign, xpress, logic+soft synths), I've never coughed up for instruction from a registered/pro user. But I'll see how I get on solo first.

I wasn't holding out much hope, either. I seem to remember one company (Prusa?) claiming that they had made significant inroads into the handling and smells issue but can't haven't seen anything to back that up.

In the meantime I'll FDM or continue throwing cash at Materialise/3T etc...

I printed a few dragons, fidget spinners and dino heads when I bought the Cetus. All gathering dust on shelves now...

I don't know much about the ender 5 but my creality cr10 is still going strong for what will be 3 years this Christmas.

If you buy one just purchase some spare nozzles and feed gears but once you get the hang of things and use decent quality material things run pretty smoothly. The only other annoyance is bed levelling but it's par for the course with these cheaper printers.

It has pretty much revolutionised things in work with how we can print broken/missing parts for computer equipment. The bits would have otherwise languished on our shelves and been sold off cheaply.

Creality are good, budget filament printers.

I've managed, and have seen, print quality to rival the prusa of the world - however a little more tweaking, thinking and cheap upgrading to get there.

Otherwise, for absolute best quality, there's dla resin printing.

Anycubic photon is great according to one pher, but a learning curve! Very limited builds size though.

For a bigger build volume, there's the new phrozen for £1k.

Depends on the budget and your willingness to spend time, money and effort getting the printer to print with the sort of quality you're happy with.

ie, if you go for a cheaper one (approx. £200?) you're going almost certain to have issues.

£500 will get you a Creality CR10S Pro with a load of useful features like auto bed levelling, capricorn tubing and other upgrades already built in when compared to their Ender 3/5.

It might work straight out of the box or you might face further issues which will have to be ironed out. I've read several times elsewhere that 3D printing isn't a 'set up and forget' process - ie, ongoing tweaks are required.

But if you want to minimise that, and have a machine that's got everything built into it straight out of the box (either as a kit of fully assembled) then have a look at Prusa i3 MK3S, at around £700 as a kit.

I've spent the last few weeks watching at a ton of YT reviews, reading blogs/articles etc etc. I started off confident that £200 would get me a reliable machine but after thinking about how much additional time and money it will probably take to get the sort of reliability and print quality I want, the budget has now increased dramatically!

VERY useful YT channels are: Maker's Muse, Chep, 3D Printing Nerd and 3DMN (3D Maker Noob)

As an alternative to filament based 3D printing, SLA is more expensive, quicker, messier and smells quite badly apparently - but the end results are AMAZING!