Feed The Manchild: Building a printrbot simple metal

As you tinker with various hobby projects, inevitably the idea is going to pop into your head; it sure would be nice if I had a 3D printer to make this custom part that I need. It is immediately followed by "nah, it's not really necessary", and you discard the idea as unrealistic or find some other reason no to buy one.

Well, I recently had one of those thoughts, but this time, I was unable to repress it. So I plunged into a short, but frantic, period of scanning the internet for reviews, feedback and information regarding the various options, I finally landed on the Printrbot Simple Metal kit. So this week my kit arrived by UPS, and it was time to assemble the printer.

Firefly class

The instructions on the printrbot webpage are detailed and easy to follow, and the estimated time for assembly was surprisingly accurate (down to the minute). Even when combining two step-by-step instructions, one for the heated build platform and one for the printer itself, there were really no places to go wrong in the assembly. Tested.com made a series of build videos . Note that these were made before they updated the assembly instructions.

It is possible to order a pre assembled version of the printrbot for a small addition to the price, but frankly, I found the build process quite entertaining and educational as to how the printer operates. That being said, if you feel uneasy about the assembly process and the tweaking, this printer, or any other in this price range for that matter, might not be for you yet. It seems to be a quite common conception that in order to have your printer operating properly, some level of tweaking will always be necessary.

Now, I'm still in the initial phase of configuring my printer, but it pretty much printed an acceptable object straight off the bat. Using the recommended starting configuration file for slicer, it printed quite decent PLA objects.

Heated bed installation

The heated build platform add on available through the web shop seems like an absolute necessity from what I can see. It makes the plastic stick down fairly effortlessly, with no need for excessive taping between every print as I've seen people do on non-heated printer beds. Only the provided kapton square is required.

Supposedly, the printer should also be able to handle ABS plastic with the heated bed, but so far I'm having a bit of trouble making it stick. the bed doesn't quite reach the desired temperature of 100°C (I can only get it to around 94), and the ABS lets go of the surface fairly easily during the print. I will continue tweaking and trying this out in the upcoming weeks.

All in all, I am extremely happy with the simple metal, and I'm looking forward to experiment with using it for some actual projects relatively soon.