Printer Recommendations

That’s one thing I really like about my railcore is the bed leveling. No fiddling with leveling screws. I’m generally .005mm flat across the bed.

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Powder coated build sheets? I just got a Powdercoater…

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I think the SecKit looks pretty interesting. If I had the cash and needed another printer, it would be tempting.
https://seckit3dp.design/price/sk-go

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Mine is a buildtak sheet on a spring steel sheet.

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I’ve been using glass. Works great for pla and petg, but I’ve got a roll of abs I’ve been trying to figure out how to use. Abs would be nice because it’s so much cheaper, but short of building a printer just for that, I don’t think it will be practical for me.

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ABS prefers an enclosed printer as well.

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Abs is yucky though. It shrinks, and it is bad to breath and stuff.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions so far. I have been trying not to add my opinion to each printer, and add requirements, because I wanted to see more what you thought without that impact.

The MK3S is a favorite here, and I like my two prusa style printers (wanhao duplicator i3, and MP3DPv2). But I just can’t buy another one. So I guess I’m really honing in on a corexy, with a moving bed for the Z.

The popular ones I see often are the 1) Tech2C Hypercube and Hypercube evolution, 2) D-Bot, 3) SecKit sk-go, 4) Voron, and 5) BLV mgn cube.

I think I am leaning towards ordering this kit:

It will be about $620 after shipping. It uses an skr v1.3 board, and there are more expensive kits that have duet boards. Are the duet boards really worth the money? Do they print any better? Even the knock offs are about $120. Here, the kit from the same seller with the side panels (which I may or may not make myself) and the duet board costs $350 more:

I’m really hoping that this printer will make it easier to just print something on a whim. I understand it will be a big project to built it at first, but I like those kinds of projects. But I am hoping it will have more robust operation, even if I haven’t used it in a week. The prints from the author are very good looking, but that always seems to be the case. I certainly haven’t ever printing anything that looks that good on my printers.

Looks like the seckit also offers a BIGTREETECH duet 1.4 option, and it only adds about $50 to the price.

AFAICT, the seckit with similar choices as the affordable BLV is about $780 with shipping.

I like that the duet has a built in web server with all the control stuff built in. A couple of the guys on the railcore discord have build vorons, they seem to like them. The one thing I like about the railcore and the voron is the automagic bed leveling. Since they are using more than 2 z steppers, they can accurately position the bed. All my starting gcode does a 4 point probe, auto level, then prints. The build plates are mic6 tool plates, so they’re flatter than we can reliably print layers.

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Oh! Another thing I like about duet is you can edit the config right from the interface.

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Heh, my mic6 plate is flat enough and leveled properly so all I do is a single Z in the middle then print. :wink: I have 3 belted leadscrews though so the bed is always the same at those 3 points.

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I’ve accidentally run my bed too high a couple times. That’ll throw off the level. Also the steppers will drift over time. I also have a removable build plate, so the surface will change a touch every time you pull it off.

Oooh. Those are purdy. Almost makes me want to get a second printer, but I barely print enough to warrant having the first one. I would like a larger build volume. I’ll have to go look at some of those machines.

A long time ago, I went with the Geetech Aluminum. I think the only thing still stock on it is the metal frame… scratch that. I had modified the frame too… Anyways… The biggest and best upgrade I ever did to it was when I replaced the stock controller with a RADDs board. That was well over a year ago now and I haven’t had to upgrade any of the machine since.

Putting it in an enclosure is the second best thing I did. I rarely have to touch the machine. I have a smart switch that allows me to start it from my office, and I can upload a print to Octoprint and start it without ever going out to the machine. When it’s done, I take the print off, clean the glass plate, and turn off the machine until the next time I need it. Of course, that means most of what I’ve been printing lately has all been ‘transparent’ as I’m too lazy to go change filament colors. My MPCNC now looks like a rainbow from replacing parts using whatever color was on the printer at the time.

Ahh, the beauty of belted leadscrews to a single stepper is no drift over time. :wink: And I have my removable build plate with pei always replaced facing the same direction so the leveling is consistent.

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I have built 2 Core X/Y style printers. The D-Bot and Weedwalls Hypercube. My D-bot has a 300x300x300 build space, and it is my work horse. This can be a really good printer if you take the time to stiffen up the Z axis. The way it is designed was not to my liking, but a few mods and it is rock solid. I haven’t had to relevel the bed since I got it tuned where I wanted it. I run 2 lead screws, one in front and the other in the rear, running off of one stepper motor. The bed rides on 16mm linear rods that are both mounted in the rear of the machine. My Hypercube has a build space of 400x400 at around 18" tall i believe. I think it really boils down to how much time you have to invest in such builds. I have spent countless hours building and tweaking, but my machines run near perfect now, and that gives me some satisfaction. :sunglasses:

On a side note, Weedwalls hypercube is really nice, but he has made several changes to his design, and sometimes he leaves the old version of parts in the zip files, so take notice of that. I think I started building it right after he put it up on thingiverse, so it was a work in progress.

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I have been looking at this again. I was planning on checking some out in person at mrrf… Now I am back to trying to see through the BS. Thanks for the perspective. I do really like the extrusion corexy style. I would like to get one with linear rails instead of rods though. I would have bought a seckit go this week if they had been in stock, I think.

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I have thought about upgrading my XY axis to linear rails, but I’ve got it running too good to take apart😂

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My hypercube BLV fusion is a XY rails system. It’s on the thingiverse… but it’s sort of designed as a parts dump for a ton of different designs and options. One of these days I’ll separate out just a single set of pieces and have a single parts list, I just have so many projects on the go. :wink:

I really like the looks of the D-Bots. I had a friend start building one, but I don’t know if he ever finished it.

I’ve been considering building a replacement to my Geeetech Aluminum.