Last time, I talked a bit about the 3D printing tool chain, and how I determined whether 3D printing was something that I could actually do. This time, I want to talk about something a little different – how I determined whether 3D printing was something that I could actually afford to do. In particular, what factors contributed most to my choice of a printer, what the main options were (as I saw them), and a little bit about what I thought once I had actually received my printer.
In looking for printers, the first thing I really wanted to decide was whether I wanted to get a 3D printer kit (like a RepRap) or whether I wanted to get an assembled printer. My first thought was that getting an assembled printer was out of my price range, so I didn’t look too closely, rather, I looked at a lot of kits, and spent a lot of time pouring over the instructions for putting them together. This might seem a bit odd, since I didn’t even have one yet, but I really wanted to know if this was something I was going to be able to do before I spent a lot of money shipping a bucket of parts to my house. At this point, the front-runners were the Mendel from RepRapPro (hadn’t decided on mono or tricolor), and one other which I don’t remember (except that it actually shipped with a soda can as a legitimate part). The price seemed reasonable, and it seemed like I was getting everything I needed to be up and running.