Comment on California just passed a law forcing mandatory DRM in 3D printers

• ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  mine the older 2.1 design and scratch built. Hard to say because a lot of parts were grabbed from other projects

  If I were starting today I’d just get a kit. The LDO kit is the standard and high quality but pricier.~1500 for 350mm. There’s the formbot kit as well, much cheaper (~800 for 350mm) but not as nice quality wise. Never used one of these kits but that’s the general sentiment on the forums now. West3d also has a kit builder, this is def the most expensive option but if you plan to install a bunch of mods this can save you some money buy bundling them at the beginning (but honestly if you’ve never built one before I’d start with the vanilla build)

  Time wise it’s not too bad, sort of. I would say if you’re a tinkerer type person you could build it in a weekend, especially with a kit. However, you may spend quite a bit more time calibrating everything. Like the time from a box of shit to actually printing isn’t terrible, but the time to getting a beautiful dimensionally accurate print is potentially a bit more involved, especially before you get it printing fast (if you pursue such a thing)

  That’s honestly the primary reason Bambu is destroying in terms of sales right now (plus aggressive marketing). They are shit bc they are consumer hostile, but they do make good equipment. You can get a solid print right from the first startup. You can with voron too tbf but it’s like comparing an iphone to desktop Linux: the former is easier to setup and has a lot of slick features for use, the latter can replicate almost all of them but takes a bit more time to get going (and because it’s open design can be taken much further once you get the hang of it, vorons can get amazing quality at incredibly fast speeds though tbf some of those mods to get truly fast can be pricy)

  Alternatively look on their discord or somewhere like Craigslist/facebook marketplace. I see people sell LDO builds for like 6-900 a lot. Resale is tough because once built it’s a nightmare to ship so they drop value like crazy and then you can (hopefully) get one that’s at least printing decently

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  • Croquette@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I got gifted a Bambu P1S a few years ago, but customization is pretty limited.

    I like the idea of the Voron and it’s upgradability but the initial time investment was really high for me.

    Thanks for sharing your information. I am a tinkering person, so I don’t feel lost when doing projects like that, but since I am in Canada, sourcing parts was terrible when I looked a few years ago. The LDO kits seem pricy, but I will look for alternatives. But at least, the option’s there.

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    • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      FWIW from what I’ve read the formbot kit seems to be pretty serviceable, almost 50% less and is still pretty good, though by most accounts I’ve seen the LDO kit is objectively better (for a significant premium)

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      • Croquette@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        The nice thing is that I can upgrade along the way, so even taking the formlab kit, I can slowly upgrade the parts if I want to.

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