Monoprice now has $400 3D printers | Hacker News Reader

Monoprice now has $400 3D printers

monoprice.com

46 pointsck261 comments

What are the more practical uses of 3D printing at this point? Is it still in early adopter phase? Are (everyday) users saving any money by having their own 3D printer?

I don't view 3D printers as a money saving device -- they're still too inaccurate, which means you can waste a lot of material (read: $$$) on misprints. For anything a normal consumer would buy, it would be cheaper to make 100 injection-molded parts than a single 3D printed one. They save money for engineering firms; but the money they save is the time spent waiting for a part to be delivered.

They're invaluable for people who are already "makers" though. Let's say you built an Arduino/RPi weather sensor (lame use case, but insert any use case here) and you need a way to mount it on a pole on the outside of your house. You can either find something on Amazon you think might work and go the trial-and-error route, or you can design a simple bracket in a CAD app and 3D print it.

Most practical uses for 3D printing parts are still inferior to CNC milling or wood carving. Rapid prototyping remains the most useful task for 3D printers.

A hammer is better at putting nails into wood than a screwdriver is.

Hobby CNC mills like the Xcarve or the shapeoko only have a 3"~ Z axis. That's on top of the normal limits of carving out of a solid block of material vs printing from nothing.

I don't disagree though. Much of what people demonstrate with a 3d printer would have come out better with a hobby CNC mill.

for the range of 100 parts 3D printing is still more viable for many cases than injection molding. mold alone will cost on average $5k in China.

Also, not everything can be injection molded.

There is certainly a place for 3D printed products (I know, since I am selling some)

Just curious: What are you selling?

some odd things, which are not worth mass production:

* http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QPA3K92 * http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TTCHHJ2 * http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RYFM3R2

I have few more ideas in a pipeline. It is not bringing much money, but it does pay for my hobby.

EDIT: I am also open source all of the stuff i am selling (under non-commercial license for obvious reasons) - https://github.com/hippich/stl

Very true; I just made that number up :) But I guess my original point was that it will almost never be cheaper for a consumer to 3D print something than it will be to buy the mass-produced version of that same thing. Unless that thing is covered by an IP license (i.e. a Mario statue or something) in which case there probably is or will be some law against it that just isn't realistic to enforce against individuals.

Need a a special mount for your camera? Did that weird part in your car break? ...

Is it useful? Definitely.

Do you need one at your home? Most likely no.

I wish there was a "Kinkos for 3D printing". It seems like the old copy shop model will work for 3d printing for a while.

There is! http://www.staples.com/sbd/cre/products/3d-printing/

There service is provided by Sculpteo and is not an in-store service. I cannot just go into the store and get something printed like I can with a copy job.

I don't follow this stuff too closely, but isn't that what http://www.shapeways.com/ is?

There's Shapeways. I've ordered a couple pieces from them and both turned out well.

http://spaces.makerspace.com/makerspace-directory

They exist, you just have to know what to look for! :) Libraries are increasingly getting 3d printers which you can use. I was at a space yesterday called Hatch in Boston that is totally free and volunteer run.

There are monthly subscription based spaces such as Artisan's Asylum[1] in Cambridge, MA that are full of all the equipment you could possible need for larger projects. They are also great because being surrounded by other makers is great conversation!

[1] https://artisansasylum.com/

am I missing something or is their directory account / password protected?

I've used http://3dhubs.com a few times with good results, quicker and cheaper than shapeways, and (at least at the places I've printed) whoever is printing for you might give some suggestions/pointers if they think something isn't gonna work well. It's more of an "Uber for 3dprinting" than a Kinkos though.

Prototyping. Even for hobbyist builders, it's super useful to be able to 3d print something before committing it to metal, wood, etc.

Outside of that, they're basically good for party tricks ("Everyone gets their own customized shotglass!").

If you're genetically required to jerry-rig your own whatsits rather than buy them ("$3.50 for THAT?? I could make that in an hour with a coat hanger and rare-earth magnet!!") you may also enjoy it as it provides another way to stick it to the Homo Economicus dullards.

I've used it mostly for prototyping and gifts. I've made a photography turntable, a functional arduino robot, and 3D printed my dad's house to put in a shadow box frame as a gift.

http://jrbedard.com/printing

Very interesting 3D projects! Which 3D printer do you use?

Thanks, for these projects I used a Dremel Idea Builder.

