EDIT:
Thank you to everyone who offered their advice and feedback. After a lot of thinking and web surfing and a few dozen online reviews and tutorials i decided to go with a Prusa i3. Found a local shop selling it with a bunch of upgrades and once i get the hang of it i’ll be upgrading it to a Mega Prusa i3 and an enclosed heated chamber.
Looking forward to joining the 3d printing community sometime this or next week.
Original:
Hello. I’ve been thinking of getting a 3d printer for some time now and i’ll have the money soon. The main reason is for personal use with a possibility of a small side business. Since i like doing all kinds of tech things i will most likely look into upgrading to different materials, hot ends and other such things.
After looking around i seem to have narrowed it down to 2 possible candidates.
The Flashforge Creator Pro or the Prusa i3.
The creator pro comes with a few extra things like an enclosed chamber (which i’ve heard is very usefull for ABS and is not something you can easily make for a printer without one) and dual extruder but has a smaller build volume and is more expensive.
The i3 is basic but very cheap and i could buy upgrade parts for it with the leftover money and has quite a bit bigger build volume and can be extended for an even bigger one.
Since i don’t know that much about 3d printers i have to ask how far can printers be upgraded? Can motors be replaced for better ones for better precision? Can you upgrade anything to allow for a bigger resolution? What about more extruders? (was thinking of going for 2 diamond hot ends with 6 colors eventually). Can the creator pro be upgraded as much as the i3? Is an enclosed chamber that much of a big deal? How hard is it to change the coding (i am a programmer by trade and would not be opposed to learning) and how much would the main board need to be changed to acomodate for new code or other custom features like new materials, colors and others?
Would appreciate any input or other printer suggestions but no closed hardware/software printers or ones that used proprietary materials.
5 Likes
Hi, I own 3 Prusa I3’s, Zortrax M200, Deltasine Redback2, Kossel Mini, Wilson & Flashforge Creator Pro.
In my opinion if you have the dollars, I would definitely buy a Flashforge, best out of the box printer I have seen, you have to put a couple of things together as they are packed very well.
My concern with the creator pro is that because of the box it would be very hard to upgrade. Seeing so few post or videos of people upgrading one made me start thinking about the prusa i3 in the first place. Can you share any insight into upgrades and or extensions on the creator pro? is it even possible to extend the print volume due to the box?
Only upgrades I have done to the Forge is Active Cooling Fans and Flex extruders, so I can do flex, not sure if the new Forges have these pre fitted.
Obviously you cannot upgrade out of the limits of the box, so yes, limited.
Prusa’s are fantastic if you DIY you learn a lot along the way, and it does not take long to build one at all.
The Picture I uploaded was the very first print from a new Prusa I3 I had just built.
And if you want to build a machine you can extend, I would go the Wilson, the Wilson will go to 400x200x200
http://reprap.org/wiki/Wilson
Check the upgrade Video here
There are tons of upgrades you can print yourself at Thingiverse for the I3’s and Wilson’s
1 Like
Invize
5
The possibility for upgrades depends on the printer. For higher precision it probably wouldn’t be the motors you’d want to upgrade, but rather the guides, bearings, belts, gears and frame.
I own a FlashForge Creator Pro, but I haven’t tried any other printer so I can’t compare. Having said that I must say I’m very happy with the FlashForge. The machine itself is very sturdy and made of metal. It prints well and the print bed has a very good surface material (a plastic mat similar to painters tape but more durable) that works great for both PLA and ABS. It can’t be upgraded much though, but apart from maybe printer bed size I can’t see it needing much of an upgrade anyway. When I bought it I was worried that the print bed would be too small, but so far I haven’t had to print anything that was too large. And if I have to I can always split the print in multiple parts and glue or screw them together.
The enclosed chamber is important if you’re going to print in ABS. ABS has to be cooled evenly so as to not warp so if you don’t have a heated bed and enclosure you’d end up with warped prints and that’s no good. You might get away without the enclosure if you’re printing in a warm room with no moving air.
