If you want inexpensive but good quality and compact, check out the Monoprice
Select Mini. (AKA Malyan M200) There's a Facebook group for it with over 5,000
members, many of which have two or more of the printers.
It comes fully assembled out of the box, mostly steel construction and weighs
over 16 pounds. There's a large number of mods for it posted to the Facebook
group and thingiverse, most of them printable on the printer.
Price? Well below $200 USD
Early units suffered from really dodgy power supplies that would just up and
die, or in a few cases had components blow up. The current supply seems to be
better quality but many owners still opt to replace it, often with a simple
hack to a Xbox 360 brick, the grey ones for the white Xbox.
Mine has way more than paid for itself. I printed and sold some replacement
parts for Brother knitting machines.
Another job I used it for was a one-off, making some knobs for an antique car.
I designed and printed them, then filled with urethane resin. Shipped them to
the restoration shop which primed,filled and finish painted the outsides. I got
$500 for that and the turnaround was far faster than making smooth finished
prototypes, making silicone molds then casting solid urethane knobs. I also
designed and printed fixtures to hold metal rods and bolts in the knobs for
forming mounting holes in the resin, and made clamping blocks to hold the knobs
in a vise for drilling the holes out to finished size.
Being able to design your own 3D items is the core thing for 3D printers. If
you just need a few things made, it's easier and cheaper to pay someone else to
print them.
Here's the things I've released publicly. A couple are modifications of other
people's things.http://www.thingiverse.com/Galane/designs
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