You can save some money by printing replacement parts to repair stuff instead of throwing it away. Other than that.. it depends on what you do :-) for some hobbies 3d printing is invaluable, for others it isn't.

I fly quadcopters and do a bit of FPV racing[1], and a 3d printer is so incredibly useful for printing parts.

[1] http://www.multigp.com/

I actually had a friend who went to school for this and uses it for almost everything. He prints silverware, plates, glasses and other things instead of going out and buying them.

He prints a lot of other things you probably wouldn't think of. One time the toilet paper roll holder in his bathroom broke so he just printed a new one. He also had a lamp in his study break and instead of going out and buying a new one, he printed a mold of a lamp, then took the wiring out of the old one, wired it up on the new one and boom! New lamp.

He really made me think there's a ton of uses people would never think of for 3D printing, the stuff he does really opened my eyes.

One of the comments in this thread says "Filament isn't food-safe" -- what is your friend using to print these things?

They have several food-grade filaments you can use to print stuff that comes on contact with food:

http://www.3ders.org/articles/20140111-food-grade-pp-filamen...

http://www.makergeeks.com/fogrplafi.html

I've also heard a KeyTech has developed an FDA safe filament for printing objects that come in contact with food or skin.

PLA is actually a bioplastic made from veggies and is actually considered food safe[1]. In fact, many of the plastic cups that you use are made from PLA, particularly anything clear. They can biodegrade given enough heat. The non-foodsafe part of 3d printing PLA is the hot end which is not clean, and can also be cross contaminated from printing other plastics such as ABS which is oil based.

[1] http://reprage.com/post/36869678168/is-3d-printed-pla-food-s...

You also have to deal with the FDM void issue. Look closely between the layers: they cannot be there if you are to consider your product to be food-grade. Fortuately there are ways to remediate this.

ABS is weak to acetone, so you can make an acetone vapor bath. Look this up how to do it.

PLA is the nasty one, as the solvent that dissolves it is methyl-ethyl ketone (MEK). Nastiest stuff I've worked with outside a fume hood. Use a respirator, gloves, and trash clothing. The stuff dissolves all sorts of polymers. It's also used as a polymer glue. But tl;dr: Don't use if if you don't have to.

That sounds like a high end professional model if it's able to print items the size of a lamp.

It does sound fantastic though.

Do you know what model of printer he uses?

Not off the top of my head. I'll see if I can get a hold of him and find out.

I bought a replicator 2 when they were new, thinking that it was a consumer device.

Difficulties I was aware of:

- Modeling is kind of a pain. Thingiverse and other 3d model repositories are helpful, but anything custom modeled can be a pain. TinkerCAD is pretty simple.

- Single color limits the kind of ornamental models you can print

- Filament isn't food-safe

Difficulties I was surprised by:

- It is extremely slow to print anything. The simplest model is maybe 10 minutes. For larger models the time can increase to 8-10 hours easily.

- Model prep (slicing and supports) took a surprisingly large amount of time. This has been improved, but still not great.

- Supports are horrible to deal with and remove. There are other slicing packages that offer better supports, but nothing fantastic.

- The hardware was definitely not consumer grade. I was expecting something like a microwave, where I open the door at the end and a model comes out. I have to know far too much about how the 3d printer works.

So, here is a short history of issues with my replicator 2:

- First few prints worked great.

- The nut and bolt print was misaligned by layers - the nut was skewed into sort of a parallelogram. This was due to one of my belts needing to be tightened, causing slippage each layer.

- After a few prints, I started getting good prints at the bottom of the part, but then at the top it would get all stringy. I tried various things to fix this like decreasing the distance between the build plate and the print nozzle, increasing it, and so forth. Eventually I needed to open up the print assembly and tighten something that controlled how tightly it pulled filament through.

- At one point I had some filament break off inside, blocking the nozzle. I needed to remove the heat sink to get at it, but when I put it back together, I accidentally squished the wire that sent temperature information, so it stopped being able to heat. Took a while to figure out the problem.

- I also had a problem where one of the circuit boards was misaligned, so when it was trying to go to its home position it wasn't touching the sensor and would just keep trying to move in the one direction even though it had reached the end.

- I had a file with the normals flipped, so it wouldn't print supports properly. It was a minor problem, really.

