eBay score!!

I'm no expert but this is what my friend had to say:


I hope the expensive machines get cheaper though! So even if we can't do it, the price of getting other people to print it for us gets cheaper!

-plarnold

Makes sense, the layers probably don't cool evenly on the cheaper machines, also some come with heated plates or somrthing I've read which then need 'calibration'. But I'm sure as things will improve as time passes

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I had only looked into 3D printers a little but I thought they were quite affordable now and the plastic material that they use is pretty cheap too. What turned me off and what I think is the most important part of 3D printing for duplicating parts and such is a 3D Scanner which is much more expensive. Without a scanned all you can print would be something developed in a CAD Software program. To me, unless you have access to somebody else's scanner I wouldn't have a used for the printer. My use would be to scan a part and in a CAD program make some changes before printing like smoke box doors scaled down to fit perfectly on a defaced train or specially created couplers.

A few months back I found a site full of pre-scanned 3D models which included a whole load of plarail items including unusual track pieces. I'll try to find the bookmark later this evening