today on bits we're going to talk about
choosing your first 3d printer when
you're choosing your first 3d printer
it's really important to figure out what
you want out of the machine do you want
something that's going to work right out
of the box or do you want something that
you get to build and tinker with over
time so we're going to talk about a few
of the things that will help you make
those decisions but rather than telling
you which specific printer to buy let's
talk about a few of the things that will
help you make that decision like price
print volume and a bunch of extra
features first you're gonna see a bunch
of different acronyms about the
different types of printers you're gonna
see F F F F D M s la s LS probably some
other ones and the big difference
between those is how they go about
creating the item from raw material FDM
is the general term for laying down thin
layers of material to build up an item F
F F is specifically that process with
filament and that stands for fused
filament fabrication SLA stands for
stereo lithography apparatus and that's
basically just a resin that is cured by
light SLS stands for selective laser
centering and that's where you take a
powdered substance and you Center it
together and that's not melting it's
more of a heated compression the most
common and cost effective of those three
is FFF so that's what we're going to
talk about here later on we'll do a bits
video all about the comparison between
SLA and FFF first let's talk about price
this really comes down to how you
specifically want to spend your time and
your money a machine that is easier to
use is usually a higher quality and also
more expensive a cheaper machine will
require a lot more of your time to
adjust calibrate and probably upgrade
the machine overtime decent quality
printers start around $600 but quickly
go up into the thousands you can also
get a printer for just a hundred or even
a couple of hundred dollars but you are
going to spend a lot more time getting
that machine up and running and printing
to the quality that you expect kit
printers are also a great opportunity to
get a good quality machine you just have
to put in the work to put it together
and get it calibrated ultimately though
you get what you pay for so just decide
ahead of time how you want to spend your
time and your money next up let's talk
about print volume and this is the fully
usable area on a 3d printer this is
usually measured in millimeters and a
typical mid-range printer will be about
200 millimeters in all three axes
smaller printers will be in 100 150
millimeter range but the larger ones
will
go 300 millimeters and up this really
comes down to what you want to use the
printer for if you're just looking to
print small pieces you don't need a big
printer but if you want to print a full
helmet all in one piece you're gonna
need one of the larger sizes but even if
you do have a large thing that you want
to print you don't have to print it all
at one time you can use slicing software
to cut it into smaller pieces that fit
onto your print bit the next thing to
think about is the maximum hot end
temperature that you're gonna need if
you're printing in PLA or abs pretty
much any hot end will do but once you
get into the more durable filaments like
nylon polycarbonate PE TG you're gonna
have to have higher temperatures but if
you have plastic parts on your hot end
those higher temperatures will cause it
to melt again this is a situation of
picking what materials you want to use
and finding the hot end that will work
for them most of the printers that you
will see have a single extruder which
means you can only put out one material
at a time but some do have dual extruder
so you can have two different types of
materials within the same print this
allows you to put multiple colors into a
single print or use one for the model
and one for dissolvable supports these
can be difficult to calibrate together
and are usually only available on more
expensive machines the surface that you
print on is also really important a lot
of printers have glass build plates and
this works for a lot of plastics but
sometimes you need extra help to get the
print to adhere to the surface a lot of
plates have special coatings on them
that help with adhesion
there are metal plates that are magnetic
so that you can pull them off and pop
the print off the surface but there are
aftermarket products for just about
every printer to upgrade the build plate
the user interface for printers is also
really important and varied across the
spectrum most of them will have a dial
and a single button but they're really
expensive ones will have a touchscreen
with a really nice experience those are
kind of important and useful but most of
the work that you do
preparing a print actually happens in
the slicing software on a computer just
about every printer has an SD slot so
that you can transfer your models
through an SD card but a lot of them
also have Wi-Fi or Ethernet there's also
some bonus features that you may want to
keep an eye out for that just make
printers really nice to use
you've got Auto bed leveling or mesh bed
leveling those both do a lot of the work
for you to compensate for an unlevel bed
you've got power recovery in case you
lose power in the middle of a print you
got run out sensors that detect when you
run out of filament there's a lot of
things that can make printing much
easier to do I hope that information
helps you make an educated purchase as
you're looking to get you
3d printer if you've got some other tips
of things that people should keep their
eyes out for leave them down in the
comments so we can all learn together
I've got a playlist of other bits videos
that you may be interested in and I'll
be back later this week with a new
project video I'll see you then