Cheers OP, I'll be getting my kids one of these for Christmas.....they don't want one, but with a bit of practice they should be able to produce a PS4 and the Xbone that they wanted :smirk:

Seems like a bargain, but it might be worth checking your local HackSpace to see if they have a printer you can use. (Some may charge for the consumables and a notional fee towards use of their facilities.)

Yes (excluding hotend, electronics and a few components)

Price now gone up to £249

Just ordered. Only 7 left in stock now.

Heat added, thanks OP was very close to buying this printer for £299.99 in Maplin.

This is a good deal but a few things to note. DRM PLA - not sure the XYZ jnr has been cracked on this yet so your paying £20 for 600 grams rather then 1kg.
One Z axis stepper and apparently leads to one side sagging a bit - though you can print a new part to help here.

For me the enclosure and expected lifetime issues with a small build area sort of puts me off. However it's a great price and no faf out of the box.
If it auto bed levels you are sorted.

So cheap for a 3D Printer. Is it any good though??

After coming across this some time ago I decided to build a reprap prusa i3 but the BOM was getting close to £155 not including extruded aluminum and nuts and bolts. Found a AliX seller, with 109 product feedback, whose buyers were happy with so bought an i3 clone + 2 filaments+8gb sd card for £149. Print dimensions 220*220*230mm. Yes it looks like it's made from sticky back tape, recycled coke bottles and metal rods, but it is a VERY big case of function over form, and 3d printing learning tool. Will build an enclosure if need be.

Heat for the price compared to others of the same model, but very cold for what it is, a small, locked in, non-upgradeable 3d printer in a very big shiny box to bulk it up. Got a feeling a lot of these will be gathering dust after Xmas. Sounds funny but the more DIY-ish the 3D printer is the more you can get the kids and other family members involved in its construction. Although this Da Vinci kit might eliminate a lot of frustration a little bit of reading on forums can go a very long way to ironing out issues if you do take the much cheaper DIY 3d printer route.

*****Got hit by UPS large parcel charge so although it's "free shipping" I'll have to pay £30 on top. Use China registered and you have a better chance it'll slip under the net as a large "gift".******

Thanks for the detailed reply. I also mess about with electronics but am not at the stage where I could justify a 3D printer at the moment.

With SLA you get much better resolution and can arguably print more complex geometries but don't get much material choice and the prints require post processing to cure the resin. The resin can be nasty stuff.
Becuase of the surface tension of the liquid resin, larger prints can be an issue. The better ones have tilt mechanisms between each layer but that obviously slows the print down. I wouldn't be buying one unless I needed one.

If you just want to get some SLA prints made, and can wait a 3-4 weeks for delivery, you could try this service (No affiliation) http://dev.dangerousprototypes.com/store/print3d at $0.95 per gram. I've used their services before and was pleased with the quality for the price.

How do these type of filament printers compare to stereolithography models? They seem to come in around £580 on eBay at the bottom end. Filament 3D printers come across as fairly clumsy in comparison - though since I've never used one I could be wrong. :neutral_face:

myself, I'd wait another 5 years, maybe then the technology will have matured enough for a product at this price point being worth it.

I don't think you can really save money on not buying things, especially if you value your time. Personally reprap really interested me and I wanted to make enclosures for electronics projects without hours of drilling, filing etc so it fits well with my other hobbies.

What would you do with it though if you had it? I am struggling to imagine what I could use it for that would be of practical benefit. At the moment I may replace a cooker knob that may or may not break down. Am sure there must be other uses that might even save money by purchasing, just no idea what they are.

Hi

Same here. I am trying to forget I ever saw this and the 2 you tube video. :confused:

I made dials for ma cooker 'cos the inner bit had crumbled and espares wanted £10 for each dial.

And made a bunch of other useless items that I downloaded from thingiverse, like paperclips etc.

Ah it must be an older one, the current ones look much better!
I'm just stuck in the eternal upgrade cycle, new hot ends, linear motion, circuit boards, bed materials. First it was blue, then printed a set of black replacement parts, then went back to a different shade of blue!

