FIRST Choice 3D Printer Lottery

[dtengineering]

I have a print running in the basement on a Solidoodle 3 right now. It has been a year since I first got my hands on a Solidoodle 2 and, as mentioned above... I'm still learning.

The idea that a 3D printer is some kind of miracle machine where you just push a button and whatever you can imagine miraculously appears has been somewhat overhyped in the media.

They are cool, they are useful, but there are limitiations, both to what you can print and to the reliability of the machine... well, to be fair, it hasn't been the machine itself so much as operator error and perhaps some 'dirty' PLA filament that caused intermittent clogging of one of my print nozzles. That happened just about the time I was getting the printer figured out, and the day before a group of middle school kids was coming for a visit to see it working. (Thankfully I had a glow-in-the-dark Yoda printed in advance as a souvenir... the machine was 'down' when they visited.)

So definitely consider getting the printer if 3D printing is a field that both mentors and students want to explore... but expect to spend a fair bit of time getting it set up and working and learning its limitations... and its abilities. If you are getting your first 3D printer as part of this year's KoP, you may find it more useful for next years' build season rather than this year's. In fact, this year it may serve more as a distraction than an asset...

Most of today's low-end 3D printers are a lot like the Model T Ford. They can get you where you are going, but you'll have to learn to drive and you might have to turn a few wrenches along the way. Twenty years from now, I expect, we'll be looking back and laughing at how primitive they really were!

Jason