/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>292038
Also, you might be able to achieve higher speeds with a bowden extruder design because that would remove mass from the X carriage, thus there is less to make the Z rods (which hold the X assembly) wobble. However, there might be some other problems that come with a bowden design like feed stock hysteresis. One of the best printers out there uses a bowden, though and just look at this print!
OF course, a lot of tweaking (and 14 hours of print time) is required to get to this quality.

Maybe add in some extra cost for a heated bed. It will save you a lot of headache and filament.

3D printing. Yeah, it has been booming to death recently and all people seem to care about is that they can now print out their favourite characters from games and stuff. But there is far more to it: you will have to learn some basic electronics and mechanical design; physics will also come in handy. Practically, a little bit of computing and 3D skills are a must.
Also, there is a lot of research to do: we still only have that stupid homogenous infill. For example, I am currently working on a solution to provide variable density printing (some MIT students are also working on that, but I cannot patiently wait for them to finish their research and patent it to some closed source company). A lot of complex maths and programming will be involved in the process, making it all really challenging, but that's the fun about it.
Basically, you would be combining a lot of different areas of expertise in this hobby. And with the various complete printers you can buy for around 500$, getting into 3D printing is becoming rather easy.
I am aware that your budget is 200-300$ per month, but those 500$ would only be the initial cost. After that, around 60$ per spool of printing material should last you at least one month as long as you don't start a printing factory. Speaking of factory: you can also print printer parts and sell them for quite some money. It's no exaggeration to say that the profit is several hundred percent of the investment in raw material if you look at the prices of some sellers.

>>277934
not necessarily.
Depending on the hot end (nozzle and heating element), you could achieve wildly different results with the same material.
One of our printers (I am working in a lab at a college) only produced crap results with PLA plastic until my boss changed the hot end. Now, the results are of quite the high quality. The slicing and control software / firmware also plays a part in quality.
Of course finally, a lot of tweaking and trial-and-error is involved in perfecting results.
The attached picture shows a print off a 1200€ printer (Ultimaker) that is supposed to be one of the best currently available (I guess half of the price is pure profit, though?). I haven't reached the resolution and quality with our printers yet, but it may be doable. The interesting thing is that it is based on the RepRap (and Makerbot) hardware which doesn't stop it from outperforming cheaper "professional grade" FDM machines that cost 10 times more.

>>277628
Sorry to break your dream, but printing any part that has to endure enormous loads (like skateboard wheels and guitars) isn't possible with the regular home printers (yet). There are some very intricate aircraft parts that are nearly impossible to manufacture with other methods, though. But that is another printing process altogether.

>>277873
Absolutely doable. A graduate from my college scaled the Mendel90 design up to a working area of 40*40*? cm.