My son is about ready for his first printer. His school is running Cetus MK3 printers, he has a class using them, and his teacher has recommended this printer. He also has an educational seat of Fusion 360.
I’m proficient with Mastercam and hand written/modified G-code. I can help him with CAD no problem. Alignment, assembly, adjustment, and backlash are second nature for me. Have a little better than layman’s understanding of printers. (Lusted over the Markforged printer that could do continuous carbon fiber.)
Eventually, will be building my own shop and hope my son might work with me. Hope to include printing, especially in metal.
I’ve seen some of the flap about Bambu and them closing up the software tool chain. I would like to avoid that sort of thing, for now, openness is better.
Top of my budget is around $500, with $200 probably being better.
Usable prints for tooling/spacers/repairs would be a bonus as would being able to print UV resistant plastic.
My goal for him is to get gud at modelling and get a feel for computer controlled movement. Another goal, harder to describe, is him finding the joy in mechanical tinkering and producing an idea made physical.
Thank you much! What do?
I learned on FreeCAD and find it super intuitive now. There were frustrations at first, but I learned proper design with a thorough understanding of the TNI in all CAD as a result. Whatever a person starts on becomes a dependency especially with proprietary where user dependency is part of the design.
I have trouble with Blender because of the hotkey memorization required, but I can put down FreeCAD for months and return with no decay in skills. You’re welcome to disagree. That is just my experience.
I started with Surfcam then MasterCAM, done some TEBIS, Fusion 360, AutoCAD, Eagle, Solidworks, and probably some others. I’ve even used inkscape and GIMP to cleanup and convert images into models for measurements and reverse engineering.
I have never had the trouble I have with FreeCAD. Have seen others complain about it as well.