- I had lots of problems where the filament would either be too far away and not adhere properly to the build platform, or too close and jam the nozzle. I also had a problem where some prints were very difficult to remove, I ended up destroying them trying to remove them. Using blue 3M painter's tape solved the issue. If you get the 2" rolls, 3 strips cover the build plate.

- I had several prints getting stringy, I ended up having to replace the nozzle and thermal tape entirely

As someone who was just fighting with a Replicator 2 at my local makerspace last night, quick question for you: Have you ever had a print with multiple bed-contact areas, and Makerbot Desktop only generates a raft for one piece?

The print starts out fine until it moves over to the second area (where it forgot to build a raft) and starts spewing plastic out into the air since there's nothing in lower layers to print on top of.

Weird, I haven't seen this bug before. I do check the print preview before each print. I have had bugs before where if I rotated or scaled the geometry slightly everything suddenly started working.

Unfortunately, anything MakerBot is junk. Expensive junk. I'm sorry you got suckered into their marketing vortex.

> Modeling is kind of a pain.

Unfortunately, it's much more than "kind of". It's one of the biggest barriers into 3d printing. It's all happiness and flowers when your stuff is simple or on Thingiverse/STL/model website. But once you venture out that, modeling is very hard. Not only that, but you have to abide by 3d printing modeling standards, which are learned by trial and error.

> Filament isn't food-safe

Actually, it depends. First, you need a natural filament. ABS and PLA by themselves are safe. The additives and plasticizers aren't always. And the worst is that companies will hide behind "trade secret" when you ask them for the MSDS for all the components in their plastic mixture. Or worse yet, you get Chinese filament and fun things like lead and cadmium. Yum!

Now, say you find natural ABS, great. ABS MSDS is clear and concise. Now, your second issue with food safety now is the voids in a FDM printing technique. You have to heal the holes, somehow. This can be done a few ways. The best way is to use an acetone vapor bath and melt them together. It works, and works well. Another way is to use a food-safe epoxy and paint it to fill the voids.

But no, it is not directly print->drink from.

> It is extremely slow to print anything.

It is slow to print. However what you should be comparing it to is injection mold turn arounds. There, you would be looking at a mold change and 2 weeks absolute minimum turn around, versus a few hours. And the cost per model is really pretty cheap. A mold usually costs between $10,000-$25,000 because of the CAD time and 4/5/6 axis metal milling of said mold. I know a few companies bought a cluster of 3d printers and print out what they need, and have minutes-turn around for changing and fixing parts.

> Model prep (slicing and supports) took a surprisingly large amount of time....Supports are horrible to deal with and remove.

I use slic3r to do most of my GCode generation work, and it's usually considered one of the fastest. On models that have tons of detail, yeah, it's slow. But not that bad for most models. I think this is the case of being stuck with garbage proprietary tools with no easy way to choose the best software for the job.

Also, there's a bit of work with using the water soluble supports with a 2nd hotend. That plastic's expensive, but works well. You have have to tune the 2nd hotend appropriately (and tuning initially can be painful). Aside that, standard supports using ABS or PLA do indeed suck. Try to print without using them if you can.

> but then at the top it would get all stringy.... I had several prints getting stringy

That's a consistent sign that your hotend was getting too hot for the plastic. The correct way to do this is print at a hotter temp at the base and bottom few layers, and cool down to a 'non-stringy temp', usually found by slowly turning down the hotend until you get low/no ooze.

> having to replace the nozzle

MakerBot's Replicator 2 nozzle was known defective. Worse yet was that they sold 3 packs for $500 knowing that about after 20-30 hours of use will destroy it. They're currently defending a class action lawsuit precisely because of this issue.

And also, with my 3d printer, my nozzles are $8 each, and all metal. Mine can print PLA, ABS, HiPS, Nylon, and polycarbonate. If you had a RepRap, you can look on aliexpress and find them, and the rest of the parts to build stuff cheaply.

I agree with most of your points.

- I make CAD software for a living, so I've got a leg up when it comes to modeling. And I still absolutely find it a pain.

- Interesting feedback on being food-safe, thanks for the clarification.

- Yes, I realize that it's much faster than other options. I guess I was just a bit naive. Still, I'd love to have a 3d printer that is even faster than, say, a Carbon3d printer. It would really speed up the cycle time.

- When I first got started on the Rep2 makerware was using makerbot's C++ slicer for most models, and a Python-based slicer for high quality. The situation is much better now than it used to be. I've heard good things about slic3r.