The FlashForge is based on MakerBot and uses the same controller and the same firmware (Sailfish) which is open source so it would probably not be that difficult to change. What you need to know though is that a 3D printer is pretty dumb. It knows nothing about colors, materials or 3D models. It only do exactly what the G-code tells it to do, which is basically “set heater 1 to 220 degrees”, “move to coordinates 0,0”, “move to coordinates 1,5 while extruding 5mm material” and so on. All the difficult stuff such as melting temperatures, fan speeds, extrusion speeds, infills etc is handled by the slicer program.
I use Simplify3D for all machines except the Zortrax which has it’s own program Z-Suite.
I agree the FF is a great machine, I cannot say enough about it myself, but, limited to the Box.
DIY machines have a the ability to upgrade as you like, size, the amount of extruders, bed size, height size, (I added Auto bed Leveling to the I3 and active cooling as well) etc, so Yes, if your buying a Premade, go the FF for sure, but remember, limited to box size…
I am currently building the upgraded 400x200x200 Wilson, I don’t like limits…
Hi I have a flashforge , makerbot and 2 up plus 2s the flashforge is way superior to the makerbot but you will need good software to get good results, simplify 3D is the go, My best printers are by far the Up plus 2 even though the table size is limited the quality of the prints makes up for it you will need to make a box, i used polycarb for mine and they work really well.
Now I just bought a Flashforge Creator pro and am very happy with it. If you don’t know 3D printing, I can recommend it. You could buy an i3 to start out with, first off you won’t be printing with dual heads. Please DO buy Simplify3D on the side, it makes 3D printing a breeze in comparison to the other software on the market.
I am a designer, not so much of a tinkerer, but I own several different printers and from my experience I’d say a good software makes a huge difference on print quality and versatility no matter the printer. Simplify3d is really worth investing. If you are looking to print different materials, having a closed chamber is a major point to consider.
6123D
10
So like everyone else I will recommend going with the FFCP because of the fantastic ease of use, however there is a new FFCP clone on the market that many people are not aware of yet called the “Power Spec 3D Pro” and is made by the Midwest electronics company MicroCenter. This printer comes in at close to 50% the price of the FFCP and has 100% of the capabilities that the FFCP has to offer!
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You could take a look at the Wanhao Duplicator 4S, also with dual extruder. However you get what you pay for and the Flashforge is just more sturdy.
With regards to upgrades:
- print on glass: a ‘must have’ when printing in ABS. We sell these upgrade kits. Please send me a direct mail if you are interested (barry.peet@metaquip.nl). Ofcourse you can fix this yourself also, it’s a very easy upgrade, just have a look on thingiverse…
- heated chamber: when printing large objects in ABS, a heater chamber is a very wise thing to do. Also available through us.
Overall with these two upgrades the Creator Pro is a very good machine, also for ABS printing.
Extending the print volume is not easy, since the box is limited…
regards Barry
austweb
13
Please explain the upgraded heat chamber, Flashforge is fully enclosed from the factory, please post a picture of this Heat Chamber
Invize
14
The Creator Pro has active cooling. I don’t know about special support for flex but I’ve successfully printed flex with it so I don’t see any need for upgrade for that either.
austweb
15
My Creator Pro did not support Flex when I bought mine, I upgraded the extruders to do so, so if yours came with Flex support, Obviously you would not see the need for that upgrade either!
By Active cooling , if you mean the 2 standard fans that cool the extruders, that is not Active Cooling.
Active Cooling cools the print to get better adhesion and much longer bridging.
Invize
16
No, the latest version of Creator Pro has a cooling fan mounted on the side of the left extruder with an air duct leading to the nozzle. This probably means that the cooling will be best for the left extruder.
Hey @Datcu_Bogdan_Al , It’s great to see all the feedback here from the community. You should also check out a collection of feedback that we’ve gathered in out our best 3D printer guide 
Hope that helps!
Hi there,
dont have access to any pictures here now. But the upgrade is fairly simple: we added a heater-element in the print-chamber, combined with a temperature-controller. We set the temp to 50 to 60 degrees (celsius). This is more than the closed chamber will be without a heater.
regards Barry
