CTC Printer & Intro

[james_c_rocks]

Hi,

A quick intro, I'm an ex-IT geek and proud of it. I'm 61 and retired a year or so back (following redundancy) to write and do some other stuff. I love science fiction (read, watch, used to play) and now I'm an author having written my first book, "Stars, Hide Your Fires" (first of a trilogy, called "The Abyssal Void War").

I'm notoriously difficult to buy stuff for (especially birthdays) because I have most of the stuff I want and streaming knocks some of the "stuffing" out of being a BluRay/DVD collector. So, for my 61st, my wife bought me a CTC 3D Printer and being the busy/lazy [expletive deleted] I am, 6 months later, I've only just got around to setting it up. As one might expect I have questions

• Where's the best place for beginner tutorials? I've been looking around for tutorials and, while there are some, they seem either "iffy" or a bit too advanced for me at my current state of play.
• What filament can/should I use? The printer manual says I should source from CTC which is exactly what you'd expect a company to say if they want to maintain steady trade with their customers. There's a problem there because of the prices, though marginally cheaper than Amazon, which are in dollars so is clearly non-UK and also that there will be significant delivery charges. More than that, reels of PLA/ABS (1.75mm) are far cheaper than either on eBay so, is there any reason I should buy only from CTC (or even from Amazon)?
• Is there any better software out there? The printer comes with "MakerWare" and some samples so I guess I should ask if there's anything better out there, preferably free (I'm retired so I don't have a lot of spare cash), that would work with it?
• What's a good basic set of colours? Obviously, that will depend upon a given project but I'm after a good basic set.

Thanks for any advice

James

[RichardM]

Welcome to the weird world of 3Dp - I'm a total novice myself having just purchased an Anet A2 ket & bolting it together.
With respect to mods / upgrades - hardware or software/firmware I would suggest playing with what you've got and get some insight into the machine first.
I bought the A2 with half a mind to mod frequently and drastically assuming all the web reports of problems were intrinsic in this model... but having built it using correct sized bolts and T nuts etc. (bought in separately) and ensuring everything was lined up correctly and tight I am very impressed with the (almost) out of the box quality. But remember I'm a novice so I may be easily impressed.
Bought 10 rolls of PLA filament 100g each from ebay - seems OK but have bought a 1Kg reel from 3DQF $12.99 inc VAT (free shipping) - service was excellent - 3dqf.co.uk.
Best of luck with the new toy.
................... I have noticed this site has very little activity - I joined 'cause it is UK based but find PrinterKnowledge more active.

Cheers

Richard

[james_c_rocks]

Thx for the reply Richard and yes, it does seem quite low activity.

I ended up buying a rainbow pack as well, Amazon UK does one for £6.99 (Go Inks® Rainbow Pack of 3D Printer Filament ... it's free delivery for me coz I'm on prime but it looks to be free anyway. My logic was buying a lot of colours frequently, establish what I use most and buy bigger reels of those.

I'm still working my way through the manual for my printer (it was assembled but I think it is based on a kit that they, the suppliers, assemble) and getting much confused. On the plus side, I have printed a couple of things ... a heart downloaded from Thingiverse so I could impress my wife and what looks to be a second spool to attach to the back of my printer. So far I have only printed from an SD card (even the downloaded one I copied across to print) but the printer is USB attached so I reckon there must be a way to print directly from the attached computer.

It would be interesting to hear how you get on with your printer and with 3D printing generally so ...

Again, thanks for the reply

James