Thanks a lot for the tricks, I’ll try them out when I get this one back into operation :)

It’s cool that there are so many different 3D printer designs, very innovative area, even if many ideas look better in theory than in practice.
Cheers!

OpenBeams are pretty cool, I have a set of them here from Adafruit. V-Slots look very promising for linear motion systems as well:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/openrail/openbuilds-v-slot

Based on my issues with Printrbot I am probably going to go with a Mendelmax 1.5+ build next.

It looks like some of your stringing/melting problems are from making such a small, detailed model. If the layers don’t have enough time to cool, you can get that melty look. Try blowing the model up a bit, and see how it looks next time! The first time I tried a little model, it looked like a blob! A cool trick is when printing small, print two models, and position them a few inches away from each other on the print bed. The time it takes the extruder to travel from one to the other is usually enough time to let the plastic cool a bit, so the layer forms nicely.

Like GP, I also built a Printrbot Jr. from a kit. It was a great experience, and taught me a lot about how the printer actually works from the inside out. With a lot of tweaking and adjusting and upgrading, the Printrbot Jr. can make some pretty high-quality PLA parts.

However, I agree with the extruder statements. My extruder has given me nothing but headaches, and the laser-cut wood does not seem to be a good choice for this type of mechanism. I plan on replacing it with an ABS printed version of the Accessible Wade’s Extruder.

Once again, great write-up. Thanks for posting pictures of the process.

Have fun printing!,
Andrew Sink

Thanks for the feedback, I was actually thinking about Printrbot this morning, because I felt the lasercut plywood might be more stable than the 3D printed parts. Glad that my instinct has stopped me short. :)

I am quite excited about people trying to make something reliable and usable out of the box, for example I was checking OpenBeam Kossel Pro recently http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ttstam/openbeam-kossel-pro-a-new-type-of-3d-printer . I just cannot really justify US$1000+ on these things at the moment.

Are considering getting any other in the near future?

I had a similar experience with building a Printrbot, albeit with laser cut plywood instead of 3D printed parts.

Building the kit was worth the experience, never mind the fact that the kit was junk. Understanding their perspective and implementation of linear motion was key, as was putting together a somewhat functioning hot end.

Having said that, today I would much have rather purchased a turnkey Makerbot or Lulzbot with support.

Cheers