http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2015-Many-kinds-of-language-DIY-sunhokey-prusa-i3-3d-printer-2-rolls-New-Arrival-filament/32490431488.html?spm=2114.01010108.3.214.1bvjLU&ws_ab_test=201556_8,201527_2_71_72_73_74_75,201560_4


No seller reviews, but I think AliPay is pretty secure so wondering it's worth a punt...

I'm also working on a UV resin printer at the moment, got a 405nm laser diode and driver on their way from the States.

That is very cheap. Too good to be true?

I'd imagine so, but Ali Express do offer a money back guarantee type thing, although I've no idea how reliable it is.

It seems to require you to return the item if it's not as described, and I imagine the cost of posting a 3D printer back to china is not going to be insignificant. 

Prusa i3 MK2 announced

http://prusaprinters.org/original-prusa-i3-mk2-release/

I assume once the schematics are released they will start to appear on aliexpress.

Which will probably mean the i3 clones will drop in price.

They really seem to have made some great improvements with this upgrade.  I'm thinking of buying one later on. 

So what are recommendations for 3D printers worth getting that are under £500(ish) and available to buy now (i.e. not kickstarer/pre-order/etc), have decent build quality, useful & easy to source materials, able to print more than 5cm², etc?

Either a shitty kit from Aliexpress for about £50-150, or spend a fair bit more than £500 for something that works at least some of the time.

Or back my kickstarter and I'll build myself a house with the money before announcing that the project failed in 4 years time.

Thought so. :(

I have two of these.  I paid $349 for the first one and less than $300 for the second with 3 spools of filament. The only bad thing about them is you have to use their filament.  I am going to mod one of them and swap the board with an Arduino and RAMPS.

About 2 1/2 years later and I've finally pushed the button and bought one in the AliExpress 11.11 sales.

~£150 - Anet A8 Auto Levelling

So I've been using it since boxing day and managed to get a few decent prints out. I'm quite impressed for the price (and probably more impressed with my ability to actually getting it functioning reasonably well!)

The printer I bought apparently had some setting on fire issues, so I bought a separate MOSFET board for the heated bed to try and prevent such fires.

Initial prints have been to improve the printer.

My successful prints to date (none designed by me, all from Thingiverse)

Filament guide


Cooling duct
 

GoPro adapter for my Mobius action camera


New frame to hold the mainboard and MOSFET board


Raspberry Pi Camera Holder



 

"Cooling duct"

Are you sure? It looks like either a painful sex toy, or a toilet seat for a midget.

How many failed prints and pasta incidents? Super impressed by the quality you're getting already.

I printed two calibration cubes successfully straight out. Played with some settings then tweaked things, printed another and it failed halfway through, but it was far better quality than the others so I stayed with those slicer settings and made sure the hot end height/level was spot on.

Since then I've had a few prints screw up on the first layer or two, so I'd stop, relevel, make sure the end was clean (yj) and start again. Otherwise nothing else has failed after the first few layers have gone down nicely.

No spaghetti incidents thankfully, seen plenty of photos of those! I've had some corner warping which usually means poor adhesion to the bed/surface, that should be easily sorted.

I am pretty surprised how well they're coming out after seeing the disastrous attempts on the Facebook groups.

Had my first pasta print last night



The cheap masking tape did a rubbish job of staying stuck to the bed and being a good surface to print on.

I have now got some blue masking tape which a lot of people recommend, and so far my prints are so much better. Adhered to the bed nice and flat, no peeling.

Impressive results :) Do you get spaghetti if it's not stuck down properly? And do you just stick the tape down then print onto that?

Pretty much. You get the spaghetti if the print moves (that should be in the centre of the bed) because it hasn't adhered properly, and then the head is printing into thin air, rather than adding the next layers to what it had already printed.

Put the tape down, check there's no bubbles, do some levelling to make sure the printer knows how low it should go and where to start the first print. Too high and the plastic won't stick, too low and the head will drag along the bed. We're talking 0.1 mm differences. The recommended way is to fold a piece of paper then use that as the thickness between head and bed. When you feel a little drag, but can still move it, you've got the correct height.

Yep, blue tape is much better

I bought myself a Flashforge Creator Pro last week: a Christmas return to Technology Outlet reduced to £600.  I've been too busy to set it up till now and I had a few hours fiddling to get the print to stick but it looks like its printing its first test block OK now.

I've tried to upload a piccie, but uploading seems a bit borked atm.

Just seen your video on Twitter. Looking good!

No idea how that thing is controlled, and I can't compare this to any other options, but OctoPi/Print seems like such a great solution for controlling and managing 3D printers.

It uses the Cura slicer. You upload you Cura slicing profile. Then you can just drag and drop stls to print. So simple.