For people looking for a 3d printer

[Dale Reed]

(07-20-2014 04:01 AM)eried Wrote:  Looks nice! You ordered the kit or the assembled one? Have you tried abs?

Growing up, my dad made sure I had the gift of Heathkit and/or Craftsman every birthday and Christmas. So, of course, I got the kit. If you're OK with basic mechanical assembly from a bunch of marked bags of parts, and positioning connectors properly on a circuit board given a photo-with-callouts of the connection points, you'll be fine with the kit.

I have printed LOTS of PLA, and some "PET+" (brand name, for PET or PETE polyethylene terephthalate filament, the stuff from which 2-liter bottles and such are made) from a company called MadeSolid, but no ABS (yet -- I have some, just haven't opened the bag yet). The PET+ is excellent material, kind of runny from the nozzle (so you have to tweak the settings to avoid "stringing" and "whiskering"), but super strong, and it's a food-grade material. I really like MadeSolid's crystal clear PET+ in particular.

I stocked up on black MakerGear PLA. I've been meaning to make a landscape calculator of my own design, with a four-line character LCD, but I haven't gotten around to designing the PCB for it yet. I'm planning on using the M2 to print the enclosure for the calculator, and the custom enclosure for another electronic project I've been working on. Wish I had more time to play with my microcontroller development boards and software and PCB design software and all that.

Maybe when I retire....

BTW, my retirement party will be from 14:00 to 16:00 EDT on April 8, 2024. My workplace will be under a total solar eclipse at 15:15 EDT that day, so I can sneak out in the dark --- kind of like the Baltimore Colts did in 1984, and the Cleveland Browns did in 1996...

Dale