Right now the price of everything seems to be going up. Lumber, cars, houses, food,
it's inflation. The only thing that's not going up? 3D printers. I'll explain it all on today's
Filament Friday. Filament Friday is brought to you every week by the generous donations
of these Patreon supporters. I've been packing things up trying to get ready for the midwest
reprap festival this weekend which is a big 3D printing conference, although smaller this year
because of Covid, it's in Goshen Indiana and this guy's coming with me. This is my original
fabricator mini. I bought this back in 2018 for $177. It didn't come with the LCD or SD card
but it was completely open source. So I could get to the marlin firmware I learned marlin firmware,
I learned how to update it, to add the LCD, to add SD card and it's been printing for me ever since.
It's a small build area 80 by 80 by 80 millimeters but I developed CHEP Cube and several other small
prints on this and I learned how to print better. How to adjust my slicer settings. I learned so
much from this little printer, but at the time in 2018 $177 for a printer was unheard of. You could
get some kits for around that same price or even a little bit less but they didn't print that well
you had to really modify them and make them work. So you put a lot of time and money into it. This
thing came fully assembled out of the box ready to print. From there I moved up to a CR-10 and
then eventually this guy. The cr-10 mini. This was my favorite printer and at the time it was
pretty affordable for the size it's got a 220 by 300 by 300 build area so I could build really big
for about 280 dollars now this thing is on banggood for 149.99.
$150.They really don't make them at creality anymore so i guess it's more of a closeout
but he uses the same parts of the CR-10 which is still available so parts are still available,
so I picked one of these up because I had a bunch of these and most of them are worn out
used 'em in my print farm. But I had to have a newer CR-10 mini because
I really did like this printer for the longest time until the ender 3 came along and now I see
why. It just prints really nice. It's slower, it's a 12-volt system, doesn't have silent drivers,
takes longer to heat up, but it's still an amazing printer. The print quality i get out of this is
really really good and then the ender 3 came out and this is one of my original ender 3's.
I've modified it quite a bit but it was under 200 dollars and printed really really well.
24 volt system, originally was 8-bit board but now they come with 32-bit board, unfortunately
still no silent drivers on these guys. But it was a great printer and I've used several of these but
creality upgraded it again and gave us the Ender 3 v2 which gives us a glass bed,
32-bit board with silent drivers, belt adjusters to tighten the belt, even has an easy way to add
auto level. Doesn't come with it, but you can easily add it. I showed that in a previous video.
It's really really a good printer. But now we're inching up again to around $260 to
$280. You can find these on sale for you know $230 sometimes. But we inched our way back up
so they can make money on these things. But now we're going back down
and with the open source nature of these guys we get clones like the voxel lab aquila or aquila.
However you want to pronounce it. This is a clone of the v2. What's the difference? $179!
About the same price as that little fabricator mini I bought five years ago. But look how
far we've come. Much bigger build area, 32 bit board, 24 volt system, glass bed with a surface,
adjusters included, better display, SD card already included, and you can easily update
this with a auto level sensor or filament runout sensor. Some machines in this price range have
touch screens and filament run-out sensors. There's a lot of options now. Some will say that;
when are we going to evolve because just lowering the price doesn't advance things? But I say
we went from that little thing to this at the same price. We evolved and made a lot better technology
so now someone can get started with 3d printing for under $200. And frankly I don't know why these
things aren't flying off the shelf. It prints just as good as this. Prints really really good
for under $200. It's fantastic. If you want to get into 3d printing or even get a second 3d printer,
it's really really affordable right now to do it. And I'm looking at this
coming christmas I would think a lot more printers are going to be purchased because the ender 3
was really a hot item last year and this is so much better than a standard Ender three.
So it's really exciting to see where 3d printing is going. I hope it gets more people involved
because they can afford it. Plus these machines are so much better than what they were back in
the old days. And the fact that I can still get a big machine like that for $150 dollars.
That's fantastic. And it's my goal to help you guys get started including my profiles
and any tips and tricks that I've learned over the years to help you get started with these
machines get more people involved in 3d printing. I'll be bringing some of these to the midwest rep
rap festival. I know it's gonna be a smaller group but hopefully I get to meet some viewers
and then give me feedback on what they like what they don't like. I love talking to the people who
watch the channel and for those that can't make it, where do you think we're going with this.
Let me know in the comments below. If you like what I'm doing here maybe check out
some of the other videos popping up. And if nothing else click on the CHEP logo
and subscribe. I'll see you next time right here at Filament Friday