What should new desktop 3D printer buyers NOT be worried about?
I recently had a lengthy discussion with a friend considering purchasing a desktop 3D printer, and delved into the mind of a new buyer.
What I saw was concerns about the purchase, but often regarding aspects that should have had lower priority.
This is not unexpected; people completely new to 3D printing usually don’t understand much about the technology. That tends to manifest as concerns about things that don’t really matter at the earliest stages of the 3D print learning process.
The concerns were: Cost, Build volume, “Looks,” and Footprint.
Cost
With all the sales going on in the past week, it was a pretty good time to buy a desktop 3D printer. The low costs inspired my friend to consider a purchase, but cost concerns ranged beyond the printer itself.
My friend saw there were deals on filament, and wondered whether they should score a huge pile of cheap filament in the same sale.
I suggested NOT doing that. Someone just getting into 3D printing really doesn’t yet understand what they will be printing and why. Stocking up on material could save money, but only if it is the correct material. What if it isn’t? What if you realized you want to print, say, wood-like objects, but found yourself with a mountain of red PLA?
Build Volume
Another concern was build volume. How big can it print? Can I print this overly-large item? I have to buy a machine that’s really big!
The truth is that big machines cost a lot more and are usually harder to operate. That’s because warping occurs more easily on larger prints.
It’s always possible to chop up a 3D print into parts and print them on a smaller machine, with assembly later. In a way, every 3D printer can print any sized object — in parts.
“Looks”
My friend was overly attracted to 3D printers with enclosures because they “looked better”. Perhaps that’s true, but they also cost a lot more. The enclosure is there not so much for the looks, but mostly to provide heat capture to enable the printing of engineering materials.
My friend is not going to be printing engineering materials, so the enclosure doesn’t really do anything for them. But it looks better, I suppose.
A more important “look” to me is the user interface. This is something that the 3D printer operator would visually encounter constantly. I would take a better and easy-to-use interface over an attractive case any day of the week.
Footprint
This could be a concern, depending on the installation site. Some of the recent desktop 3D printers include filament-swapping accessories that sometimes sit beside the main 3D printer, taking up a fair bit of desk space.
However, the desk space used by a 3D printer isn’t just the printer: it also will require space for post-processing prints, storing filament, and most of all, where do all those plastic dragons go?
The Real Concerns
Those concerns seemed real to my friend, but in truth they don’t really matter much. What they didn’t realize is that obtaining a new 3D printer begins a lengthy learning process where many mistakes will be made.
My recommendation was to simplify the experience as much as possible in order to speed up the learning — and avoid the “I quit, it’s too complicated” scenario.
That means selecting a machine that has a good reputation for operations and quality. That means selecting filament spools that are automatically recognized by the machine, even though they might cost a couple of dollars more. That means printing the simplest objects first, and leaving the large, multi-part objects until later.
That means learning how to print before attempting to print challenging objects.
I told my friend his mission at this point was to just learn how to print. Only after that should they decide where to go next. Who knows, they may decide it’s not for them after all, and then what do they do with 16 spools of rainbow sparkle?
