My wife surprised me with a 3d printer 2 years ago. I told her I wanted one, but I was expecting a $300 dollar model, something cheap to play with without too much expense. She bought me the Makerbot 2.
I was so excited on getting the Makerbot. Even the way it came out of the packaging was magical. And it printed well, for the first few months. I got maybe a full spool (2.2 pounds) out of it, and then it just seemed to have….problems. It started after I spent a marathon printing a birdhouse, which no birds ever used despite it hanging in a tree in my yard for over a year. The thermistor failed, indicating wrong temperature values. Which to me was extremely strange, considering that these printers were made to handle volume. Hours, at least. I didn’t realize it was the thermistor either, it had failed out of warranty, of course, so I took a chance guessing at the problem and attempting to fix it on my own. What maker owns a 3d printer and can’t attempt to fix it?
So I began to take it apart and find out the inner workings of the printer. Over the course, I replaced the head, the fittings, the heater cartridge, and finally the thermistor. I even bought a whole new unit from Dx.com, and ended up using that as the main printing unit. I bought upgraded filament, upgraded the feed system, upgraded just about what I could just to try to get back on track. Just to be clear, however, be sure that you grab parts that work with the values. I set the head on fire once because I had installed 12 volt cartridges, and the Makerbot uses 24 volts. I’ll take that mistake, but all in all, once I finally got it working, I had already bought another 3d printer.
And once I really got them both working the way I wanted, 2 years later, it sort of dawned on my the hobby I had delved into. See, I bought into 3d printing as a way to freedom; Make what you want, whenever you wanted! You don’t have to buy anything any more!
And that’s not the case. There’s no real expense saved. You can find or buy the same things-raspberry pi cases on dx or other Chinese resale sites for the same price or cheaper. Plus you have to design your print. Relying on someone having the obscure object you need is luck on thingiverse.com or myminifactory. And then combing through the models is just as silly-why print something you didn’t know you wanted in the first place? Or rather, let’s find more hobbies that you didn’t know about that you should print and make time for? Create a CNC machine by printing it, hooking up the electronics and then finding out that you have to spend more time fixing it!?
It’s a slippery road, but I realized after I finally got both my printers working the way I finally wanted them to, that it WAS about the journey. It’s new technology. It has hiccups. And if you want something that’s totally unique, you can do it. It just has a cost, one you will have to anticipate when you buy into it. It will cost more than 1 print to get it right. It will cost time to print. It will cost filament to test, filament to create, filament to recycle or throw away, if you can bring yourself to it. Me, I’m still holding on to all of mine to create a filament extruder and of course, another project.
If you don’t want that hassle, call us and we’ll print it for you. Or go to ponoko or something.