3d printing. I need advice, which printer? Child friendly? Easy for non Computer guy to use?

Very good work getting your first print job to work without too much issues.

My Prusa I3, Mk2s seems to work a bit more reliable than the new Mk 3. Both printers are quite new, so I am in the early stages of figuring out things.

Once I dialed in the temp settings and z-axis offset the Mk2S seem to work about 95% of the time.

I am still in the process of dialing in the Mk3, and my hit to miss ratio is abut 50%.

The one thing that helped a lot for me was to find a good profile for the printers and make sure I use them.

To speed printing up you can change the quality of the print, the fill level, and a few other tweaks within the slicer type program.

[added]
[they went out of business and I most of the filament turned out for me to be too poor to use]
www.makergeeks.com

has a grab bag of filaments that you can use to help dial in the printer with a specific type of filament. Only used this material on a few items that seemed to work ok.
Freq sales, and I think free shipping. The grab bag you request the size of the filament and the style (PLA, etc), and they pick an over stocked color.

But can you print a gun yet?

I agree with bradbn4: a 3D printer is more or less an expensive toy without the desire/ability to 3D model and Fusion 360 is a great way to do it. There is a large library of models out there, but the learning experience available from downloading-and-printing them is limited.

I have a tevo tarantula and it's a good printer, but also a project. It took me about 6 hours to assemble and another day to get it printing right between tweaking settings and adjusting the printer. A bonus of a kit is that you become very familiar with the machine if you ever finish assembling it... Mine sat for 3 months before I had the motivation to put it together. A friend has a Monoprice printer and I'd say that's a great place to start for a casual user.

As for materials, PLA is awesome. ABS can be a huge pain in the butt to print.

If you can get them to print a primer catcher for my 550B and RCBS turret head Rock Chucker, I'll gladly buy them.

Ok folks, my turn for a printer. I am thinking about getting the Folgertch FT-5. Anyone have experiance with it? The CR10 is potentially anothwr option. Cant find much detail on comparisons.

I have two Printrbot Plus, one a dual head and the other with a 0.8 nozzle on it. That 0.8mm nozzle is the bomb for printing out hand size or larger things 0.6 layers and 1.0mm traces for walls...

I only print in PETG (T-Glase) now. Little glue stick on the bed and no more adhesion issues, or far less than with ABS. PET-G is pretty tough too.

Machine wise, I'm looking at the Prusa i3 Mk3 with a multi material head. I might hold off until one of current ones die. They are based on the ceramic hit ends and they don't make them anymore. I'm converting the single head to a new E3D Titan Aero. The dual looks like too much of a PITA to convert the way the z-carriage is rigged. The Prusa seems pretty good, and the multimaterial looks like an interesting option.

I'm looking more for multimaterial ability than size. I'm still scared by ABS prints being knocked off the bed due to bad adhesion- and the larger the print, the more likely that is to happen- and ruin a long print.

The real issue is learning CAD software to make what you want. I'm still a CAD idiot- and I use TinkerCAD to cover my limited abilities.

Well, I pulled the triger on an FT-5. Will be here on Monday so no fun this weekend.
Stay tuned for fun in the coming weeks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Irving

If you can get them to print a primer catcher for my 550B and RCBS turret head Rock Chucker, I'll gladly buy them.

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There are several guys in the different Dillon Groups on FB. This is one example:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/928962933789215/files/
The top PDF from Karl Bibb is his catalog.

(I tried attaching the PDF catalog but the upload kept failing)

That one has a primer catcher with and without tube. Not the rock chucker though.

I know they are all selling things that are out there for download, so someone with a printer should be able to get the original files.

ETA: I uploaded the PDF to my site. You can see it here: https://suburbangunowner.com/images/3d-items.pdf

I have managed to print out a few useful (non-toy) items with my printer. While PLA is down right easy to work with; the more useful PETG can give ABS a run for the money in strength; without having to drop the printer in an enclosure.

Simple search on Dillon from Thingiverse shows a few items you can download and print.

https://www.thingiverse.com/tag:Dillon

the link still works; even with the smiley face