It’s been a looooong time since I’ve posted. I’m sorry. I kind of fell away from it. You know how it is – real life gets in the way sometimes.
Just recently, I’ve been thinking ahead to Christmas and what I might buy myself as a present. I’ve been going between a new Xbox One S or a 3D printer. However, I don’t really get the time to play the consoles I already own (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii), so why would I add another one to the list? I’ve been doing a lot of reading about 3D printers, and I’ve made my decision. I’m going for a 3D printer. There are LOADS of printers on the market at the moment, and they’ve really come down in price in the past 18 months or so.
Even though the price have dropped, the Ultimakers are still way outside my price range. The smaller kit-form printers are much nearer my wife-approval and price range. To that end, I’ve decided on a RepRap Prusa i3 Pro B from Geeetech. At the moment, it’s sitting at £169 GBP on Amazon, and Christmas is just around the corner. I like the RepRap printers because they’re open source and there’s a massive community of support offering guidance on how to get the best out of your device and the opportunity to remix and upgrade.
I’ve read a lot about the i3 Pro B and watched loads of YouTube videos showing the setup. It’s a long setup process – some people took 3 days, others just a day. Knowing my luck, it’ll take me a whole week and it STILL won’t work. For me though, I like the challenge of the kit form. I’ll learn exactly how it all works and hangs together, which means remixing it will be a little easier. Oh, and there’s a bit of personal pride in being able to look at it and think “I did that!”. Let’s face it though – if I didn’t like to make things and show them off, I wouldn’t be buying the printer, would I?
