3D Printer recommendation

[Peter Wang]

I will be requesting a 3D printer for an assistive technology lab I'm setting up in my school district.  I intend to use it at least for printing keyguards for iPads.  These are essentially just sheets of plastic with holes cut out that correspond to buttons shown on an app we configure for special education students who need assistance communicating.  These keyguards help guide their fingers for pressing screen buttons.  

Since there are several different apps, and each has a large number of possible button grids, and each student may need a different sized hole (e.g., entire button exposed down to just a small circle), this would be a perfect use for 3D printing.  

I am looking for a recommendation for a 3D printer that would be good for this application.  

My personal experience is with a Creality Ender 3, and a Prusa i3 MK3S+.  I leery of choosing Creality, because I think of their machines as for hobbyists that would require too much tweaking (I've probably spent more time modifying my Ender 3 than I have actually using it to print).  I love the Prusa because it just works.  For my purposes and environment; however, I think both of these would be too slow, so I am leaning towards a CoreXY machine because of the speed.  

Does anyone have experience with any CoreXY machines and can comment on how they might work for my need?

Pete

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[Jesse D Robinson]

Hi Peter,

I cannot speak highly enough of the Bambu Labs series of printers.   We own six Bambu X1Cs with the AMS and six of the Bambu A1 minis.   They are workhorses.....are very easy to use, very robust with very little issues, and when and if you have to repair them very inexpensive.  Feel free to poke me offline if you want more information.

Jesse

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[Brian Bicknell]

Second Bambu labs. We have four X1 Carbons and they have changed my mind on 3D printing in the educational space. Good luck!

Brian Bicknell  Director of Engineering and Design  Pronouns: he/him/his  br...@synapseschool.org | 650.294.4570 Educating a Community of Change Makers  www.synapseschool.org

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[Chris McLaughlin]

I second Jesse on the Bambu X1C. They're amazing. Great results, easy to use.

Chris

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[Joseph Chiu (Toybuilder)]

If your main goal is cutting keyguards on flat sheets, you might be better served with a laser cutter or a drag-knife cutter if thinner materials are okay -- they will be much faster and possibly less expensive for the feedstock.

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[Chris Bruce]

Thanks for the input on the Bambu machines.  Is it possible to run them sneakernet-only?  We can’t plug anything into the school network.  Right now we are using my Prusa a bunch of Ender 3’s, but I would love to try the Bambu.

-Chris

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[Jacob Kordeleski]

The A1 series takes a micro SD and offers optional network printing, either bounced through the cloud or exclusively on your network.

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From: k-12-f...@googlegroups.com <k-12-f...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chris Bruce <cjbr...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 17, 2024 3:20:17 PM
To: K-12 Fab Labs and Makerspaces <k-12-f...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [k-12-fablabs] 3D Printer recommendation

 

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[Justin M Schmidt]

Hi Chris, Pete, all - 

You can sneakernet and print off a microSD from the printer's control panel. I'm not sure if you can USB directly to it and drive it from a slicer/pronterface/etc.

When you say you can't "plug in" do you mean only ethernet? Can you connect devices to Wi-Fi? It works fine over Wi-Fi and doesn't need to be discoverable/etc as it works over the internet and not through a local connection.

 As far as printing FAST goes, you want to play around with your slicer settings and home in on what will work best for the geometry you're trying to print. I find just hitting "ludicrous speed" on the control panel yields inconsistent results. (I can get a great Benchy if I'm lucky, but I usually have layer adhesion issues on larger prints.)

Lastly, on using a laser cutter or a drag knife (cricut, etc) instead of 3D printing... I've made and used guides for students with iPad AACs. A laser cutter could make this work faster and easier, but at greater expense. For my students, a thin guide would not have met their needs – that could rule out using a cricut for you (but that would be cool for prototyping fits!) 3D printing also opens up being able to bevel or soften the edges, play with different topologies and textures, create designs that clip onto a device, etc.

Justin Schmidt
Instructor

K-12 Maker Lab | MIT Edgerton Center

Email | LinkedIn

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Subject: Re: [k-12-fablabs] 3D Printer recommendation

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[Castle Kim]

My personal recommendation (and personal pick) would be Prusa and Bambu. 

Prusa is just a rock solid machine. They have an amazing history and support for their printers. I appreciate how older machines can be upgraded (hardware and software) to match their continued development. Also, with their recent acquisition of Printed Solid in the US, they now have an official US warehouse and distributor, so you can get the support, parts, and order easier and quicker. As you have mentioned Prusa allows the tinkering capability which depending on your need is a plus or a minus. You are able to tinker, fix, and upgrade parts (with third party parts) as needed and it gives longevity to the machine. However, I fully understand that is a commitment of time that is takes you away from other work that you could be doing. 

On the other hand Bambu is a rock solid out of the box printer. Print speed and quality is phenomenal. Unless you are sending jobs with UBS flash drives, They get connected to the Bambu Cloud service, so if you are doing any remote or networked prints the models gets saved on their cloud system. So for cases with copyright, patent-prototype, or confidentiality models it could be a problem. Also, you can't really tinker the parts of bambu like you can with prusa. They are very robust and they provide good service to replace the parts, but they do go with the model of semi-proprietary model on their parts. With the network question, as I mentioned most of Bambu models gets connected to the Bambu Cloud, except for their most recent model. Bambu X1E. This printer is targeted for private companies, research facilities, and/or potentially academic settings. The printer itself is very similar to X1 Carbon, but has few updated features. One of them being that it can be connected within a closed network system, so it doesn't need to be connected to the Bambu Cloud. 

Hopefully that helps! 

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[Castle Kim]

Also did you check the spec for print speed for the new Prusa MK4S? The model has a faster print speed than its previous model. I think the Bambu still might be faster, but worth checking its specs since print seed is an important aspect for your needs. 

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[Melissa Anthony]

PrusaXL would be my recommendation for a 3D printer because of the speed and because it just works.

However, if you are going for speed and you're just making a sheet of plastic with holes cut out, you can't beat the speed of a laser cutter.

I'm curious if anyone uses something akin to a vinyl cutter for something like this.

On Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 2:36 PM Peter Wang <pw...@fusdk12.net> wrote:

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[Peter Wang]

Thanks for all the feedback on the Bambu.  It looks like you're all using the  X1-Carbon, which was one of the ones I was eyeing, but the price may be a challenge.  I saw that their P1S, including the Automatic Material System is a lot less than the X1, so I'll probably request one of those instead.

@Joseph - thanks for the cutter idea.  Those flat keyguards are just my initial use (and it makes for a great justification because buying a keyguard costs nearly $100, and it takes several weeks to get).  I was also thinking of using them to make custom pencil grips using TPU/TPE, but I'd have to identify a suitable mold making substance (maybe impression foam), and rig up something for 3D scanning.  I'm also looking at a laser engraving attachment to etch barcodes into our iPads (the kids peel off labels).

[Tracy Haswell]

Yes, Bambu! 

Get Outlook for iOS

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Subject: Re: [k-12-fablabs] 3D Printer recommendation

 

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[Michelle Scilingo]

We also went with Bambus

We also have Makerbot, Upmini, Prusa, Flashforge, and Ender Pros.

Bambu, Prusas and Flashforge Creator Pro 2 has been pretty consistent and good.

:D 

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Michelle Scilingo