3D Printer?

[+bob1200xl]

I want to get my grandson a 3D printer, which I know little about. What would be a good choice for a 14 year-old? 

 

Can I run one on an 8-bit? Has anyone tried?

 

Bob

 

 

[Gunstar]

Several members recommended the Creality Ender3/Ender3 Pro 3D printers as good printers for under $300. I purchased an Ender3 Pro clone/knock-off from Sain Smart off of Woot! for less than $200 and have been perfectly happy with it so far, it seems just as quality a build and machine as the original Creality brand.

 

3D printers need at least a slicer program to turn CAD files into 3D printer files so the chances of using one with an 8-bit Atari are zero unless someone can program a slicer program for the Atari. I think it would be incredible if a slicer program could be used with the incredible ChromaCAD suite on the Atari. ChromaCAD even builds 3D models in "slices" of triangles and would be perfect to use for making 3D models for a 3D printer if a Slicer were written to go with the ChomaCAD suite of programs. It would have to be a very slow process, just like ChromaCAD itself, as it would probably have to manipulate many models from ChromaCAD to piece together into a large one and would require large amounts of ram and virtual memory (SD card). A dream of mine that is probably a pipe-dream, but it would be so cool, ChromaCAD could work wonderfully for creating models for 3D print, if a slicer were possible to program as another extension program for ChromaCAD like the model builder and surface shader and more, programs.

Edited May 20, 2021 by Gunstar

[Rybags]

I doubt it'd be practical to run one from the Atari - likely the mathematical operations would take thousands of times longer and you'd be constantly waiting for calculations to finish with the printer sitting idle.

[Mr Robot]

If you are controlling your 3D printer with Octaprint on a raspberry pi, you can install the Cura slicer engine on Octoprint and it will slice any stl files you put on the Pi. Takes a bit of tuning to get a good slicer profile but it might be a solution if someone could write a ChromaCAD to STL converter.

 

[Mr Robot]

As for the ender 3, it's very much a tinkerers printer, it requires a lot of effort to get the best from it and as such suits me perfectly. If your grandson isn't that sort of kid maybe a Prusa MK3 would be a more solid and reliable option?

 

[atarialoha]

There are 3 basic steps.

 

1) Design the item on a 3D design software tool. This can be a graphical tool (like https://www.tinkercad.com) or a programmatic tool (like OpenSCAD). I have used both before. Now I use the Shapr3D tool (for Mac/iPad). This will not likely run on 8-bit machines. All the graphical stuff is too intense. In fact, even on my relatively high-end computers (say, i7 CPU for Windows or M1 CPU for Mac) it takes QUITE some time for the rendering so you can see what you designed.

 

2) When you are happy with the 3D design from Step 1, you must then import this design into a Slicer tool. The tool computes the individual "slices" (layers) for the 3D printer to ooze its gooey plastic onto for each "slice" as the 3D printer head moves up (well, actually the printing bed moves DOWN, as the item gets printed gradually). This slicing is ALSO processor intensive. What you end up with at the end of the computation is a GCODE file, which is like an assembler converting op codes (or c) into machine language. It is the GCODE that tells the 3D printer exactly how to move its motors and what amount of goo to squeeze out.

 

3) Now you take that GCODE and put it into the 3D printer and tell it to do its thing. You need to prep the printer though. This means spreading a thin layer of glue (usually something like those glue sticks for school, for sticking paper) so the 3D plastic filament will stick onto the surface (smooth glass is not particularly sticky). Now you wait 30 minutes to 30 hours or 30 days (LOL) until this object is slowly printed. I'm not kidding about the 30 hours. Maybe 10 hours, for an "average" item.

 

3D printers have come down in price, as have most tech things. It's possible $300 printers will be easy to use but from what I understand, the more affordable ones are tricky and you need to fine tune the temperature at which the plastic filament comes out, etc. For these reasons my printer is not the $300 one but I also don't think you need to spend way more than $1000 nowadays (I got mine a few years back). I have not shopped for any recent 3D printer. I just use mine (from Dremel).

