Which 3d printer to get

Hi All,

The printer will be used for 2 things

1.) printing my partners design protoypes (sunglasses)
2.) be my testing partner to develop 3d printing filament from recycled plastic (mainly PET or HDPE)

After quite a bit of research i though i would put it out to the community to see if anyone has any experience thus far and which machine they would use to pursue the challenge.

Things to consider when looking at machines :

1.) Machine min/Max temperature, the difference in melting points for each plastic is different so we would need something that has the range.

2.) software capability – the ability of the software is important, ive read some of the closed software cant run at lower temperatures (hdpe is melting at about 145c) therefore a machine with open software is preferred

3.) pricing – the machine needs to be good enough to do the sunglass prototype jobs in good quality, but also affordable to replace parts (in case we mess up the nozzles when testing the recycled filament)

any help would be appreciated

0

@willyk There are hundreds of printers to choose from and your choice only depends on what your budget is.
If you are on a low budget, less say between $300 and $400, your best choice at this moment is the Creality CR-10, it’s at $360 on GearBest: https://www.gearbest.com/3d-printers-3d-printer-kits/pp_627175.html

If your budget is even lower, you might go for an Anet A8 (which is the one I have) but you will need LOTS of time and patience to build it and calibrate it.

Also, I would recommend you not to waste a lot of time testing HDPE filament, it has been done before and HDPE is simply not made for 3D printing. PET on the other hand is a pretty good printing material.