Hey guys did you see the new Da Vinci Junior. The printer it self doesn’t seem to be that bad… especially for the price of $299… What do you guys think about the Da Vinci series of printers?
http://thetechwaynews.com/2015/01/06/is-the-da-vinci-junior-3d-printer-the-most-affordable-good-3d-printer-yet/
As long as it’s easy to rip out the electronics and rewire something else in there so you’re not fussing with chipped filament, they produce pretty good printers from what I’ve been told. The hacks available for their other printer are what made it worth buying in the first place.
But can it print PLA?
Isn’t it all proprietary by default?
@ThantiK Where have you heard that the hardware is good? The prints that they brought with them to display at NY Maker Faire looked worse than my failed prints from 5 years ago.
Like I mentioned though, “from what I’ve been told”. Maybe the people who were telling me didn’t have a fucking clue. Going back and looking at the output from that thing, you’re right…holy fuck. It’s bad.
I’ve always kinda assumed that their machines are capable of decent prints and I’ve also heard folks claiming to get good prints from the hacked machines. That said, I’ve also seen their “official” sample prints at Inside 3d Printing (NY) and MakerFaire (NY) and been flat shocked that a.) the prints were as bad as they were and b.) they were willing to show them. I’d like to see examples of good prints from these machines.
Well, it could just be that their proprietary firmware and slicer are unimaginably crappy. OTOH, it could just be that anyone who is willing to buy a printer, tear its brain out, and transplant a new one in is going to go thought some other significant tuning and upgrades along the way.
I have the DaVinci and have not hacked it at all. With the settings on the best quality and slowest speed I’m rather impressed with the output but I only have my own prints to really compare to. I’ve seen prints on a 20 micron and those where phenomenal but the DaVinci 1 can only do 100 so that is not a good comparison. I do plan on hacking it later but for now it just works for what i need it for. I have read claims of better results by just using a different slicer but have not tried. The filament hack is also a must but I’ve just been doing small things with the various colours I have. See my albums for some things I’ve printed.
The prints I saw in person were curiously bad. The question here is will people who just want to play settle for proprietary filament and kinda bad prints at best?
What does the filament cost?
There is a bit of a cultural miss I think. It feels like they are pedaling a cheap knock off. Like settling for a cheap iPhone knock off. I’ll visit their booth tomorrow to check it out.
I’m not worried about competing on quality or value. I am worried that any cheap machine will move the needle, leaving customers to expect cheaper prices and leaving them disappointed with 3d printing in general.
The $499 machine is ridiculously large. I wonder if this one feels big too.
I’ll give feedback tomorrow
Brook
The filament costs $28 per 600g (250m I think) from Amazon @Brook_Drumm
My opinion is for the price I got it and ease of use it’s worth it but again I have little to compare to. At this time I am settling for quality as it’s a reliable machine so far. I’m still having fun and learning to design and hope to one day build my own better one using this one.
@Ruald_Andreae Awesome, thanks! Without looking at them too close (I’m on my phablet) I’d say these look on par with what I saw at the XYZ booths. I’m sure some improvement could be made with just better or better-dialed-in slicing but I lack the expertise to say much of the apparent inconsistency is probably hardware issues. Thanks very much for sharing these!
While aiming for perfection is sometimes a worthwhile goal, ‘good enough’ is more realistic. I have a Da Vinci 1.0 and it is ‘good enough’ for hobby work and prototyping. It works out-of-the-box and frankly, who cares that the filament costs a bit more? There is a convenience factor here too. It’s only money after all. If we all worried about saving on consumables, who would ever buy a sports car?
If you are primarily interested in the end result as opposed to the process of getting there, the Da Vinci 1.0 is just fine.
@John_Penney , the problem with that statement is when your definition of “good enough” isn’t good enough for serious designers. I regularly design things to about 0.2mm tolerances. Just the Z wobble alone on that thing would screw that up terribly. So not only would I be not getting the quality that comes out of…well…basically any RepRap/Printrbot/Ultimaker/Bukobot, I’m also paying more for filament. I may have saved $50-100 in the short term, but it’s going to cost me in the amount of workable parts that come out of it. Especially when you start talking about PLA sand casting into aluminum!
@ThantiK that’s fair enough. I thought I would print an ‘Aria’ full size at the highest quality the Da Vinci can manage. It started slicing at 3:45 this morning, it’s still slicing at 7:30 am. I’m assuming it will start printing at some point…
The intention was to photograph the result at high resolution close-up and post those images so others such as yourself can judge the result and provide some feedback. I think it would be fair to assume that those of us buying and using Da Vinci printers are first-time users with no standard to judge against. I suspect I have the only working 3d printer in the town I live in (Blenheim, New Zealand).
1.30pm and it is still slicing…
What did they do, start with skeinforge and make it slower?
@ThantiK I don’t think you are in touch with the demographic XYZ is aiming for. If you’ve been on the show floor the last couple of days you see that the reaction to the low end machines, even with filament lock in is positive. XYZ has big backing, marketing and distribution and that’s what it takes for a consumer product. I wouldn’t get one but these are the exact types of machines people will buy that are more interested in printing than learning how to build a printer. XYZ is operating on a whole different scale than the manufacturers you mentioned and for a mass market product that’s required.
One thing I noticed on the floor is that the smaller FDM process machines are being driven to the entry level with larger FDM machines and the first round or so of SLA machines taking hold.