 

The other thing is, you need to check that types of filament the printer uses, and how much it costs, and how good the results are.

 

There are other resin printers that use a plastic solution, which your 3D object gets created and slowly drawn out, like magic. Those would require you to purchase bottles of these resin solutions, and usually this is not a cheap device (or supplies), but the printed object would be less rough compared to the filament process I described above.

[atarialoha]

BTW it might not be necessary to purchase a high end PC/Mac for the design/slicing. There are CLOUD platforms for this, and you can just do everything on the Web, and then download the finished GCODE which you then put into the printer (via a USB stick, for example). Printers will specify which tools/platforms they can work with.

[Bee]

There are 2 main types of 3D printing.  FDM = Ender 3 types of printer, or maybe a Pursa Mini and Resin.  In FDM a filament is melted and driven through a nozzle and stacked into layers.  In Resin a tub has a light source and an aperture under it, the product is adhered to a plate and the build raises out of the tub pulling the layer off the bottom of the tub.  The layers are much finner.  Resin is better at making smaller parts.  FDM lends itself to larger parts.  From my perspective FDM is better suited to a younger audience.  A inexpensive Windows PC is a good choice as a design platform and print controller.  I use a Kano PC for this type of work.

 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/kano-pc-pro-education-edition/8s2fq1hmlk0q?activetab=pivot%3aoverviewtab

 

Printer source:

 

https://www.matterhackers.com/

 

https://www.prusa3d.com/

 

I've never bought a Prusa for 2 reasons, shipping cost & the owner was less than honest about an issue when I asked him about it at a trade show.

 

@bob1200xlPM me if you have any specific questions.  I supported 2 different manufacturers FDM products in the earlier home market and I had a history in the industrial space before the home market existed.

 

Thank you

 

 

 

 

Edited May 20, 2021 by Bee

[amiman99]

I read this book few years ago to get familiar with 3D printing technology before I got my first 3D printer. It's less then $10 shipped for used one on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/Printing-Idiots-Guides-Cameron-Coward/dp/1615647449

Makers Muse on YouTube is pretty good reviewing 3D printers. There are too many printers to choose from from any price range.

https://www.youtube.com/c/MakersMuse/videos

 

[Bee]

Also - 3D Printers use text files to describe the machine movements, some controllers can speak serial 19.2 baud,  so in theory you could possibly spool a serial print to run a 3D printer but it would have no real time feedback.  It's on my to do list when I have free time. 

 

[1200XL M.U.L.E.]

We have two 3D printers. One of them is a Creality Ender mentioned here and the other is a ready-to-go called Anycubic. Both work well. My kids went through many spools printing everything from their own designs to downloads off the web. It's great fun to see them dream up some design and have that design turn into reality. Here's the Anycubic we have.

 

Anycubic i3 Mega 3D Printer – ANYCUBIC 3D Printing

 

Two words of warning, though.

 

First warning, these are hobbyist printers so the components don't have "industrial durability". Parts wear out and they happen to wear out all together. Hot ends gum up. Heating elements under the platform fry. Motors burn out. So, be ready to service the printer. Thankfully parts are easy to get on Amazon and the like. Our Creality printer is starting to go through a second wave of part replacement and we're thinking of simply replacing the whole printer. Maybe one that prints resin. The Anycubic just went through its first wave of part replacements and is running strong.

 

Second warning, run the printer in a garage or in a well ventilated laboratory. Some materials, like ABS, give off unhealthy fumes and odors. Some prints can take 8 - 12 hours and need to run overnight. A dedicated place like a garage could help here.

 

My kids have "low end" Windows 10 computers with 9th generation i3-8300 processors but with decent Nvidia GPUs. They never had any problems running their modelers and slicers but the fans do spin up for sure. I'm sure something could be jigged up to connect an Atari to the printer so the Atari could send discrete control commands. Heck ... we've seen USB adapters that basically connect our serial floppy drives via USB to our PC. Maybe fit your sliced model onto a floppy and have the Atari dump/send the file to the printer layer by layer? I'm not sure how all that would work but it would be very cool!  

[Tickled_Pink]

I have an Ender 3. Setting it up is the hard part. I wasted a lot of plastic trying to get it to print properly before I discovered a few techniques. It depends on how technically savvy and patient your grandson it. If he's neither, then perhaps the Ender 3 isn't a good choice. I don't know if anywhere sells them pre-built as mine was self-assembly. But when you do get it running and printing properly every time, then it's an easy one to use and get into 3D printing with. It's just that initial setup, which can be a frustrating bitch.

[mdivancic]

Everyone has done a good job explaining 3D printing, so I will just move to the opinion phase (mine). I’ve owned five 3D printers over the last six years. Two were complete junk, I’ll skip those. I’ve two best out of the box experience I’ve seen or had were with Lulzbot and Prusa.  Both just work out of the box, no tinkering. My Luzbot has been a workhorse, to the point that I’ve worn it out and have to rebuild it. That being said Luzbot is behind the times with technology and features and cost to much compared to what you can get today.

 

My wife couldn’t be bothered to wait for me to get around to the rebuild so she got a Prusa kit and built her printer over the Mother’s Day weekend. By far the best quality print I’ve seen with a FMD printer. This would be the printer I recommend these days. If your Grandson is technical he may enjoy the kit version.

 

I also have a resin printer, way to much work unless there is a reason to have that level of quality. I print wargame miniatures with mine. 
 

All the terrain on this table is FMD 3D printed:

 

These tanks are printed with my resin printer:

 

And of course I’ve made some stuff for Atari:

[Mr Robot]

I'm just going to leave this here, not my print. This was printed as a single piece on a prusa mk3 with the mmu. Took 86 hours to print.

 

[Gunstar]

13 hours ago, Mr Robot said:

If you are controlling your 3D printer with Octaprint on a raspberry pi, you can install the Cura slicer engine on Octoprint and it will slice any stl files you put on the Pi. Takes a bit of tuning to get a good slicer profile but it might be a solution if someone could write a ChromaCAD to STL converter.

 

That was my next thought, considering processing power, that ChromaCAD files could be converted to STL,

[Mathy]

Hello mdivancic

 

10 hours ago, mdivancic said:

I’ve owned five 3D printers over the last six years. Two were complete junk, I’ll skip those.

 

Maybe it's worth mentioning them, so others know which ones not to buy.

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

[Mathy]

Hello guys

 

What surprises me is that nobody mentioned the ESP32 or Fujinet.  Would these be too slow to handle the calculations?

 

Sincerely

 

Mathy

 

[Mr Robot]

A PiZero isn't powerful enough to keep up with a 3d printer running at 50mm/s so the octoprint people recommend at least a Pi3+. The ESP32 could probably handle the conversion from ChromaCAD/whatever to STL but not the slicing or pushing the gcode to the printer without stuttering

[atarialoha]

On 5/19/2021 at 2:09 PM, bob1200xl said:

I want to get my grandson a 3D printer, which I know little about. What would be a good choice for a 14 year-old? 

 

Can I run one on an 8-bit? Has anyone tried?

 

Bob

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Mr Robot said:

A PiZero isn't powerful enough to keep up with a 3d printer running at 50mm/s so the octoprint people recommend at least a Pi3+. The ESP32 could probably handle the conversion from ChromaCAD/whatever to STL but not the slicing or pushing the gcode to the printer without stuttering

 

I assume the discussion about using the 3D printer with an 8-bit computer, or a SBC or even a Microcontroller, is because some printers must have a connected computer to do the printing.

 

In that case, FYI there are also printers which are standalone (mine is such a type) and it is completely independent of a computer. You just give it the GCODE file, whether by a USB memory drive, or even via the Internet (it has its own Ethernet port), the latter being controlled by the Dremel cloud service (which also slices). I primarily use it disconnected from the Internet (although it does its own firmware updating).

 

I use an analogy of 3D printers to laser printers to describe the current situation of 3D printing.

