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3D printing

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Metum7:
Don't know if this is the right category to put this in, but do any of you guys now of some relatively low cost 3d printing services out there? I don't really care about finish or color and things like that, as I plan to do some post-processing myself. Just plain old 3d printing is what I need

PlayBox:
i don't know much about 3D printing but lieslieann a person who knows about 3d printing here says its not really good to use 3d printing services because its not worth it to 3d print if you don't have a 3d printer yourself

MIGHTY CHICKEN:

--- Quote from: PlayBox on Thu, 17 November 2022, 16:27:14 ---i don't know much about 3D printing but lieslieann a person who knows about 3d printing here says its not really good to use 3d printing services because its not worth it to 3d print if you don't have a 3d printer yourself

--- End quote ---

Have you tried any of these services yourself or have some basic knowledge of printing? There is still very much a place for them. Printers can be very expensive and hard to tune. It's not a skill that everyone wants to learn or invest in. You can print a lot of things before costs reach a point where you may justify a printer.

I have one myself but have only gotten to print sloppy prints in PETG and PLA, but places such as JLC have great services with a variety of printing techniques and materials (its the one I use most frequently aside from smaller shops), they have great resin quality with some materials I could not imagine being able to print myself in any capacity, great for mass keycaps too, tight tolerances. I suppose OP could also look for local friends or makers who offer such services depending on their location. Plenty locals around where I live in various hobbies offering them.

Leslieann:
I used to do printing on demand... It's not cheap (when done right) and without knowledge of 3d printing it's going to cost you even more.
For example, one of the more common services out, who gave online prices only priced it with 10 or 15% infill. That's great if you want a cheap trinket  but anything you want to use needs more, for example I do keyboards at 3 perimeters and 40% infill. Had a lot of problems with customers getting sticker shock once we started discussing what they actually needed and had a few bad reviews because of people not knowing what they needed.

More importantly though, by the time you get something you can sort of use it's going to cost you as much as a printer will cost you and it still won't be as good as you want.
Almost everything you see/buy/use has gone through multiple revisions, unless you're using someone else's plans which are known to be good (and you better know them personally or multiple references) it's probably not going to work the first time. If it's your first project expect several revisions before you get it right and it will add up fast.

With a printer not only can you rip off prototypes for a couple dollars instead of tens of dollars, but you can test small sections. Say you made a change to one corner or you added a rotary switch, you can print out just that corner and test it before you print the whole thing.

If you do decide to have someone do it for you have them look over your design first, it can save you a lot of hassle. They will look it over but they aren't going to look for issues with your design, only how it will print.


--- Quote from: MIGHTY CHICKEN on Thu, 17 November 2022, 17:27:34 ---Have you tried any of these services yourself or have some basic knowledge of printing? There is still very much a place for them. Printers can be very expensive and hard to tune. It's not a skill that everyone wants to learn or invest in. You can print a lot of things before costs reach a point where you may justify a printer.
--- End quote ---

It depends A LOT on what you're printing.
Want a keychain, sure you can do a bunch for the price of a printer, want a keyboard printed with each part in one piece, not so much.
I pretty much won't fire up my big printer for someone for less than $50 and most jobs on it tend to run into the hundreds.

MIGHTY CHICKEN:

--- Quote from: Leslieann on Thu, 17 November 2022, 20:47:16 ---It depends A LOT on what you're printing.
Want a keychain, sure you can do a bunch for the price of a printer, want a keyboard printed with each part in one piece, not so much.
I pretty much won't fire up my big printer for someone for less than $50 and most jobs on it tend to run into the hundreds.

--- End quote ---
This sounds about right, especially for a single person. Although it's still a big hunk of money, for the larger printers. JLC sla for 60 runs for about 50 bucks and gives a pretty decent result. I'm sure I could get my fdm to make something passable with enough tuning but for any person looking to make a one-off some github design I still think its fine enough to get it printed from elsewhere. If you planned on prototyping a design for later on, having one right next to you does the job better than outsourcing over and over. Also apologies if I passed off as rude in any way earlier, the question was directed towards playbox who seemed to be taking words off of ya. I wouldn't assume there's no value in a service or no reason to get a 3d print without a printer.

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