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GORDON wrote:What do you think.... 7 yeas before 3D printers are sub-$500, and showing up in homes in great numbers?

Given the reliability and user-friendliness of the standard 2D printer, the 3D version may have a couple more hurdles to overcome. Then there's crippling it so it can't produce anything complex or potentially harmful.

Heh... turned out everyone really overshot the time on the "below $500". I bought an Ender 3 this past week. Some assembly required, but getting great reviews. Think it's nearing the end of its run and Creality will come out with their next low end machine. Just a guess on my part, but supply is starting to dry up.

When did they go below $300?

Cakedaddy wrote: When did they go below $300?

You're right. I misread the date on those posts. I think the Ender 3 came out early this year. I am seeing youtube videos for printers under $500 in 2016.

June of 2016, there's an article with a $200 printer from monoprice.

The next question is, were they worth buying/using.

I think Monoprice are not great. Probably were worth it to scale of cost, but that's it. 3D printers in general require more TLC than most electronic/mechanical devices. I've heard a lot of complaints about the level of TLC required with many of the Monoprice printers.

The base model of the Creality Ender 3 is around $200 and everyone is saying they are as good as the $800 printers on print quality and with and with a few cheap upgrades are great printers with overall quality. I'll let you know on my experience with it.

Had to order a replacement for the Ender 3. Controller board seemed to have a failure within the first 4 hours of use. If you get a 3D printer, I'd suggest Amazon. Might be able to find it cheaper in other places, but the no questions returns makes it worth it if you have an issue. Seen a few horror stories of people having trouble getting exchanges or refunds from other tech web stores. So far (knock on wood) so good with this one.

As I gain a greater understanding on the design of the printer, I'm more and more amazed at how tight our electronic and mechanical tolerances are today. At any given time during a print, the print nozzle has no way to determine where it is. Switches tell it where home (0,0,0) is when the print job starts and it goes from there. The printer has no way to monitor how much plastic is being fed through the nozzle. You can go on-line and see a number of spectacular failures, but the fact that anything gets printed is impressive.

Got around to buying a printer today. MicroCenter had a coupon to get the Ender 3 pro for $100. I had some stuff I was going to ask my nephew to print for me, so instead, this worked out. Haven't fired it up yet, but it's the same printer he has and works well for what I want to print (based on him printing stuff for me).

My wife went in and picked up a second one. As she was checking out, the male cashier asked her if she had anyone that could help her with it. It's a very difficult hobby to figure out and understand.

GORDON wrote: ↑Thu Apr 18, 2013 3:25 pm What do you think.... 7 yeas before 3D printers are sub-$500, and showing up in homes in great numbers?

I'm going to say half-credit?

So far, I'm impressed with the completeness of the kit. Of course all of the parts are included to make it work. But it also includes:
Cutters to work with the filament
Every tool needed to assemble (allen wrenches, box wrenches, tiny screw driver)
Includes a spatula to scrape your stuff off the bed
A thin wire with a spring at the end
Extra nozzle
Extra extruder thing
8GB Micro SD card with USB stick reader
Few yards of filament so you can print right away

One complaint, the instructions to build it. They were setup like your standard Lego building instructions, and just as wordy. All pictures. Was hard to interpret some of them. And some basic things were left out. Such as, they had the wiring wrapped around, under the base. So when I went to plug everything in, some cords were too short. When I realized why, I had to take a bunch of it apart to get the cable slack out. Even now, I can see I routed one cable the wrong way. In fact, the cables are even shown in the instructions, so you don't get to see how to route them. I think they leave them out to make the unit look neater, and to not clutter up the instructions. But, this caused issues for me. That being said, 90 minutes to build. I could build another now in about 40 minutes. Maybe less. Easy to do, once you figure it out.

Another complaint, the included software was extremely dated. Was installing the version included on the SD card. It kept erroring. I went to their site and downloaded the current. It was about 8 revisions newer.

After correcting a couple of build errors (I left a wire unplugged), I'm now printing my first thing. A thumb screw for a larger tool I'm going to print. Using the slicing software was very easy. Open the file. Click Slice. Click export. Insert the SD card in the machine, select the file, start.

I'm sure like anything else, I'll get used to things and will be able to dial settings in and get good builds with it.

So far, not regretting spending the $100 for it. IF I can print all the stuff I want, it will pay for itself pretty quickly. LIke, the $300 worth of Warhammer models I'm going to print.

Cakedaddy wrote: ↑Thu Feb 03, 2022 10:03 pm LIke, the $300 worth of Warhammer models I'm going to print.

You're into Warhammer?

Into? Not really. My son and I played a lot when he was younger. And we played 40K instead of plain Warhammer. But we haven't played in a long time. Still have all of it though.