Helped a friend get a printrbot working for his twins today. The simple makers kit certainly has some poor aspects, but it’s damn good at that price as a taster to see if it’s something they will be into.
I’m not keen on the sandpaper pulleys, the quality of the string used to drive the axes, the wiring in general is derp, and this ones extruder is a pain as the supplied spring is too short and there is no method of adjusting tension without packing washers. Also the software config is very fiddly. And you expect soft end stops to be set up to stop you ceasing into the max position.
Impressed by how well slic3r works with it basically out of the box though.
Many of those things have actually improved on the newer Maker Kits (1405) - that still doesn’t make it a top-notch printer, but it’s rapidly getting rid of shoddy solutions like the sandpaper “pulleys”.
Disclaimer: I own the same version Simple you have, and I love it!
You get what you pay for. The Simple is (or certainly was earlier this year) the best printer you could get for under $400. To achieve that @Brook_Drumm1 did an amazing job of balancing performance, reliability and affordability.
That said, a 3D printer is not a cheap toy - it will cost you to enjoy it. The maker version is for those who like to play first and save money second.
Once you have your machine dialed in and are comfortable making trinkets for around the house, the next step is to upgrade the machine. Buy the belt and pulley upgrade and print the parts to extend the X axis. Then work on extending and stabilizing the Y axis.
You’ll have lots of fun, gain good experience and hopefully some good social time with your friend and kids.
The Simple Makers kit has gotten better and better. We have some significant upgrades planned for next year but I’d love to hear from the community. What would you change? Btw: the upgrade kit is still available if you do want to move to belts, gt2 pulleys, aluminum bed and z sensor. I love this little bot!
@Brook_Drumm My biggest suggestion / feedback is to keep the cost down. Lots of products start affordable, but seem to suffer feature creep and end up costing more and more. Add other models that have more features, etc. (like the Simple Metal), but keep the price of the base unit as affordable as possible - sacrificing upgrades if needed.
I bought my Simple just before the belt drive, z-probe, bigger z-stepper upgrade - sigh - that was an awesome upgrade and at no extra cost!! But that is life - no time for regrets. I bought a belt & pulleys somewhere and have printed the parts to make it bigger & better.
I was having issues with heat creeping up the hotend and causing jams. A printed fan mount (http://www.thingiverse.com/make:79467) and an extra 40mm fan appears to have solved that problem - I wonder if somehow the fan cooling the print could be shrouded to also cool the extruder?
One last issue I have that I have not got around to solving is keeping the printer from walking around when it prints tight infills. The vibration causes it move - maybe some rubber feet?
I posted my current setup publicly for you to check out.
The Printrbot Simple is a great little printer for the price. It’s certainly not in the same league as a $2-3,000 printer, but that’s to be expected. If you put the effort in, you can get amazing results. So you’re putting in minimal dollars and making the difference up in your effort, which is a great way to learn. If you just want “plug and print” a kit isn’t the way to go, of course.
+Brook Drumm, the Printrbot Simple is one of the best choices out there for anyone starting on a budget, whatever enhancement you make to the machine, keep it that way. @Bracken_Dawson , search for “Printrbot Simple” at thingiverse where you’ll find everything you need to enhance/expend the current machine.
We are committed to making better printers for less. Look at the Make 3d printing magazine - the metal Simple tied for second in print quality with the TAZ ($2500) and got beat only by a couple points by the ultimaker ($2300). That’s about 4 Metal Simples for the price of one of our close competitors.
The goal this year is to keep driving our prices down while improving performance and ease of use. Someday, I want to include the heated bed in the $999 plus and to get the metal Simple down to $499. We have a plan but it will take time to get there.
Brook
People seem to be missing the sentence where I said it’s damn good for the price. I think it’s currently the only raspberry pi of 3D printing. One of the twins is picking it up really quick and really understanding things. So we might get to mods soon, then maybe a simple metal.
So thanks for filling that market segment. @Brook_Drumm , it’s necessary.
I have the same printer and can’t say a nice word on it. I had to make a lot of modifications to get it kind of working. I found a fishing line in an outdoor store, that claims to be the strongest fishing line on earth and folded it 4 times and turned it 3 times around the sandpaper drum. No slipping and it broke only once. Then I made this https://www.tindie.com/products/FemtoCow/printrlight-light-and-extruder-fan-holder-for-printrbot-simple-2014-2/ to combat extruder overheating. Because without it I couldn’t print anything that would take more than 15 minutes because the filament would get soft and jammed in the extruder.
Oh, and the Ubis hot end, I have fourth one already. One of them broke just after 40 days and they refused to exchange it because they give only 30 days warranty. They used to have a description on the hotend page, how is it the best hotend in the world because it’s made by Jesus himself after working for 20 years in HP test lab, LOL. If they only put their money where their mouth is. 30 day warranty says it all about what they REALLY think about quality of the product they make.
