Is this
Any good, or a complete waste of my hard-earned?
The Reprap Prusa i3 is a great printer but with any of these kits/cheap printers you are going to have to be prepared to spend a significant amount of time tinkering with it and adjusting it to keep it tuned.
Its also a fairly complex build so mechanically you should be fairly competent before considering pressing ‘Buy It Now’
Courty
it depends what you want it for, as an introduction to 3d printing and building it is great.
but expect to spend as long calibrating it as building it if you want results anywhere near the ultimaker.
i think sintron are one of the better companies for back up service.
the all metal jhead hot end is good but you may want to upgrade at a later date to an e3d hotend.
at that price it is very good.
however I have just ordered one of these
but i print things to sell and this model will match the ultimaker in print quality for a 1/3 of the price of the 2+ and 1/5 the price of the new ultimaker 3.
Plus this comes from josef Prusa the inventor of the prusa
thomas sanlanderer review here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfe_84FGJ8c
It would be my first 3D printer. I’ve used the Ultimaker and it is lovely, and I realise that it’s an order of magnitude better than this would be, but I can’t justify the price.
Not a problem building it, I’m pretty mechanically minded.
Tempted to press ‘go’…
You can get excellent results from a diy. But a fair bit more calibration.
The new Prusa has some innovative solutions to this though?
Press Go - we’ll help you 
Courty
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I’m also curious about these kits, I’ve eyed one up for myself for a little bit.
my nephew built that exact one, v good but as everyone says “requires large amounts of fiddling with”
Courty
my first one was this
https://www.think3dprint3d.com/3D-Printer-Kits/complete-3D-printer-kits/Kossel-Mini-3dPrinter-Kit
i bought this last november fairly easy to build but steep learning curve to calibrate and get printing well.
happy to help with any issues you have with the build or calibration… i have had plenty of experience!
A delta… Would that be a better first choice?
Depends what you are looking for Rich, if it’s for teaching I would suggest Ultimaker as it just works, while if you are looking for a project and more customisable it would make sense to go down other routes.
maybe, maybe not. I wanted a delta because of the way they look, and nearly every forum advised me not to try a delta as a first build.
being told something is too difficult for me was the final push to get the delta.
however after the painful calibration it has now been in use nearly everyday for the last year.
i have had to replace fans a couple of times. and have just ordered some new carbon rod arms and track rod ends and timing belts to give it a good service. but once that is done it should give another years trouble free service
Not for teaching, Tom. I don’t think they work very well in a classroom setting yet - printing anything worthwhile takes too long, especially multiplied by the numbers in a class. Plus you have to teach 3D modelling first, or just download from Thingiverse and I don’t think there’s much learning involved with that.
No, this is a project for me to get better at 3D modelling, better at 3D printing and add another string to the already over-stringed bow that is my CV…
Agreed, just experience of having a DIY printer in a Uni class room was bad.
I was astonished at how polished the Ultimaker was when you showed it to me after only experiencing diy printers.
Any mileage in cutting my own acrylic and buying the other bits separately?
The idea of the RepRap printers is that they are self-replicating. yes you can cut the acrylic and most of the other parts are either Printable on another 3D printer (the Ultimaker?) or purchasable from a hardware store (threaded rod and screws etc) - There are companies on ebay and elsewhere that will sell minimum level kits of parts so you can do just that like the head and control boards.
The idea of the complete kit is that for a beginner, you have everything you need and can then experiment after building the initial printer.
Courty
I think I like the look of this one
I like that all the bits seem laser cut. I think I could replace parts as necessary in steel to make the structure more rigid in future maybe?
And might it be worth getting one of these too? A sensor to enable self leveling.
Looks good - if you buy it there are a couple of bits you will have to change at some point + will want to upgrade.
The filament feeder is an old style MK7 which is fairly weak and will die with hard use (replacement for the mk10, ~£10), you will need to make a cooler hood for the extruder if you want to print PLA (advisable) and the lead screw bushes, although replaceable, will wear out as i’ll bet they are cheap brass…
That said, the point of the RepRap is that you change stuff and you experiment…
The self-leveling is a great idea too, you need to still set it up but it helps make printing more reliable
Courty
I bought it!
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