YES! I finally got one (about a month or two ago), been wanting one for a long time. I did a gig and got some extra funds (mainly, I was able to finally talk the wife into it). So yes, I got a 3D printer!! I did about three days of research and Googling. I had thought I found one and I was about to buy it, then of course, I found another one that caught my eye, it happened to be on sale, so I ended up doing research on that one too. It turned out to be a lot better. Metal body not acrylic. So I ended up with that one. It is a Monoprice Maker Select V2.1, a rebrand of the Wanhao Duplicator i3. A great machine, and very popular which was a factor in my decision. Great community support. Worked great right out of the box, only took about six screws or so to assemble. I did order the MOSFET board to offload the heat bed amperage. Since the board has cheap skinny Chinese traces it is prone to overheat and melt down. I would like to avoid that. The MOSFET does this.

First thing printed…a liver hahah due to my transplant. Then a replacement knob for our Kitchen Aid Mixer. I have tried to print useful things and not dumb trinkets. I don’t want to fill my desk and shelves with plastic knick-knacks. After I printed a few pieces I went straight into printing printer upgrades. The Z-braces were the first thing I printed and it is the best upgrade I have done so far. It shows immediate improvement on your printed items. Of course, now there is a rear Z-brace kit, which I would have done but I do not want to reprint everything and redo the printer. It is solid so as is, so I am leaving it as is.

So far the printer is awesome. I have many plans for it. I  can now print prototypes for my projects and custom boxes for my electronics, this is perfect! I have already started to dabble in creating my own custom “things”.