Notifications
Clear all

First time owner of a 3D Printer  

  RSS
Kaan
 Kaan
(@kaan)
Active Member
First time owner of a 3D Printer

Hello, yesterday I purchased the Prusa i3 MK2S kit and hopefully it will arrive in 2-3 weeks.

I'm trying to find out if I did the right thing by buying the kit instead of the assembled version.

Is it easy to build the 3D Printer for a new user?

I have good experience on building racing drones with high quality. I know it's not the same thing with a printer but it may give you an idea about my proficiency.

Do you think I'll be fine doing it?

Posted : 05/08/2017 10:05 pm
AJS
 AJS
(@ajs)
Noble Member
Re: First time owner of a 3D Printer

It is a very easy and enjoyable build, with step by step instructions. Having built it, you will be in a much better place to fix it.

I highly recommend the kit vs the pre-built. I don't think the pre-built is as turn-key as people expect, and the kit teaches you how it works, so you are more likely to jump right in to work on it.

Read these forums to prevent frustration as you start out.

Any advices given are offered in good faith. It is your responsibility to ensure that by following my advice you do not suffer or cause injury, damage or loss. If you solve your problem, please post the solution…

Posted : 05/08/2017 10:25 pm
Bill
 Bill
(@bill-3)
Estimable Member
Re: First time owner of a 3D Printer

What aaron said!

I was much better prepared to diagnose problems and fix them having a full understanding of how everything works and where it is located having built the printer myself.

Posted : 06/08/2017 6:07 am
JeffJordan
(@jeffjordan)
Member Moderator
Re: First time owner of a 3D Printer

yeah, I would always recommend to choose the kit as well.

first: it's fun to build.
second: you'll learn a lot about the printer and how everything acts together.
third: you'll save a few bucks.

printing 3d stuff is not an "out of the box" job as printing a sheet of paper with your inkjet or laser printer.
it's a haptic, mechanical procedure where you have to consider a lot of environmental conditions (temperature, clean print surface, air draught) and if you've build the printer yourself, you have a better understanding how to fix things... and how to follow some advice that you'll find at this forum.
and not to forget: the printer sometimes needs some maintenance, so it's good to know which screw to turn in case of a loose pulley for example.

until your kit arrives, parse this forum for helpful information (note the special prusa use of the orientation for the lcd ribbon cables), you'll find a lot of them.
as I always say: "you only learn by mistakes... but you don't need to do them by yourself".

dem inscheniör is' nix zu schwör...

Posted : 06/08/2017 8:51 am
Kaan
 Kaan
(@kaan)
Active Member
Topic starter answered:
Re: First time owner of a 3D Printer

Thank you all for your help. I'm glad I bought the kit. I like building stuff by myself. I remember it took me about 4 months to build my first drone. Not the building part but making research and learning part. And at the end I could build a real racing drone that any FPV racer could win a race with it 🙂

So giving enough time to learn is the most important key I guess. Now I'm not familiar to some words that used here in the forum. I need to read a glossary of the parts that are used in 3D printer. Otherwise it may be difficult to pick threads on this forum to read which I can understand what you guys are talking about 🙂

I know it's a new technology for home users but I'm going to ask; is there a good read or a good book that you suggest me to read? I'm looking for something which will teach me a lot of things after I read the book about 3D printing. I also need to learn something about the designing or let's say the software part. Never had an experience on drawing a 3D object on any CAD software.

Once more than you very much guys!

Posted : 06/08/2017 9:44 pm
AJS
 AJS
(@ajs)
Noble Member
Re: First time owner of a 3D Printer

Like any other hobby, you will pick up the lingo quickly. There is no magic to it, just words for things. Building your kit will introduce you to those parts in an easy way.

As far as CAD goes, if you have any programming language background, I can't recommend OpenSCAD enough. While you wait for your printer, it would be worth going through some of those tutorials/lessons.

Others have good luck with TinkerCAD, SolidWorks, Blender, SketchUp, ...

MeshMixer is worth learning too.

Any advices given are offered in good faith. It is your responsibility to ensure that by following my advice you do not suffer or cause injury, damage or loss. If you solve your problem, please post the solution…

Posted : 06/08/2017 10:23 pm
Kaan
 Kaan
(@kaan)
Active Member
Topic starter answered:
Re: First time owner of a 3D Printer

Thank you Aaron. I'll check the apps you suggested. I have a coding background but it's not very deep. I checked the OpenSCAD and it doesn't seem very complicated. But I think I like visual creations better than coding. Even when I used to create web pages, it was useful to know the code part but I always designed the pages visually. That's why I may give it a try to TinkerCAD or the others maybe...

Thank you very much for your help.

Take care.

Posted : 07/08/2017 8:50 am
Share: