Been thinking bout building me own printer got the tools why not
Not a terrible plan if you have the knowledge and want something specific. But what I found is the part costs exceed a purchased printer. I lucked out and bought a cheap generic printer that ended up being a bad design, so more or less got the materials at their volume discount and used that for a new design.
Though if you accept knock-off products and cheap ebay goods it may work out ok on cost?
Who said i got to buy the parts ill makem
And plus all I got to do is get sand for making mold casts of the parts
You still have to buy the control board, heaters, motors, all those parts you can’t really make.
Do you have a printer style in mind?
No just mother board
I got parts for days I got a bunch of old machinery on the family farm
And if I ant got it i can make it except the control board and it a gonna be pretty big for a printer
Do you plan on making your own hotend and extruder?
You would be better off buying a kit first to get the understanding and knowledge of how 3D printing works. $400 or less will buy you a decent prusa i3 clone off ebay. You sound enthusiastic about building your own from scratch, but unless you have a specific application that can’t be bought elsewhere, your wasting your time and money. The tooling costs to start from scratch will be more than the complete printer kit bought off ebay. You may know casting, but do you know enough about the software to write code from scratch for your application. The software integration has been greatly underestimated by many wishing to do the same. Our opinion is buy a working kit first, as close to what you need. There are kits that can laser engrave and mill metal as well as 3D print polymers. If those don’t wind up meeting your needs, you should have a better idea of what and how to change a kit, or then put together something new.
I have a forge and I use a 3d printer almost every day an plus I got the metal to so I am pretty much set but thank you for recomedations though ill be sure to keep it in mind for later use
Keep us posted on the build! Maybe a blog?
Ill try
ok, yeah since you have the experience, is there a specific need for this machine? I assume its going to be bigger than the average tabletop printer if you were going to use cast parts? Were you considering making 3D printed farm equipment? That would be worth documenting.
Man I’d hate to try and do some giant days-long print and then have it fail
at the 95% point!
Would feel safer to print smaller parts that could lock together for your
casting mold. Wouldn’t have to worry about the strength of the joints (I’m
assuming a filament version of lost wax cast) as the cast itself would be
one piece when done.
I got a welder frames gonna be welded together