I bought a MakerGear M2 in kit form back in August. Because of the complexities of owning and operating a home 3D printer, I actually recommend building from a kit. It will give you a level of familiarity with your hardware that will come in handy when you have to tweak or repair it (and you WILL have to). All in all, the MakerGear has been a solid printer that produces relatively high-quality prints consistently. Support from MakerGear is absolutely top-shelf, they are very quick to address and fix any issues you may have. Some things I have learned:
1) Not all plastic is created equal. Even plastic from a "good" supplier is sometimes suspect when your printer jams. You have to check filament diameter consistency. Melt temperatures will also vary even on the same "type" of plastic from different manufacturers.
2) Careful calibration and leveling is a must. Prints will fail frequently if you skimp on this step. It is imperative to check belts, drives, etc. frequently to make sure everything will run smoothly. There are also parts that must be kept lubricated.
I guess you could say that owning a 3D printer is more akin to owning a machine lathe than a traditional "printer".
From the software side of things, I use FreeCad for designing, Slic3r for slicing, and Pronterface for printer control with pretty good success. I have even been able to sell some products I have produced locally, and have a patent application in the works for one of them!
All has not been a bed of roses, though. One major problem I had took me weeks to track down. I kept having extruder jams during prints. None of the usual fixes seemed to help. I finally noticed that melted plastic was coming out from under the hot-end insulation! It turns out that the hot end assembly was unscrewing itself during the printing process. I had to disassemble it, clean it out, wrap the threads with several layers of teflon tape, and start again. It has been OK since then. I could replace the hot end with a new design MakerGear has now (they seem to iterate rather quickly), but don't want to shell out for it yet.
1) Not all plastic is created equal. Even plastic from a "good" supplier is sometimes suspect when your printer jams. You have to check filament diameter consistency. Melt temperatures will also vary even on the same "type" of plastic from different manufacturers.
2) Careful calibration and leveling is a must. Prints will fail frequently if you skimp on this step. It is imperative to check belts, drives, etc. frequently to make sure everything will run smoothly. There are also parts that must be kept lubricated.
I guess you could say that owning a 3D printer is more akin to owning a machine lathe than a traditional "printer".
From the software side of things, I use FreeCad for designing, Slic3r for slicing, and Pronterface for printer control with pretty good success. I have even been able to sell some products I have produced locally, and have a patent application in the works for one of them!
All has not been a bed of roses, though. One major problem I had took me weeks to track down. I kept having extruder jams during prints. None of the usual fixes seemed to help. I finally noticed that melted plastic was coming out from under the hot-end insulation! It turns out that the hot end assembly was unscrewing itself during the printing process. I had to disassemble it, clean it out, wrap the threads with several layers of teflon tape, and start again. It has been OK since then. I could replace the hot end with a new design MakerGear has now (they seem to iterate rather quickly), but don't want to shell out for it yet.