Chinese 3D printers: cheap and cheerful
In a post about the supply of 200 printers to schools in the Moscow region , we asked why such expensive printers should be bought by schoolchildren - they will be broken anyway ( Leapfrog Creatr 2H 3D printer costs 125,964 rubles ) - they say it’s better to buy Chinese, they are several times cheaper .
Fabbers does not trade “Chinese”, but it often faces a Chinese question: customers first say “And Chinese is cheaper”, but in 3-4 months they still come back to us. So the experience of comparisons has accumulated a lot.
Photos from the epic3dprintingfail blog
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It is clear that the market decides whether people will still choose the cheapest to try or just play around, especially when it comes to the product at the price of a smartphone of the average price category. But to make this choice more meaningful - we wrote this post.
To prevent this from being done in an “expensive good, cheap - bad” style, we took a few real-life examples and experiences from Fabbers engineers, and made a list of key things to keep in mind when choosing a budget 3D printer:
Let's start with the benefits.
Price - by itself, the first and obvious advantage.
Shipment and customs. The difference in prices between “store” printers and “printers from alibaba” due to the fact that the 3D printer in the TN VED falls under the category of “not for personal use”, i.e. importing more than one piece has the right only to a legal entity paying a fee, which affects the price.
A large number of spare parts. Moreover, if the printer came with a marriage, you can always try to knock out part or the entire amount of payment from the seller - this is not always easy, but it usually works.
Industry support. Of course, there are no innovations in budget 3D-printers, and everything, from technology, to materials and software, is borrowed or “borrowed” from “older” ones. But the more cheap 3D-printers are sold, the higher are the sales and the models are more expensive - firstly, home or office 3D-printing is popular by itself, and secondly, many users, realizing that they didn’t get what they wanted, pay attention to more serious models.
Now let's go through the weak points of "printers from Alibaba":
Completing. Cheaper components reduce resistance to small shocks and vibrations. Other weak points are moving parts: ball screws, belts, gears.
Extruders: material matters. Extruders in cheap printers get clogged up quickly, they have to be constantly cleaned, etc.
Work zone. The usefulness of the printer is determined, including the size of the objects that it can produce. The cheaper the printer, the smaller the working area.
Heated table. Unfortunately, heating is not uniform in cheap technology - it keeps in the center, for example, given 100 degrees, at the edges 50-60. As a result, large parts of the seal stick off the platform and the seal does not come out. An example from a post on Habré:
Power supplies. Chinese printers in our networks are waiting for a harsh reception: they have a minimum of smoothing elements that even out the jumps, which leads to stopping printing on the peaks of such jumps.
Assembly. Cheap kits often have parts and components of terrible quality, as a result, they are very difficult to assemble and configure and are capricious in their work. Chinese printers very often arrive defective, they are like Russian roulette.
A low-cost 3D printer is now a constructor that confirms the saying “our hands are not for boredom”. In the post mentioned above, everything ended well only thanks to the direct hands and a certain amount of the author’s efforts spent on bringing the printer to the mind.
Soft Most 3D printers come with their own control programs. The right manufacturers hone them, develop, provide support. Chinese, at best, use someone else's software from normal printers, but here there is already the issue of coordinating the work of the program with the printer - the printer often loses touch, etc. At worst, they have their own, inconvenient software, in Chinese, which for hours slices a part into layers and does it with errors, as a result, the part again fails.
Design. The same argument - of course, serious manufacturers are more thoroughly working on the appearance of their gadgets.
Leapfrog Creatr XL - beautiful printer and beautiful work
Even if the price issue is acute, buying a cheap printer has an alternative - if there is no budget for good technology - it may be worth using the 3D printer rental service - Google already gives a lot of options for Moscow, St. Petersburg and other large cities.
But you cannot save money on children and education - therefore, it remains only to be happy for those students who this year received not cheap Chinese designers in their classes, but good, high-quality and safe equipment.
Fabbers does not trade “Chinese”, but it often faces a Chinese question: customers first say “And Chinese is cheaper”, but in 3-4 months they still come back to us. So the experience of comparisons has accumulated a lot.
Photos from the epic3dprintingfail blog
')
It is clear that the market decides whether people will still choose the cheapest to try or just play around, especially when it comes to the product at the price of a smartphone of the average price category. But to make this choice more meaningful - we wrote this post.
To prevent this from being done in an “expensive good, cheap - bad” style, we took a few real-life examples and experiences from Fabbers engineers, and made a list of key things to keep in mind when choosing a budget 3D printer:
Let's start with the benefits.
Price - by itself, the first and obvious advantage. Shipment and customs. The difference in prices between “store” printers and “printers from alibaba” due to the fact that the 3D printer in the TN VED falls under the category of “not for personal use”, i.e. importing more than one piece has the right only to a legal entity paying a fee, which affects the price. A large number of spare parts. Moreover, if the printer came with a marriage, you can always try to knock out part or the entire amount of payment from the seller - this is not always easy, but it usually works. Industry support. Of course, there are no innovations in budget 3D-printers, and everything, from technology, to materials and software, is borrowed or “borrowed” from “older” ones. But the more cheap 3D-printers are sold, the higher are the sales and the models are more expensive - firstly, home or office 3D-printing is popular by itself, and secondly, many users, realizing that they didn’t get what they wanted, pay attention to more serious models.Now let's go through the weak points of "printers from Alibaba":
Completing. Cheaper components reduce resistance to small shocks and vibrations. Other weak points are moving parts: ball screws, belts, gears. Extruders: material matters. Extruders in cheap printers get clogged up quickly, they have to be constantly cleaned, etc. Work zone. The usefulness of the printer is determined, including the size of the objects that it can produce. The cheaper the printer, the smaller the working area. Heated table. Unfortunately, heating is not uniform in cheap technology - it keeps in the center, for example, given 100 degrees, at the edges 50-60. As a result, large parts of the seal stick off the platform and the seal does not come out. An example from a post on Habré:curve table: the center is about 1 mm below the edges - this does not allow the print height of the first layer to be set normally. There was glass in the kit, but it touched the table only with edges - and accordingly there was a very large temperature difference in different places of the table.
Power supplies. Chinese printers in our networks are waiting for a harsh reception: they have a minimum of smoothing elements that even out the jumps, which leads to stopping printing on the peaks of such jumps. Assembly. Cheap kits often have parts and components of terrible quality, as a result, they are very difficult to assemble and configure and are capricious in their work. Chinese printers very often arrive defective, they are like Russian roulette.A low-cost 3D printer is now a constructor that confirms the saying “our hands are not for boredom”. In the post mentioned above, everything ended well only thanks to the direct hands and a certain amount of the author’s efforts spent on bringing the printer to the mind.
Soft Most 3D printers come with their own control programs. The right manufacturers hone them, develop, provide support. Chinese, at best, use someone else's software from normal printers, but here there is already the issue of coordinating the work of the program with the printer - the printer often loses touch, etc. At worst, they have their own, inconvenient software, in Chinese, which for hours slices a part into layers and does it with errors, as a result, the part again fails. Design. The same argument - of course, serious manufacturers are more thoroughly working on the appearance of their gadgets.Leapfrog Creatr XL - beautiful printer and beautiful work
What to do?
Even if the price issue is acute, buying a cheap printer has an alternative - if there is no budget for good technology - it may be worth using the 3D printer rental service - Google already gives a lot of options for Moscow, St. Petersburg and other large cities.
But you cannot save money on children and education - therefore, it remains only to be happy for those students who this year received not cheap Chinese designers in their classes, but good, high-quality and safe equipment.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/225257/
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