Well, It was only tme before I purchased one. So I did. I was able to obtain an XYZ printer from craigs list for cheap. Well as all know there had to be a reason to do this. I needed a few items that I didn't feel like paying $200 to replace, one being a stand for a Star Trek 1701 ship. The ship was fine, but the stand broke. Not someting I could just order. The second was I needed two verical light saber holders for my "man cave movie room" (pics later). To order those online, $20.00 + shipping each. Since this was only a few reasons, I decided to go ahead and make the plung.

Now I will say the first printer an XYZ Divinci 1.0 it's self is not bad. It does use pre-made cartridges, at $30.00 for 200m of plastic. I can say there are many sites that can show you how to bypass this, but I will not. For what you pay is what you get in this case. Maybe they will open it in the future but for now..... The cost is rather ok for what you are geting, plus all the setting for temps are on the chip with no way for you to change it unless you do the "hacking". Again this may void your warranty. I will say though, that their customer service from my expericance sucks. I won't bore you with details.

After my experice with the XYZ printer, and it's small build size, I decided to opt for something larger. I ordered a CR-10-S4 from www.tinymachines.com This was a great place to work with from the order to replacement parts and even if something broke. I cannot recomend them enough. The investment was rather large, but figured I only live once. This is a very modular printer. I suggest that you look online at the mods you can print to make things better and extend the life of you printer. One thing I do recoment with this printer is order a set of extension cables. This will allow you to move the box from the printer and not stretch your cables. I may do a seperate page on Mods for my printers at a later time but for now I will just give the advice here. Again I LOVE THIS PRINTER

While at a bargin discount store, I was going through the "brown boxes" of half way marked items. One was labled 3d Printer. ($100) Wow! So I bought it. It wound up being a Monoprice Mini v1. I had lots of trouble with this after the heating bed stopped working. Aparently you cannot order or get replacement parts for these. So I modded it with a new print head, and other things. Still haven't worked this one out yet. It did work for a few month though. I did get my money out of it. Still I would NOT recomend this one. UPDATE ***** 5/18/19 ***** After alot of issues, I found a replacement board for $50, quite the investment on a crap printer. However, this changed once I got the new board. NO MORE ISSUES! It is now a great printer for small, high resolution prints. I do mean small because of the build volume.

I purchased an easy to mod printer, an ANET A8. Now, this is a clone printer. That just means its a bunch of random parts put together in a kit that prints. It was only $100 from a guy on Craigs list. By now the smaller MonoPrice was toast anyway so I needed something as a backup. After reading about the Mods for this printer, most of which you can print on the printer. I started that process. I can say there were saftey concerns after reading several things on these kit printer. Including but not limited to FIRE! There was another small investment that had to be made to make it "safe" to leave running when I was not home. Again no details here maybe on another page / section later. I will say this printer is still not the greatest even after the upgrades but I don't give up... just push off until I can fix it and make it better.

I am addicted to printers and printing. I have purchased yet another printer. This time I went with a known maker I can trust. I will say that Creality make a damn good printer and they are awsome to work on. I purchased a Crealiy Ender3. I got a good deal on WOOT! At this point I am running out of room in my house for these things. I will say, I have 5 and use 4. Pictures are below somewhere, in the list of things I have printed of the printers as well.

One last thing. I heard of this thing called OctoPrint/OctoPi. It sounded crazy and you needed a PI in order to use it. (I had one) This thing is awsome once you learn how to setup especially for multiple printers. I can now print "wireless" to each printer, and it draws so much less power than a PC it doesn't kill the UPS when the power goes off. As a side note, I did upgrade the firmware on all my printers. (Don't ask it was hell) This was in an effort to make them all as safe as possiable.

Below are some examples of things I have printed. You can search for them on the internet and find them, unless the author was sued (it happens), however if you see one you like I have printed, try www.thingiverse.com Please remember I do not own, or have any rights to the templates.

They belong to the authors. Click pictrues for larger views. Note these are things I have made, some trial and error here. I have read alot since making these, I willl say for "smooting" I suggest ABS instead of PLA, but PLA you can get transparent colors. Many people will say you can smooth PLA with Actone (INCORRECT). ABS works great with Actone and is cheap. I will be making some COSPLAY and Movie Props for myself or friends. Depending on how well this goes, I may create some subpages on 3D printing materials, printers, upgrades, etc. Just keep looking out for changes. But for now enjoy the items I have printed and finished. I may do a "in progress" section under projects later so you can see a start to finish of one of these items. If you have questions please use the contacts button or the link at bottom with my email.