It Begins
Watch us attempt to 3D print!
3D printing has been an interest of the staff here at PC Perspective for a few years now. Seeing how inexpensive it has gotten to build your own or buy an entry level 3D printer we were interested in doing some sort of content around 3D printing, but we weren't quite sure what to do.
However, an idea arose after seeing Monoprice's new 3D printer offerings at this year's CES. What if we put Ryan, someone who has no idea how 3D printers actually work, in front of one of their entry level models and tell him to print something.
Late last week we received the Maker Select 3D printer from Monoprice, along with a box full of different types of filament and proceeded to live stream us attempting to make it all work.
And thus, the new series "Ryan 3D Prints" was born.
While I've had some limited 3d printing experience in the past, Ryan honestly went into this knowing virtually nothing about the process.
The Maker Select printer isn't ready to print out of the box and requires a bit of assembly, with the setup time from unboxing to first print ultimately taking about 90 minutes for us on the stream. Keep in mind that we were going pretty slow and attempting to explain as best as we could as we went, so someone working by themselves could probably get up and running a bit quicker.
I was extremely impressed with how quickly we were printing successful, and high-quality objects. Beyond having to take a second try at leveling the print bed, we ran into no issues during setup.
Monoprice includes a microSD card with 4 sample models you can print on the Maker Select, and we went ahead and printed an example of all of them. While I don't know at what resolution these models were sliced at, I am impressed with the quality considering the $350 price tag on the Maker Select.
This certainly isn't the end of our 3D printing experience. Our next steps involve taking this printer and hooking it up to a PC and attempting to print our own models with an application like Cura.
Beyond that, we plan to compare different types of filament, take a look at the Dual Extruder Monoprice printer, and maybe even future offerings like the SLA printer they showed off at CES. Stay tuned to see what we end up making!
This builder documented his
This builder documented his custom case build in a series of posts. He used both plastic 3D printed parts, and some metal parts and plexy parts:
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=284758
I experimented with 3D
I experimented with 3D printing last year. I found it too expensive for me to get the level of quality I was used to at work. I am a graphic designer that has a masters in engineering.
I can give you some STL files to play with if you like. I’m also willing to make models for PC Perspective if it’s not too involved.
Try Slic3r. It’s OSS and
Try Slic3r. It’s OSS and available on pretty much every platform.
Keep up the series, please, I’m very seriously looking into getting a printer and Monoprice is a place I like to shop, so they might end up getting some sales from this sponsorship.
I heard about 3-d printers 4
I heard about 3-d printers 4 years ago when only really rich people could afford it. Now I’m starting to see them selling it at staples and bestbuy. If your hobby is flying model helicopters and planes then this printer becomes really helpful.
How many variations of 3D
How many variations of 3D printing are there, by now? It seems like one could use welding rod as a filament for 3D metal printing, and one could have a lathe-like rotating print style to print things like tubes of indefinite lenghts. Or you could print wax moulds for lost-wax casting.
And rather than just 3D printing, it seems like one could also do 3D welding, brazing, soldering or even crocheting! Does anyone have a list of working methods and ideas for this sort of tech?
I use to print on my
I use to print on my Ultimaker 2, mainly games figurines, and over the time learned from my own mistakes. Now all my prints are pretty accurate, with no troubles at all during the printing process. I use to share my works here take a look over them and do let me know what you think.