Jory
1
I’m trying to find the best quality Prusa i3 kits to help me decide on my first 3D printer for home use. I’d prefer a kit to keep the costs down and also to learn more about the machine I’m investing in. I’d like to keep the cost with shipping under around $700 USD. I like what they offer over at the Prusa official site (prusa3d) but I’m looking for other options. A few things I would like to have are:
1) Aluminum frame, possibly steel
2) Heavy duty aluminum build plate, 24V heater
3) Quality steppers that can print high speeds without dying
4) All metal hotend, good up to 300°C for printing with most filaments
5) Good controller, 32-bit if possible but otherwise just looking for good quality controllers
6) Threaded rods, linear rods, bearings, etc. of good quality
7) Legitimate 150mm/sec max printing speed, at minimum
8) Free shipping to the USA
With those qualities in mind, do any of you have any suggestions?
4 Likes
Hello, Past avid builder of Prusa i3s, so hopefully I could give some useful input. Easily the best Prusa i3-based kit I’ve worked with is my own self-sourced P3Steel. It’s rock solid and holds perfect 90 degree angles, both of which most Prusa i3s don’t do. It’s also easy to work with. With mine being self-sourced, the quality of the other parts depended on the parts I chose, but there is a kit available from a European site with the P3Steel frame. Welcome kitprinter3d.com - BlueHost.com There will be extra costs because it ships from the EU, but it should come in a fair bit under 700USD. (violates your free shipping rule, I’m afraid) If you’re going that route, make sure you select the P3Steel frame and the E3D V6 hotend. I’m not sure but you MAY have to buy an MK3 aluminum heat bed separately since by default most Prusa i3 kits ship with the MK2 PCB heatbed, but in my honest opinion the MK2 with a glass plate is better on the P3Steel than an MK3, since the MK3 will still most likely require a glass plate to be ideal but it has more mass than the MK2, slowing it down. That brings up an important point: 150mm/s printing speeds are extremely hard to attain on any Prusa i3-based design, even for experienced Reprappers. It’s just not designed well for high speeds, due to the comparatively huge mass of the print bed moving along the Y axis. I’ve gotten my P3Steel (although, granted, with a higher-than-average mass for the bed) up to 120mm/s, but any higher and backlash starts to affect the bed way too much to print well. (not to mention that the forces present start to shake whatever table you’re putting the printer on) If you really want high speeds, you’d be much better off with a Z-axis traveling bed and the Ultimaker cross gantry, but that’s pretty much as far from the Prusa i3 as any printer could be. That’s all I have. I hope my little rant has helped a bit. -Karl
Hi Jory,
As mention earlier, best is to source all the parts your self choosing the best that is available and compatible. If you consider other design/option try “TeeBotMax & TeeBot” which are rep-rap styled 3Dprinters . what you get in addition is a taller build print of 25 cm, and a fold-able 3D printer. Kits comes default with MK3 aluminum heat bed and E3D lite (not rated for 300 degrees) as mention E3D V6 will be your choice for hotend, I am sure that can be arranged. You can also opt for TeeBot which is smaller and also defaults with MK3 heatbed and E3D lite. Both printers are within your budget. see the webstore www.3dstuffs.nl
E.A Teebot
1 Like
The kits at MakerFarm are good. I like their V-slots. I built their Pegasus and overall I’m very happy with it. GREAT price! I think if you went with one of their Prusa i3v models (and an e3D-v6 hotend - not lite)… you’d probably have everything that you’re asking for within the price range that you stated. So far my only complaint with the Pegasus is that the included E3D-lite hot end is not all metal and the PTFE insert gives me trouble occasionally.
http://www.makerfarm.com/index.php/prusa-8-i3v-kit-v-slot-extrusion.html
Jory
5
The PolyPrinter we use at work can print at around 250mm/sec (something around 350mm/sec travel) when printing with ABS and it’s roughly based on the Prusa design, but highly customized and optimized. We’re very spoiled by it’s speeds. The only issue we have is printing Nylon, where we have to slow it down to between 80-120mm/sec to allow to extruder to keep from slipping on the slippery nylon filament. I’d buy one of those, but they are well outside of my price range. The 150mm/sec speed isn’t really required, but just a desire to have a fairly speedy machine.
Jory
6
The TeeBot looks interesting, but really I have no need for moving the printer around. I’d be more interested in the TeeBotMax, but I didn’t see anything on it listed on the TeeBot site. Also, I’m not interested in funding anyone on KickStarter due to the many stories of people investing their money to only end up waiting for months/years and getting nothing in return. While that isn’t tru for all KS companies, I don’t have the money to gamble with. Besides, I like the security of Paypal just in case I get something broken or different that what I ordered.
I bought the P3steel kit from www.kitprinter3D.com. The steel frame is fine, but the rest of the parts are about as budget as they come. In particular the 3D printed parts are dreadful quality, especially the tensioner in the x-idler (very poor printing) and the x-idler itself which had some delamination. The wire lengths were wrong, the Arduino not genuine (OK that’s fairly routine) and the RAMPS had a fault which blew the Arduino. The linear bearings didn’t fit the y axis mountings well… I could go on and on.
On a positive note, the vendor is very quick to respond to emails. He gave me a refund for the RAMPS and Arduino - a total of €43 including refund of the €13 postage it cost me to return the items. Unfortunately, the replacement genuine Arduino and decent RAMPS I bought cost me a lot more than that.
I recommend the frame, but you would be better researching and buying the rest yourself. I am about to do just that with a P3 Steel v4.0 frame from Poland (eBay).
