3D Printing
I recently bought a new 3D printer since the Prusa Mendel I built a few years ago was getting old and not really used much and looking around with so much choice now I figured I'd try out one of the Geeetech ones.
Given the low price of the I3 Pro B I figured there'd be a few issues to work out but the design looked like it would be a pretty decent thing and so ordered one for around.
Although it arrived back in the middle of June and I put it together in a few hours, I got hit with an issue that was puzzling for a while and I ended up contacting Geeetech customer services who sadly didn't offer any real solution. So it got put aside for a few weeks since I had to have a pacemaker fitted in a few weeks and so wanted to try and sort some other things before then. (Sadly a pacemaker means no driving for 4 weeks, bah!)
Well after having the pacemaker installed, no blue screens so far :) so I got back to trying to figure out the printer problems. Annoying, it turned out some dumbarse cough wired the heated bed and extruder the wrong way. (what an idiot) and after swapping them round it finally starts working as it should.
However after a few tries to get it to print reliably and trying out different settings for slic3r, I did some searching and found a post with slic3r settings HERE so went ahead and downloaded the firmware again went and reset the firmware, imported the settings into slic3r and redid the G-Code files and suddenly it started printing properly.
I've since printed out several things from useful:
- Spray Can Holders
- Raspberry PI Cases
- Tool Holder to fun stuff like about
- 12 Minions, and a
- Turtle and they've all printed out pretty good.
If your thinking of buying one, there's a couple of things to be aware off with these. Firstly, the Y Axis (Heated bed moving front to back) uses a metal block that the belt screws into and it's terrible. Of course thingiverse has a much better one HERE that you can print and replace and if you live in the UK and want one if you let me know I don't mind posting one out. (Just send me a tweet) The other thing is the part that holds the tension roller for the filament has cracked and I've ordered a metal one off eBay. Other than these 2 things, it's proving to be a nice little printer and it's possible Geeetech has already fixed these issues. For the money though it's well worth it and I'd happily (and already considering) buying another. Finally, if your still not sure... a really useful website you can try is TinkerCAD which you can use to make things that you can 3D print. When you learn to build things and how to then use the printer to print your designs opens up a whole new world. I've already took another design and modified it to make it into what I want and even started uploading things to thingiverse. Addictive things 3D Printing! :)