I have gotten better at designing so that supports aren't needed. I've also had some good luck with meshmixer's editable supports.

- The rep2 nozzle is okay, it's the 5th gen replicator (after they were bought by stratasys) that has the horrible problems and is super expensive. Based on what I've heard, I wouldn't recommend buying a 5th gen makerbot.

I do full stack myself, from electronics design, part design, software, and qa. I have an associates degree for drafting/3d design along side a specialty in plastics. My hunch was that thermoplastics was going to take off after the expiration of the patent in '09. Lo and behold...

No, I would love a 3d printer that would only take seconds to make a part. However, with ABS, we're effectively limited to about a 200mm/s@.35mm is about the top end of printing. Obviously we can add in more hotends and other tricks, but the flow of ABS itself is the limiting factor.

And about the supports, I've usually approached them more from a metal casting way. Making a sprue network isn't difficult; the only weirdness is to design the 'infill' in the STL, rather than let the slicer handle it. Because usually, I want a 5% rectilinear infill for the sprues and something better (say, 30% honeycomb) for the part. Ideally, I'm working on a way to delineate areas that I want different infill on slic3r. That would be pretty spiffy.

Also, have you seen Antimony on the CAD front? http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/antimony/3/ Pretty neat idea, similar to the system in Blender.

Your first question hinges on the definition of practical. Almost 0% of the population defines prototype development, using 3d printers or not, as practical. Or model railroading as being practical.

The latter question, if you exclude "everyday", is a yes. You can't sell 10 HO scale model railroad 55 gallon drums for $19.95 at a local hobby store as a boxed scenery kit when the marketplace contains people who own 3-d printers, basically everyone but the mfgrs and retailers is winning due to printed scenery components. So due to supply and demand everyone is paying less, not just printer owners, at least in the short term. In the medium to long term crushing industry segments probably doesn't help much.

I'm not thinking "practical" is a useful marketing term for a tool mostly used by professionals and serious hobbyists. A good analogy of why can be seen in my socket set for car work or my table saw, those are fine hobbies but useless for the stereotypical perfect consumer. Then again the stereotypical perfect consumer who has no hobbies other than watching advertisements and shopping probably does not exist in practice.

I'm not sure what practical means in the sense of a creative tool anyway. My mom used to pain in acrylics for fun, and it would be very hard to define brands of paint or painting styles as being more or less practical than others. Sound of one hand clapping and all that.

I was hired for design/printing of a piece that broke off of a motorized wheelchair. It was a bracket that held a neoprene bag for a cell phone.

The plastic didn't respond to superglue, nor epoxy. Unsure of what type, but was not ABS.

So I modeled it; took about 20 minutes, and ended up with the FreeCAD file and the STL. Printing took about an hour.

I charged $25 for total, with $20 for design and $5 for the part. And I offered future parts printed at the $5 price. They didn't want the design.

I found out the bracket, because it was for a wheelchair, was priced at $75. Just crazy..

The Maker Select[0] is also available for $350.

[0] https://www.monoprice.com/product?c_id=107&cp_id=10724&cs_id...

I just received this printer a week or so ago. It's an absolute steal for the money. Here's a part of a phone car holder I printed last night. It took five hours with a layer resolution of 0.15mm and a shell of 0.4mm with a 20% infill.

http://imgur.com/a/4U9Xz

I think overall it's a great printer! with a printable area of 200x200x190mm (8x8x7 inches) and a heated bed, it really can't be beat as an entry level printer.

Edit: here are a few others that I didn't skimp as much on the print settings with. http://imgur.com/a/c7IGV

Awesome! Thanks for sharing :)

FYI: The second imgur link doesn't actually show any pictures. The first one looks great, though.

hmm, works for me in an incognito window. Sorry, I wouldn't know how to fix that. :(

I'm waiting for the Tiko 3D printer to arrive that I backed on Kickstarter for $179. The original delivery was to begin in November, however it's delayed (surprise!) - however, it sounds as if the delay isn't so bad so I hope to have it early next year.

The Tiko is at a really sweet price spot. While I've had access to an Ultimaker printer (around 1000€ when it was purchased), at below $200, even just occasional printing makes it interesting to have a 3d printer at home.

$3 Million raised from 16K backers, wow

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tiko3d/tiko-the-unibody...

looks kinda small though

The print colume is 2.7 liters, I believe it's cylindrical (125mm diameter).

