I've been tinkering with printers a lot in the last month or so (instead of building my extension while the weather is grim!) and thought I'd start a thread in the hobbies section to see if any other cyclechatters share this slightly addictive passtime 
I've been using 3D printers for prototyping for about 14 years but for a long time the cost of these machines was prohibitive; the main printer I use at work is a Stratasys Fortus 900mc and at the time it set us back several hundred thousand pounds
These days of course you can purchase DIY printers that do a similar thing (but much less reliably ) for a fraction of that cost so around 3 years ago I bought my first machine, an Anet A2...
This is actually a picture of it after the post-fire repairs but I won't go in to that minor mishap
This was a fun little printer but after a while I found I needed something with a bigger build envelope... As a result, I invested in a second printer, an Anet E10...
This was a little more expensive than the A2 and a little more robust. A larger bed and taller Z axis meant it could build bigger in all directions than the A2 and the pair of them did me fairly well until quite recently. Both of these printers are ideal for printing with PLA, a fairly strong plastic but not overly stable in warm conditions or in direct sunlight. It will creep and break down which doesnt make it particularly useful for the bicycle parts I found myself wanting to design and print more regularly.
In order to make space, I gave the A2 away to a friend as a project to rebuild with his young daughter. This left space for a new printer, but I couldn't decide between a new and improved FDM machine like the A2 and E10 which prints by melting and extruding plastic filament from a spool, or a relatively new MSLA resin printer which prints by curing layers of liquid photopolymer resin by shining UV light through an LCD mask. The obvious solution was to buy one of each Unfortunately for the money I wanted to spend, I couldn't find an FDM machine that was capable of printing Nylon reliably so I had to buy a more basic machine and upgrade it which is what I've been up to in my spare time recently 
I went for a Creality Ender 6 and bought some extra aluminium extrusions, fittings, insulation and heaters and built myself a fully heated enclosure for it. I also upgraded the extrusion components to allow them to operate reliably at a higher temperature and fitted some drag chains to protect the cables. Here it is midway through it's modification...
And here it is set up and running in the garage
As you can see it's a slightly more serious bit of kit than the other two. With the additional enclosure heaters running I've got it up to 54 degrees inside whilst the garage itself was only 4 degrees. This means I can print Nylon parts without fear of them warping or cracking due to thermal shrinkage as they print, giving me stronger finished parts
Here's what it looks like with the lid open, pretty funky
And so on to my new resin printer... Sadly I've been so busy playing with the Ender 6 that I haven't had a chance to test it yet It's an Elegoo Saturn, and is currently looking forlorn sitting in the corner of my study...
It has a few advantages over the FDM machines; it can be much faster to print, and the finished parts are much higher resolution. The main disadvantage is that the standard resins are more expensive than plastic filament and the finished parts are more brittle. Unless of course you're spending significantly more on engineering grade resins but they can be as much as £100 per litre so you'd have to really want it
Anyway, over to you... Anyone else find they're spending more hours than is probably healthy compiling firmware or levelling build surfaces? I find most people I speak to that own these machines are using them to print figurines and art type projects which is a slightly different usecase to my own as they're often only interested in surface finish, whereas for me dimensional accuracy and strength are far more important. It would be great to see other peoples setups, theres always more to learn 
I've been using 3D printers for prototyping for about 14 years but for a long time the cost of these machines was prohibitive; the main printer I use at work is a Stratasys Fortus 900mc and at the time it set us back several hundred thousand pounds
These days of course you can purchase DIY printers that do a similar thing (but much less reliably ) for a fraction of that cost so around 3 years ago I bought my first machine, an Anet A2...This is actually a picture of it after the post-fire repairs but I won't go in to that minor mishap
This was a fun little printer but after a while I found I needed something with a bigger build envelope... As a result, I invested in a second printer, an Anet E10...This was a little more expensive than the A2 and a little more robust. A larger bed and taller Z axis meant it could build bigger in all directions than the A2 and the pair of them did me fairly well until quite recently. Both of these printers are ideal for printing with PLA, a fairly strong plastic but not overly stable in warm conditions or in direct sunlight. It will creep and break down which doesnt make it particularly useful for the bicycle parts I found myself wanting to design and print more regularly.
In order to make space, I gave the A2 away to a friend as a project to rebuild with his young daughter. This left space for a new printer, but I couldn't decide between a new and improved FDM machine like the A2 and E10 which prints by melting and extruding plastic filament from a spool, or a relatively new MSLA resin printer which prints by curing layers of liquid photopolymer resin by shining UV light through an LCD mask. The obvious solution was to buy one of each
Unfortunately for the money I wanted to spend, I couldn't find an FDM machine that was capable of printing Nylon reliably so I had to buy a more basic machine and upgrade it which is what I've been up to in my spare time recently I went for a Creality Ender 6 and bought some extra aluminium extrusions, fittings, insulation and heaters and built myself a fully heated enclosure for it. I also upgraded the extrusion components to allow them to operate reliably at a higher temperature and fitted some drag chains to protect the cables. Here it is midway through it's modification...And here it is set up and running in the garage
As you can see it's a slightly more serious bit of kit than the other two. With the additional enclosure heaters running I've got it up to 54 degrees inside whilst the garage itself was only 4 degrees. This means I can print Nylon parts without fear of them warping or cracking due to thermal shrinkage as they print, giving me stronger finished parts
Here's what it looks like with the lid open, pretty funky And so on to my new resin printer... Sadly I've been so busy playing with the Ender 6 that I haven't had a chance to test it yet
It's an Elegoo Saturn, and is currently looking forlorn sitting in the corner of my study...It has a few advantages over the FDM machines; it can be much faster to print, and the finished parts are much higher resolution. The main disadvantage is that the standard resins are more expensive than plastic filament and the finished parts are more brittle. Unless of course you're spending significantly more on engineering grade resins but they can be as much as £100 per litre so you'd have to really want it
Anyway, over to you... Anyone else find they're spending more hours than is probably healthy compiling firmware or levelling build surfaces?
I find most people I speak to that own these machines are using them to print figurines and art type projects which is a slightly different usecase to my own as they're often only interested in surface finish, whereas for me dimensional accuracy and strength are far more important. It would be great to see other peoples setups, theres always more to learn 
It really is super handy when you're mechanically minded and have CAD knowledge - If I need something plastic I can generally design and print it myself 
