3DPrinting
3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.
The r/functionalprint community is now located at: or !functionalprint@fedia.io
There are CAD communities available at: !cad@lemmy.world or !freecad@lemmy.ml
Rules
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No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
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Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
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No porn (NSFW prints are acceptable but must be marked NSFW)
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No Ads / Spamming / Guerrilla Marketing
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Do not create links to reddit
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If you see an issue please flag it
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No guns
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No injury gore posts
If you need an easy way to host pictures, https://catbox.moe/ may be an option. Be ethical about what you post and donate if you are able or use this a lot. It is just an individual hosting content, not a company. The image embedding syntax for Lemmy is ![]()
Moderation policy: Light, mostly invisible
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I have a printer that started life as an Ender 5 Plus. the print volume is 350x350x400. I have printed some pretty big things, like a full size Mandalorian helmet in one piece, and never maxed it out. A lot of my prints would fit in a Bambu lab A1 mini. Ask yourself how many large prints you'd do in one piece. Also, printing large prints can be stressful, as failures mid print are a lot more painful in large prints. You won't see many printers larger than 350 for a reason.
My printer has been converted to an Endorphin Hybrid CoreXY so of the original printer, little more than the frame, motors, and bed remains. It's a pretty competent printer. Over 3x the stock speed, good quality prints, and cost me around 150€, including an overkill (not really, has room for a toolchanger mod I'm planning) Octopus Max board. if you use a simpler board, you could probably shave around 40€. I had the printer, so it was a no brainer for me.
I got a couple of rails that were larger, because for some reason they were cheaper than the original. I cut them to size with an angle grinder on a miter adaptor which I had, but which are cheap. Just make sure you wrap the rails in masking tape, and grind down the edges a little. Any speck of iron dust will wreck the carriages.
Ender 5 Pluses are cheap used.
If I were starting from zero, maybe I would have looked into an Elegoo Centauri carbon, 310€, or an Anycubic Kobra X,339€ including 4 color MMU, or ideally a Snapmaker U1 toolchanger, 850€.
Just because I have some rails wouldn' really justify building a printer from scratch, but that's just me. To me is like justifying building a mountain bike from scratch because I got some wheels free.