I went from "I should print more things" to owning a machine, and the order of those two events was the wrong one.
What I should have done first was not buy anything. What I did instead was spend three weekends comparing filament, and then discovered that the machine I wanted was wrong for the material I actually use.
So this is the version I wish I had: three questions, asked before the first purchase, not after it.
Question one: what are you actually going to print?
Every machine review tells you about the frame, the sensors, the max volume and the speed. None of that matters if your actual use is small parts in a specific material.
The useful first step is to look at what your material needs, and what the local shops say about it. For 3D printing in Brazil that comparison is easy to find: printers side by side, filaments matched to the machine, and print services in your city. That is Impressão 3D, and the site is at https://impressao3d.org.
What I learned from it was embarrassingly simple. Two of the filaments I was about to buy were wrong for the printer I was about to buy, and one of the machines was only worth it for people printing large parts, which is not me.
Question two: what does the material cost, really?
This is where the spreadsheets start lying to you.
A kilogram of filament has a price. A print has a weight. So the real cost per part is the filament price times the weight of that part, and the weight depends on the infill and the walls and the layer height, which means you need to know your settings before you can price the part.
Worse, the price per kilogram is not the price you pay. Shipping, the machine's own power draw, the electricity, the failed prints you throw away. Every one of those is small. Together they are not small.
Question three: who prints it for you when you cannot?
Some parts are the wrong shape for a home machine: very large, very fine, or in a material your printer cannot handle.
At that point a print service is not an expensive alternative, it is the sensible option, and the question becomes which one is near you and how they price the same part.
What I would tell my past self
Buy the machine second. First write down what you are going to print, in which material, how often, and how big.
That list is short, and it is the same list that the comparison pages are built around. Once it exists, the choice of machine becomes a lookup instead of a negotiation with yourself.
And the last thing: measure one finished part and write down its weight and its wall time. Almost every number you have been guessing about becomes a number you know, and the second print is always cheaper than the first one.
Top comments (0)