 

For laser printers, now that we are about 40 years since they first began to be used (I used one in the 1980s at my part-time job after school, helping with office paperwork, and using the cash to buy Atari stuff), the laser printers are very mature. You just plug and play. When the toner is out, you just stick in a new one.

 

For 3D printers, the analogous situation would be:

 

You need to make sure you have the right word processor software on your computer

You need to make sure you buy the right type of paper or the printer could jam

You need to make sure you have the right toner, and be in the right room temperature, or the toner could gum up and you would have to open the printer and remove all the gunk

The toner is not cheap and if you use cheap toner, or cheap paper, the above becomes more complicated

Your laser printer might not print in exactly the same fonts as other people's

You might need to open up and repair and replace parts of your laser printer from time to time

Some laser printers will be easier to operate than others and have fewer of the above problems

 

So definitely it is not a plug and play situation, but it is very rewarding and is perfect for someone who likes to tinker

You can even do a kind of meta-universe thing and print parts to improve your own 3D printer, or print a new 3D printer with your 3D printer (plus buy metal parts and gears).

 

Here are some great and fun examples

 

 

 

[atarialoha]

Also this

 

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1237748

[MisterOz]

I own a Creality CR-10, two Ender 3's, three Prusa MK3's (one real and two scratch built Bears) and a Railcore. Like others have said, pros for the Ender are they're dirt cheap, but quality can be very hit or miss and typically will require a bit more fiddling, adjusting, etc. If you're a tinkerer like me and just love to learn this hobby inside and out, it's not really an issue. For a complete newbie, the Prusa is usually considered lowest risk, especially from a quality and product support aspect - both top notch. While no 3D printer will ever truly be an 'appliance', the Prusa machines probably come closest. Of course, you pay a lot more for that. My Prusa's are so dialed in, I usually never even babysit the job after I start it like I do with my creality based machines. Having said all that, you can achieve beautiful prints with any of them with enough tuning and tweaking. Especially once you learn how to calibrate and tune all the various areas of this hobby. Lot of great youtube resources for learning too. 

 

 

[Bee]

Without getting into too much tech detail, I can do 90% of my FDM printing on this:

 

https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=21666&gclid=Cj0KCQjwkZiFBhD9ARIsAGxFX8Avanpr-l7pJMgCporQz0CI-fVG2XFQxaIy3ubt-NKwm2HGy3yBndYaApnbEALw_wcB

 

Also a nice entry printer.  Delta printers are a diffrent branch of printing.  This, pull it out plug it in, pretty much pain free on the Hardware side.

 

Thank you

[Quiver]

4 hours ago, Mr Robot said:

A PiZero isn't powerful enough to keep up with a 3d printer running at 50mm/s so the octoprint people recommend at least a Pi3+. The ESP32 could probably handle the conversion from ChromaCAD/whatever to STL but not the slicing or pushing the gcode to the printer without stuttering

But apparently the esp32 is fast enough to run the g-code as a cnc/3d printer controller.

https://github.com/MitchBradley/Esp32PrinterController

 

https://github.com/bdring/Grbl_ESP32_MPCNC_Controller

[mdivancic]

14 hours ago, Mathy said:

Maybe it's worth mentioning them, so others know which ones not to buy.

Both printers are no longer available thank god!
 

M3D still makes printers but I wouldn’t buy one. There’s was my first printer and I got it cheap through the 

Kickstarter several years ago. It got me started at a good price, enough where I learned it was something I wanted to do.
 

3D Systems no longer makes consumer grade units.

[mdivancic]

14 hours ago, Mathy said:

What surprises me is that nobody mentioned the ESP32 or Fujinet.  Would these be too slow to handle the calculations?

Why would you want to? 3D printer, as @MisterOz points out, are not yet appliance level. Even the best need calibration and maintenance. Unless you have a burning desire to prove your Atari can do it it’s just adding another layer of difficulty to something that already takes considerable time and effort.

 

As many of the gaming friend I know point out, 3D printing is a whole new hobby. Many people don’t want to take time away from their current activities to get into this.