Quote:
Originally Posted by Qbot2640
I have considered purchasing a simple printer for myself sometime in the next year or so. What would you recommend? (Small to medium and no-frills, but reliable please.)
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What materials are you going to print with, or do you want to target the widest range of materials?
I have enjoyed printing on the Bukito Portable printers even thought they really work best for PLA (and be careful here, MakerBot's PLA requires specific settings).
Otherwise my Up! printer has been extremely reliable.
Has many after market upgrades available.
I used that printer while CSA at the Mount Olive District event last year when things got a little slow towards the end.
Worked fine and I use it at least 4 times a month.
Neither of these printers are fully enclosed.
However you can enclose them yourself with a little tinkering.
The Duplicators I've seen available here (there are other sources as well, but this site has a wide selection):
http://www.makergeeks.com/3dprinters.html
These I've seen a few times from various vendors and they seem to work fine.
There are quite a few other models and the site operator is responsive.
I intend to put up a build page for the Prusa Twelvepro I helped MORT build.
Eventually possibly step by step directions, but initially just the STL for all the parts required and the sources for parts with some options to substitute.
There are some companies that provide assistance in the form of classes to assemble RepRap style printers. It really is not all that hard to do once you parse the piles of options. A few days if you focus on it. The name of the company I spoke with 2 months ago about this escapes me right now but I'll hunt it down and update this topic when I do. I know they do classes in the NJ/PA area currently.