Following quite a lot of research online,
including watching a number of helpful You Tube videos about selecting and
using 3D printers, I purchased a Flashforge Finder 3D printer through
Amazon. This printer meets all the above criteria:
- Cost was under US$400.
- My Finder arrived four business days following the order. It was very well packaged and had excellent instructions. I printed my first test object 10 minutes after unpacking the printer – a cube which printed flawlessly. I did have the advantage of having watched a couple of excellent YouTube videos on the unpacking and setup of this very printer as well as how to use the software. Had I used the instructions that came with the printer I would probably have printed my first object in 20 minutes. The paper “getting started” instructions were quite good. The online instructions are much more comprehensive. There are minimal “Chinglish” errors in the instructions – no surprise, the printer is made in China.
- The Finder uses only PLA (Polylactic Acid) filament. It will not print ABS or any other substance that requires a heated surface on which the object is printed. From my research I concluded that, for a starter printer, PLA would serve my needs. It will glue with the same types of welding adhesive that is used with styrene. It can also be superglued or epoxied. Printing PLA produces no noxious fumes. It can easily be painted with acrylic or oil-based paints or it can be spray painted. PLA is a thermoplastic aliphatic polyester derived from renewable biomass typically from fermented plant starch such as corn and is biodegradable.
- My research revealed that there is another raw material that many 3D printers will also use ABS. ABS is not plant based and is much more resilient if used out of doors (LEGO bricks are made of ABS). However, the outdoors which has exposure to ultraviolet rays and moisture is not an environment to which my model railroad will be exposed. When printing with ABS the surface on which the print is made must be heated. Also, noxious fumes are released when printing ABS. It seemed to me that as a beginner, ABS is was a complication that I needed.
- There are also 3D printers that use a liquid resin for their raw material. These printers use ultraviolet light to solidify and cure the resin to form the object being printed. I understand that, for a comparable price, these produce much higher resolution prints than those which use plastic filament. However, I also understand that the liquid resin is very messy and produces noxious fumes. I did not want to be dealing with these attributes – I suspect that the printer would quickly fall into disuse because of the hassle of handling and cleaning up the resin.
- As with other 3D printers, the Finder can print using standard, high or ultra high resolution. For small detail items like an HO scale rooftop air conditioner I find the high resolution to be quite satisfactory, especially when the object has been painted and weathered. As PLA files and sands easily, I will sometimes give it a quick smoothing using a sanding sponge or fine file. It is normally necessary to use a sharp knife such as an Olfa knife or Exacto blade to clean up the places where the object is attached to the “raft” – a sacrificial layer of plastic which is normally printed beneath the object.
- My printing success rate has been very high. A couple of objects I designed need to have the design tweaked either because I made a mistake, or I wasn’t completely satisfied with how it looked. An example of this was the width, height and spacing of the insulators on a pole-top transformer I designed.
- The only attributes of the Finder that could be improved are the relatively small maximum print size (140 mm cube - which won't be an issue for 99% of the things I want to create) and the built-in filament spool holder.
- The most economical way to purchase filament is on 1 kg spools. The spool of filament that comes with the Finder is 600 g and is physically smaller that a 1 kg spool. There is built-in compartment at the back of the Finder which neatly conceals a 600 g spool. Thingiverse has several nice designs for the Finder which can be downloaded for free and printed with the Finder. I chose a design by Mathew Haigis (m1s2h3 on Thingiverse) and printed it. This design allows for a 1 kg spool to be hung on the side of the printer. This has the additional benefit of being able to easily see that the filament is unrolling freely and to see when the filament is running low. I later designed and printed an add-on piece for this design to serve as a filament guide to avoid the filament coming off the sides of a new spool – the filament is tightly wound on the spool and has a tendency to “spring” off the spool when the packaging is removed.
- The Finder has a nice feature for levelling the printing surface. It is semi-automatic in that it guides the user step-by-step from its nice colour screen on what to do to level the plate.
- The Finder has a very well-designed printing surface in that the top surface is easily slid out of its holder. This allows the operator to withdraw the whole printing surface from the printer and carry it to a workbench where a putty knife or other hard flat object can be used to pry the object from the surface. As this often requires quite a bit of force it seems to me that it is much better to be able to do this on a workbench that reefing on the delicate mechanism of the printer. In addition, the removable surface allows for easy cleaning of the surface if this becomes necessary. To ensure good print results it is necessary to ensure that the object becomes well adhered to the printing surface. If it were to slip or lift the print job would be ruined. From my research and my experience, it is best to rub a glue stick on the printer surface rather than the alternative of using painters masking tape which I find produces inconsistent results. The Finder comes with a glue stick included. I find that most of the glue remains stuck to the surface when an object is removed so it is not necessary to reapply the glue for each print job.
- There are two types of software needed to design and then print 3D objects. Some software can do both, but it is easier to describe the software needs separately. Say you find an object on Thingiverse that you want to print. You would download a “.STL” file to your computer (those on Thingiverse need to be unzipped from a zip file – very easy to do). You then need to open the object with software that can position the object in an optimum way to print. For example, a pyramid-shaped object will print much better if the point of the pyramid is facing up instead of down. If it were facing down the software will add a series of sacrificial supports. The supports are necessary because the printer needs to print on something – it can’t print on thin air. When positioned optimally the software then slices the object into many horizontal slices (the higher the resolution and the larger the object the greater the number of slices). The software then produces a “.G” file which the printer needs to do the actual print. This can be sent to the Finder either directly through a USB cable, Wi-Fi or a USB flash drive. So far, I have not tried the Wi-Fi. I tend to use a USB flash drive most often.
If you want to design your own object from scratch or modify a design that you have received from someone else you will need software that is used to design three dimensional objects and save them as a “.STL” file. There are many such programs available, ranging from very sophisticated programs used for commercial designs which cost many thousands of dollars or free ware. I like Tinkercad. It is used only in “the cloud” online and is not downloaded to your computer https://www.tinkercad.com/. It is hosted by Autodesk the makers of the high-end software Autocad. I first learned of Tinkercad from watching some of Luke Towan’s excellent model railroading videos. I discovered a series of extremely well-produced YouTube videos by Promo Ambitions https://promoambitions.com/tinkercad/. These teach Tinkercad in a very logical step-by-step way. These are some of the best instructional videos I have watched – on any topic. I was designing my own simple objects using Tinkercad within three hours.
I am absolutely delighted with this printer
and don’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone who is looking for their first 3D
printer.
