... and here I was thinking the mailman was just very popular over there.

This has got me interested in a 3D printer. $200 is hard to beat but the monoprice one looks good too. A few questions, are there any other that are really good in the sub $400 price range. How hot do they get? Does the whole house smell like burnt plastic?

Hah!

Just to be clear, the one we are using costs many thousands of dollars. Sorry, don’t want to give a false impression. If you ask me, it’s worth every penny for any wargamer, IF you can afford the massive investment, of course.

Mep... the Formlab Form 2 printer that Ashram is using is certainly NOT entry level and many would have difficulty spending that much on a printer just for their own needs. That said... SLA printers are really good at finer details than FDM can produce.

I like the Monoprice manufacturer if you are in the USA. They are good for beginners but have a sizable community that can help you mod/upgrade them as you get more time on the printer. Once modded they can compete with most FDM printers in the sub $1000 range short of a few that a newbie does not want to tackle for a first time printer anyway.

I'm certainly no expert. But I research a ton before committing the $$. There are a number of STL sellers out there and tons of free stuff on Thingyverse. Most prints are made to fit a 20cm x 20cm building area and about that much height. That is the biggest reason I went from initially thinking $200 on the MP Select Mini v2 and went with the $300 MP Maker Select v2.

I tend to use a mixture of amazon review, youtube reviews, and various 3D printing websites... and like any research... throw out the top and bottom 15 percent of what you find... the middle 70% will be pretty honest.

There are a lot of printers out there. Search for best 3D printer under $500 (or whatever cost you want). Getting one when I come back from Europe. Mine is a kit for $600. Great support and options, but not for a beginner. I am an engineer and programmer by trade, so I think I am not going too far out on the limb. Buy an assembled one that has good support.

Yeah, if I was going to spend a few thousand I would get a really good CNC machine. For the cost, shapeways seems to be a good enough service for the fine detail stuff. For the not so detailed stuff, they can get rather pricey. It isn't too hard to find a couple hundred of dollars of neat stuff on that site, so a cheap printer would be of interest.

My concern is the printers out there seem to be a couple of years old now. I realize there isn't too much for an EE to do to improve these guys since it is more of a mechanical and chemical problem, but I was hopping there would be some good improvements in these guys, at least on the price front. I guess that is where the $200 machine comes in. So yeah, I wouldn't want to put a lot of money into one of these guys right now, but a cheap one may be better than going to shapeways a bunch of times.

To throw my 2 cents in...

I have a Prusa i3 Mk2S. Generally speaking, I'll print war gaming related vehicles and terrain at either a 0.15mm or 0.20mm layer height. My printer can go down to 0.05mm, or 50 microns, but the printing becomes crazy slow. I generally just take the model off the printer, do a quick filing down of any snags or burrs and then prime/paint. I've never had anyone complain about the quality. 99% of the time people will just say "oh, that looks super cool".

Also, good to know your printer and how best to print models. A few things to keep in mind...

1. Not all parts of a model need to be printed at a super high resolution. I tend to cut the model up into pieces and print the detailed areas at a higher quality. I glue everything together when done.

2. If your printer is properly calibrated, vertical surfaces tend to look smoother than horizontal surfaces. Diagonal surfaces really show the layers. When splitting up a model, I try to keep this in mind and orient the different pieces appropriately. I recently made a custom wheeled troop transport for Warhammer 40k. I printed the sides of the tank separate from the body to get a better print.

3. Curved surfaces show layer lines more so than straight lines. All else equal, I'll avoid curves when possible. If I'm making a satellite dish, I might make the dish look more like this... \_/ than a traditional bowl. Looks just as good on the table, but so much easier to get a quality print.

4. Avoid overhangs if possible. Ideally, every layer should be the same size or smaller than the layer below it. Most printers have a "supports" option that creates a scaffolding used to print parts that are "hovering in space". The top of these parts will look great. The underside, resting on the supports, will typically look terrible. I only use supports for times where I know nobody will ever see the underside.

In other words, understand the limitations of 3D printing tech and design with those limitations in mind. If you're using models from a site like Thingiverse, it'll be a bit of a crap shoot. Not everything on that site was actually designed to be printed. A lot of it was just designed.

9 hours ago, KrisWall said:

Prusa i3 Mk2S

I can second the Prusa, that will be my future purchase.