Compared to the Ultimaker which has a pretty big printing volume of about 21x21x20.5cm (9 liters).

I backed Peachy printer https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-peachy-printer-the-fi... Delivery was estimated July 2014, and I'm still getting emails from them about how they're getting ready to begin production.

At least it sounds as if there's still hope.

I quite liked their statement:

“I am sorry that I predicted such early shipping dates in the campaign. I was completely naive about the shipping dates, and the amount of time required to really take the Peachy to v1.0. I should have done more research on how long hardware product development takes, having said that I don’t think research would have made me wise enough. I know now that getting a grip on how long R&D takes really requires one to experience it first hand. I do know one thing, I was dead wrong about our original shipping dates, and I posted those estimated dates without having the skillset to really estimate them. I’m also glad we didn’t stick to our estimated shipping dates. When you’re wrong about something its disastrous to not admit it and just stick with the original plan. If we had shipped what we had at the original shipping dates we would have disappointed everyone. The printer didn’t work that well and wasn't designed to be produced in high volume. Today, after a lot of R&D, we have something that we can’t wait to send you.”

- Rylan Grayston

can any experts explain the difference with their low end $350 model?

http://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=13860

I have no clue what I am looking at in difference other than the $350 one is open metal frame and the $400 looks like a wooden box. The $400 one was recently $500 so I assume it is a better value?

A few key differences: the $350 model has a heated build platform, larger print envelope, but slower print speed. The heated build platform allows one to use a wider variety of materials---in my experience however, for these consumer printers it's better to stick to using PLA for anything but small objects, unless you're specifically designing for FDM. The steel frame should be an advantage (weight and stiffness to dampen vibrations) but the weights listed on the spec sheet show the $350 and $400 models to be pretty similar.

In the end, I don't know that there's much of a difference based on the spec sheets. It'll probably take someone with direct experience with these models (or the printers they're based on) to decide between them.

IME, you want a heated bed for PLA too.

It's also not difficult to mod a 3D printer with a heated bed.

Without a heated bed, I'll take HIPS over PLA any day. Way fewer misprints with it over the course of several kg worth of filament.

The direct drive extruder would allow the use of flexible filament as well.

While they're similar weights, the metal printer will be much more dimensionally stable than wood.

Looks like Barnes & Noble is gonna be selling a "Da Vinci Jr 1.0 3D printer" for $250 in their stores on Black Friday.

No idea how it compares to the Monoprice printer.

3 out of 5 stars on amazon

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00V3J8JEG

Looks almost like a toy for kids.

Yeah that looks like the Easy-Bake oven of 3D printers.

Having said that, I've got a XYZPrinting Da Vinci printer (the full size 1.0 version) that I bought when Amazon was selling them for $400. For that price it was/is an amazingly good value (and I say that as someone who has a lot of experience with 3D printing, RepRaps, etc) if you build or buy a cartridge resetter so you don't get stuck buying their filament (they basically use the razor blade model). I've had it running for about a year now with absolutely zero issues, though I can't speak for their software since I run it using Simplify3D.

I believe the low-end DaVinci printers also have DRM on the filament reels so you can only use their filament.

That is correct. The cartridges are chipped. Not only that, but if the printer breaks down, they are completely closed source and effectively unfixable.

If you want a good printer on the cheap, try here: www.aliexpress.com/item/Black-Factory-High-Quality-Precision-Reprap-Prusa-i3-DIY-3d-Printer-kit-with-2-Rolls-Filament/32357171936.html?ws_ab_test=searchweb201556_9_79_78_77_80,searchweb201644_5,searchweb201560_8

It's $220, free shipping. It's a Prusa i3, easily moddable, fixable, and complete open source software stack. I know 2 people who have them. And aside the initial tuning (which is always fiddly), the printers are rock solid.

I think 3D printing is similar to copier/printer technology about 15 years ago. Back then, you could have your own deskjet printer at home by that was only for low quality stuff. If you wanted professional prints, you would go to a Kinkos etc. Now you can get great quality prints at home with a cheap lazerjet. Similarly, I think in the next 10 years 3D printing will evolve to a point where everyone will have one in their home.

The MOD-t from New Matter sells for $400. I've not used it myself, but saw it at the Maker Faire in NYC: https://store.newmatter.com/#!/mod-t-3d-printer

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