Has anyone purchased a Monoprice Dual Extrusion 1.75mm ABS/PLA/PVA 3D Printer?
http://www.monoprice.com/category?c_id=107&cp_id=10724&cs_id=1072403
It’s a rebadged, stripped-down FlashForge Creator line printer. The FlashForge Google Group is a good place to ask about it.
Nope, but this just in: Monoprice sells 3d printers.
What do u think the best 3D printer is under $300.
@Joshua_Collins it’s been “in” for long time…
@Ryan_Carlyle Is the FlashForge a good printer?
@John_Downey - They’re OK, but for someone like me who is an eternal tinkerer I think they’re limited. I had a CTC Replicator that was horrible and I tried to stick a Flashforge board in it but new issues arose and I gave up and sold it. My experience says stay away from Older Makerbot clones. The newer Flashforge printers are better, like the Dreamer, but the Replicators, like the above, I’d stay well clear. This is just my opinion, btw, I had a bad experience, but there are many others out there that have decent clones, just be aware, from my experience, the replicator clones are hit and miss.
Nathan is completely wrong, as per usual. The Makerbot Replicator 1 clones all use open-source firmware and have the heat-creep-resistant PTFE-lined hot ends that he likes.
Over time, FlashForge has fixed almost all of the issues from the Replicator 1. The Creator Pro is a nice printer, and this Monoprice unit is a stripped down version of that. It’s not an “excellent” printer, but a lot of people use them as workhorses.
@Ryan_Carlyle - they still using Sailfish? Whist Sailfish is open source, I found it to be less configurable than Marlin or Repetier, the on-the-fly E steps and psudo-PID that Sailfish has, aren’t the best.
As for the MK8, don’t get me started, I had more Jams than a Jam shop in Jam town. The CTC killed about 10 PTFE lined throats in about the 4 months that I had it, crappy filament was one problem, but even throwing decent ColorFabb filament at it, it still kept jamming, the same goes for the Migbots which come with the MK8 too. So, yes heat creep is much improved, but once again, in my experience, they’re nowhere near something with an E3D.
Again, just my opinions and experiences. You may find things are fine…
My CTC and Flashforge both have 3000 hours of print time on them. They have been by far my best investments. But I agree that they would be kind of useless without S3D.
@Nathan_Walkner It’s embarassing how misinformed you are about the Sailfish ecosystem. Almost everything I’ve ever seen you say on the subject is wrong. You could just make stuff up at random and probably get more right than you actually do.
- The i3 clone you’re talking about is made by Wanhao, not FlashForge. (I agree that it’s an ok printer for the price though.)
- The only thing anybody should be using RepG for is updating Sailfish. It’s not intended for use as a slicer. You can use any slicer you want with Sailfish, you just run the gcode through the GPX UI front-end, or call GPX as a post-processor script from your slicer, or use the GPX plug-in in OctoPrint. (Or use Makerware 2.4. Or sack up and buy S3D.)
- Sailfish is stable, mature, well-supported, and actively maintained. It has the best print quality and speed of any 8bit firmware, and even out-performs Smoothieware with many types of model geometry. It’s reasonable to choose a 32bit controller over Sailfish, but it beats the pants off Marlin and Repetier.
@Ax_Smith-Laffin What do you mean by on-the-fly E steps and pseudo-PID? Those don’t sound like anything in Sailfish.
Yes, it is less configurable, and that’s intentional. Avoiding the Arduino IDE eliminates a lot of difficult toolchain version bugs that plague Marlin, and supporting a more restricted set of hardware and features allows a ton of code optimization. It’s a trade-off between flexibility and performance. I recommend Sailfish in pre-assembled printers, but it’s not the right firmware if you want to build something special for yourself.
All the clones these days are using mk10 hot ends. I personally don’t like PTFE liners, but they perform fine.
@John_Downey FlashForges are fine. They’re not stellar, and they’re not bad. They’re mostly popular with people who want a printer to make stuff for their hobby or small business, NOT people who want 3d printing itself to be their hobby.
CTCs are complete garbage. STAY AWAY FROM CTC. They’re cheap knock-offs of cheap clones.
The Monoprice printer linked here is actually made by FlashForge, with some parts substitutions to reduce cost a bit. The main problems are:
- The PSU is a bit under-sized
- The heatbed wiring is likely to eventually fail and melt down due to under-spec’d connectors
- The plastic Z stage is not terribly stable
If you want super-cheap, the Wanhao Duplicator i3 is an ok option. In the $500-800 price range, the FlashForge Finder is a better option for most people than the Monoprice printer here. Or if you want an open-source design from a company that supports the community, go with a Printrbot.
Once you get over $1000, get a Craftbot. Seriously. They’re highly recommended.
@Ryan_Carlyle - If you read the Sailfish Documents, PID in Sailfish isn’t true PID control, it’s a work-around due to the way the mightyboard works. As for the E-Steps, they’re controlled by what the diameter of filament is and worked out by the either the firmware or when you create the GPX file, I can’t remember which at the moment.
@Ax_Smith-Laffin Yeah, I didn’t really like the way Dan worded that in the manual. He’s actually paraphrasing me there. It’s not a Mightyboard thing, it’s legacy safety code. The Sailfish heater code uses a slightly modified version of the basic PID algorithm that is better for heater safety (less likely to oscillate or run away) but can make the tuning more sensitive to the selection of the “I” gain term IF you don’t insulate your hot block or have a ton of airflow around the hot end. The difference in behavior from “basic PID” is indistinguishable for most users. Some people (particularly Rep2x owners after 2014) have to raise the PID “I” gain a little bit to compensate. That’s about it.
To get into the specific technical details, the difference from a basic PID algorithm is that the accumulated error is capped for the integral feedback component. It’s a legacy Makerbot code snippet (two lines of code) that the Sailfish team doesn’t touch because they have a blanket policy to not change existing heater-safety-related functionality except to fix bugs. Sailfish is used in around 100,000 3D printers globally, particularly popular with schools and small businesses, and safety was one of the primary development goals. Not messing with the heater code was one of the ways they convinced Makerbot to allow users to install official Sailfish releases over Makerbot’s forked version, and still maintain warranty coverage.
I don’t know what you’re talking about with the E-steps. It’s rare that anybody ever has any reason to change E-steps/mm with Sailfish printers. You are supposed to tune extrusion volume by adjusting the extrusion volume multiplier in your slicer.
@Nathan_Walkner While I agree that the 2560 is generally at end-of-life, you’re wrong about most of the rest of it. Sailfish has auto-leveling and filament monitoring support. You can set up a touchscreen with OctoPrint.
Seriously, just stop arguing. You’re not informed about this.
@Nathan_Walkner Ok, if you’re just trolling, I won’t waste my time arguing with you.