Do you know any 3d printer companies that didn’t trademark or register their name / logo? The point of open source isn’t hostility to IP, it is investing in building shared IP so that everyone benefits. MBI contributes 95% of their engineering to open projects. Being 5% proprietary doesn’t make them “closed”. Reserve that claim for companies like Cubify.
Can we talk about 3d printers now?
I’m currently using an Ultimaker and love it. but I had great prints on a Cupcake, Thing-o-matic, and it’s easy to use an UP!. Sort of depends on your budget. Pick the “best” in that range. Checking here first was a good first step. Jumping and learning the software is key. Skipping calibration and learning leads to shitty prints. period. Building a printer teaches you even more.
@Gareth_Robins I’m not saying all open source 3d printers or even kits for 3d printers are bad but you do seem to get what you pay for and I didnt pay that much so it required a lot of effort. I would expect most OS printers to require a bit of effort to get going though probably not quite as much as I ended up putting in.
A lot of the printers that exist now didn’t when I started looking at this and the prusa mendel seems to have changed a fair amount over the last year too. IIRC the main choice was makerbot, ultimaker or reprap at the time.
I would decide what you really want to use a 3d printer for. I wanted to create custom enclosures for electronics so I didnt care what it looked like as long as it stuck together, I didn’t need colours, didn’t need speed for something I’ll print once or twice, It needed to be relatively cheap as I’d just been on unpaid leave for 4 months and I wanted a project to work on and upgrade over time. The reprap project seemed like the best fit.
I also had several issues early on due to shoddy PLA suppliers in the UK. I’ve found iron filings, gravel, wood chips and more in my filament. I’ve also had filament that changes from bendy to brittle in the space of about 10cm and snaps inside the extruder. It’s partly my fault for buying cheap plastic on ebay. I’ve definitely seen an improvement in plastic quality over the last year.
I think we’re mixing up OSHW and DIY; there are several of assembled, tested off-the-shelf printers that are open-source.
Fair point. I hadn’t checked the market properly for a long time and hadn’t realised that you can get assembled open source ones.