Hi im looking to buy my first printer, at the moment my budget is not too great so ive been looking towards the DIY kits as im confident with construction. ive been looking at these.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/WER-Prusa-Mendel-Aluminum-Frame/dp/B01462X6OO/ref=sr\_1\_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1445603520&sr=8-9&keywords=prusa+i3

http://www.amazon.co.uk/WER-Aluminum-filament-Printer-materials/dp/B0148CXWRS/ref=sr\_1\_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1445603520&sr=8-12&keywords=prusa+i3

But finding it difficult to see reviews and such, if anyone has any opinions they would be greatly appreciated, Thank You :slight_smile:

Prusa i3 designs in general are fairly reliable and well-performing. This is one of the Chinese variants, and I’ve had good experiences with them. However, 3D printer kits are nowhere near ready to print as soon as you finish building, and especially if it’s your first printer it may take you a lot of research as well as trial and error to calibrate and tune it well. If you have the patience for such a task, then it’s a great printer for the price. One thing of note with Prusa i3s, though: in my experience since they’re built with the bare essentials for a frame, the build quality isn’t all that great and slight bumps can misalign the axis, giving you less-than-perfect angles. This is particularly apparent in the aluminum single-sheet Prusa i3 such as the one you linked, since there are no supports at all for the single sheet frame (most wood and acrylic designs mitigate this somewhat). The only two exceptions I can think of to this flaw are the P3Steel and the Wanhao Duplicator i3, both of which are built and reonforced with structural steel.

Hi! great thanks for the reply, it was really helpfull!!! i am fully prepared for much time spent calibrating and testing and repeating ha. OK so i think i found one that has the extra support you were talking about, here it is. Amazon.co.uk

Do you think this model wont have the warping issue?

That printer should be much better than the aluminum printer in mitigating Z-axis wobble or misalignment. The X and Y axes will still be slightly unstable, but the only way to solve that on any Prusa i3 is to construct it well and try to minimize how often you move it around.

If misalignment is a huge issue to you, the best advice I can give is to save up a bit more and buy a P3Steel kit instead, or possibly just buy this kit and upgrade to the P3Steel frame later on (the P3Steel doesn’t require any extra parts compared to the standard Prusa i3 as far as I’m aware). It’s constructed entirely of lasercut steel, and maintains perfect 90 degree axes even if you’re lifting it in the air (and is as solid as a rock, I might add).

EDIT: I did a bit of digging on the UK Amazon website and found a Wanhao Duplicator i3 for 30 pounds more.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/3D-printer-Wanhao-duplicator-technologyoutlet/dp/B00YSL8GQM/ref=sr\_1\_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1445634675&sr=8-1&keywords=wanhao+duplicator+i3

I can’t speak personally for how solid it is, but seeing as it’s made of powder-coated steel I imagine it’s quite a bit more solid than the Prusa i3,

hey thanks for that, ok so i think im going to go for the prusa. only because i would like to construct it myself as much effort as this will be id really like to get to grips with exactly how this works and am fairly looking forward to the build anyway. there is a steel constructed one on amazon but its from an italian company and they dont seem to have put ANY information about it in the description