No problem! Soon it won't feel like home without the whirring of stepper motors in the background and slight smell of melted PLA (it's OK, it smells a bit like maple syrup!)

Can someone clued up on this post a few examples of what you could easily produce with this, that would assist with everyday life around the house? Is it ideal for Cake moulds? Cookie cutters? Anything else? Is it any use for repairs of anything?

You made my husband's Christmas OP, thanks!

So you've bought it then? :smiley:

Cheers. I found kapton tape had terrible adhesion and go for masking tape since the texture keeps it stuck. The issue is that the bed is aluminium so it cools very quickly leading to warping/poor stick. The heated bed made a massive difference but i did a dodgy retrofit by kaptoning it on, so it was a bit shoddy.

Another drawback of the printrbot is its 10 cm^3 printing volume. One day I will get off my lazy ass and build a decent one.

Mind that is uses NFS tags on the filaments so you cannot simply use third party ones. That may not be an issue since they are quite cheap but it poses a risk on the future if they get discontinued.

They're more likely to download toy guns and print those out.

15cm x 15cm x 15cm? If your kids manage to fit a PS4 into those dimensions I'll gladly buy one off you to fit behind the telly :P

Cheers OP, I'll be getting my kids one of these for Christmas.....they don't want one, but with a bit of practice they should be able to produce a PS4 and the Xbone that they wanted :smirk:

Must. Not. Buy. Do. Not. Need.

how does a 3d printer work then? I'd love to buy this but I'm a complete noob and this might sound stupid but like a normal printer you fill it with ink and paper, with a 3D printer is there something you have to fill it up with?

The printrbot is better than this and is fairly well upgradable. Probably faster too. Also much better support in the community for reprap style bots.

With PLA onto cold kapton tape I can print tall/wide objects no problem. Might just need better tuning on your bed leveling / extruder temps / speeds / ambient room temp or drafts. It's a fine art! The heated bed is great for ABS and Nylons though.

One of the things that makes this printer much easier for beginners is the manufacturer has control of the software and the filament quality and the print speed and extruder temp and the bed is auto levelling, so there's a lot less tweaking to be done. However you'll find you can't easily graduate onto printing more exotic materials / objects if you want to.


The printer is the hobby itself at this point in time. Its like getting a pizza oven rather than ordering from dominos.
If you want 'press print, get object' then use shapeways or 3DHubs!

I think I will skip on this, not because its not a good deal, just the whole 3D printing still feels very new and a bit of a minefield. Am sure many will buy this type of thing with ideas of 'get rich quick' but I reckon I would just lose £200 quick and be frustrated with my inability to operate a 3D printer.

not bad. better than buying is one package.

I'd say for anyone looking to get into 3D Printing, that for most printers, you should expect to deal with some troubleshooting at some point as there are plenty of things that could happen:
Extruder Jams
De-lamination (separation between layers)
Temperature errors
Bed levelling problems
Print warping
Nozzle blockages
Bad filament batch
and so on.

It would also be a good idea to read up on the printer beforehand and visit the community forums to find to get info and help from other users, since those are usually better resources for calibration and troubleshooting.

Did they really think one could print circuit boards?

Genuine question this as quite interested... What if your a new comer to 3D printing? Is this going to be any good, or do you need a degree in 3D printing technology to do anything meaningful with it?

So no then?

Agreed! Sticking with my reprap too - MendelMax 1.5+ with lots of mods.

Seems like a bargain, but it might be worth checking your local HackSpace to see if they have a printer you can use. (Some may charge for the consumables and a notional fee towards use of their facilities.)

Filament cartridges:
http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Consumables/cat/3D-Printer-Filaments/subcat/Da-Vinci

Not too bad for a cheap consumer 3D printer - and one that looks like you could leave it on your desk.
I'll stick with my reprap but it's homemade and looks it.

Can you print a 3d printer with this ?

Fair review here https://all3dp.com/da-vinci-jr-1-0-3d-printer-review/

This printer does not have an all metal hot end or heated bed so will not be any good for ABS or most Nylons.

PLA will work well and is fine for most things. It's a fairly hard plastic that's a little brittle and weaker along the layer bonds and has a lower melting point than others like ABS or polycarbonate.