Upgrading a printer

[nickmow]

First I’m more of a stalker than a poster these days, very much soaking up the advice and work that everyone is doing. I ventured into printing 18 months ago with a Wanhao i3, which has and continues to serve me well. My question is if I wanted to level up to a unit that printed to the next level what would you recommend. I mostly do odd parts for models rather than whole components .
Thanks
Nick

[midlife306]

Hi Nick, it’s all about budget, £160 gets you a creality Ender 3, it’s the best bang for your buck out there at the minute with a print volume of 235 x 235 x 250.
Beyond that there are the creality CR-10S variants that go upto 500mm cubed print volume, prices range from £300 to £750 for the big one.
Cheers
Wayne


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[Will01Capri]

Hi Nick, it’s all about budget, £160 gets you a creality Ender 3, it’s the best bang for your buck out there at the minute with a print volume of 235 x 235 x 250.
Beyond that there are the creality CR-10S variants that go upto 500mm cubed print volume, prices range from £300 to £750 for the big one.
Cheers
Wayne


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I took Waynes advice and bought an Ender 3 a couple months ago and it is bloody amazing. How it compares to what you got i have no idea, but i can say that i will be looking at buying a 2nd printer and it will be a Creality.

[Max-U52]

What exactly are you looking for in your new printer? Are you looking for better print quality or bigger print bed or what? If you want to be able to print very large Parts, like the entire upper hull of a tank all in one print, you might want to look at the creality cr10 S500. It has a 500 mm x 500 mm print bed, which is about 19 inches square for my fellow-murcans.

If you're after a more high-quality print, you might want to look into SLA printers. I've been looking at them myself and you can get a decent SLA printer in kit form for about the same price as the big creality printer. About $1,000 USD. Some say SLA printers aren't as good because they use resin and that means smells, and waste, and I hear the resin is rather expensive, but I've seen the results and fdm printers can't hold a candle to SLA when it comes to quality of print.

[nickmow]

Thanks chaps,
Good question, what do I want out of it I think quality is the factor. The I3 does 200x200x180
which is big enough for my needs.

Lots of inspiration from the stuff and prints and sharing of ideas on the forum here. I’ve certainly managed to improve my prints.

Might have a look at some of your suggestions thanks again

[terry1956]

I have a prusa mk3 and an Ender 3. The prusa as broken down more times then I have had hot dinners. But the Ender 3 just keeps on printing.

[Tiger6]

I started out with an Anet A8 (basically the same machine as the Wanhao) an quickly moved to a pair of CR10's for printing larger parts. Print quality wise, the CR10's are a little better as there is less wobble in the frame, and they are a lot quieter (running the A8 overnight is not an option!). The only thing the A8 does better is handling TPU filaments for printing truck tyres, having the extrusion motor mounted directly above the nozzle eliminated the problems around trying to 'push a wet noodle down a drinking straw' that the remote extruder machines have out of the box.

If your Wanhao is still working reliably for you, I'm not sure an Ender would be much of an upgrade, so the question is do you want to print bigger parts or do you want to print more complex parts? If you are looking to make fine detail parts, then maybe the resin printer route would be better - just be sure to read up on the pitfalls and problems of those particular machines. They are also not cheap at the moment..

Hope this helps?

[Max-U52]

If you are looking to make fine detail parts, then maybe the resin printer route would be better - just be sure to read up on the pitfalls and problems of those particular machines. They are also not cheap at the moment..

I'm hoping to see some great prices on Black Friday, just a bit over a month away. I bought my CR-10 on Black Friday and got 44% off. Woo Hoo!

[wibblywobbly]

I started 3D printing back in the 'buy a box of bits' day, then bought a Delta printer kit, and then a CR10.

I learnt a huge amount from owning the first one, simply because there was so much to go wrong with early printers. The Delta was a great design, and very fast, but a nightmare to keep adjusted.

It was my experience with these two that taught me that the one thing that was valuable was build space, and that is where the CR10 scores. You have to realise that a 200x200 build plate is not a 200x200 build size. Prints require a layer around the outside of the model, a brim, which sticks the model to the bed. You could lose up to 20mm on each side of the bed due to the brim. On top of that, a print that goes close to the edge of the bed is pushing the adhesion due to bed levelling requirements.

SLA printers may be accurate, and capable of great detail, but the limit on print size is a restriction on 1/16 scale tanks. Great for machine guns etc, but no good for hulls and barrels.

[Max-U52]

I'm mainly looking at SLA printers for small detail parts like hatches, and for TIRES! My CR10 does a decent job, but the quality with SLA is light years beyond what I've done so far.