There is a lot of talk on the forum about 3D printers. If a person wanted to build their own, similar to the Xcarve situation, what type would you recommend building?
For Christmas I picked up an XYZ Da Vinci Jr 1.0 for $225. Does anyone else on the forum have this same model?
I figured might as well since it will cost more to build a 3D printer than this one cost and at least I can get my feet wet with it in the meantime. It is a little limited but I have had good success with it so far.
I have an Ord Hadron 3d printer and I’m happy with it (not at the moment as it has a dead Arduino).
It’s made using Makerslide so fits in well with the X-Carve 
It wasn’t that expensive but did take a bit of tweaking to get printing correctly.
I am currently in the process of making a 3D printer. Having a few blah moments. But it’s fun so far.
I started building a Prusa i3, but shelved it when I ran into some pulley and bearing-sourcing issues. I then saw the XYZ DaVinci 1.0A for $399 on Amazon and grabbed it. It’s been working well.
I built a MendelMax 2 a couple of years ago back when it was in beta. It’s been modded over time, and runs like a champ. Pretty much hit print and check on it every few hours to make sure nothing crazy has happened. I’ve ran quite a few 20+ hours jobs. It has a pretty large printing area (220 mm X, 280 mm Y, 195 mm Z) about the size of normal 8x10 sheet of paper, so it can handle fairly large prints. I’ve made gifts, 3D printer and Shapeoko parts, and various other things around the house. It’s great at making complex precise parts rather than trying to whittle something with a knife and Dremel.
Another XYZ Davinci 1.0A owner here. I’ve had mine for a little over a year now and have been very happy with it. Recently I made the switch to Hatchbox filament and have been printing stuff like crazy. I got a resetter off of ebay that gave me some ugly prints, but I replaced the Arduino code and now it prints like a champ.
Build an Hephestos Prusa i3 - works nicely - jjust changed to another firmware Repetier Firmware
Has been running for a year without any issues - update with a heatbed and something similiar to Buildtak print surface just from BQ
Cheers
