CTC Printer & Intro
Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2018 9:07 am
Hi,
A quick intro, I'm an ex-IT geek and proud of it. I'm 61 and retired a year or so back (following redundancy) to write and do some other stuff. I love science fiction (read, watch, used to play) and now I'm an author having written my first book, "Stars, Hide Your Fires" (first of a trilogy, called "The Abyssal Void War").
I'm notoriously difficult to buy stuff for (especially birthdays) because I have most of the stuff I want and streaming knocks some of the "stuffing" out of being a BluRay/DVD collector. So, for my 61st, my wife bought me a CTC 3D Printer and being the busy/lazy [expletive deleted] I am, 6 months later, I've only just got around to setting it up. As one might expect I have questions
James
A quick intro, I'm an ex-IT geek and proud of it. I'm 61 and retired a year or so back (following redundancy) to write and do some other stuff. I love science fiction (read, watch, used to play) and now I'm an author having written my first book, "Stars, Hide Your Fires" (first of a trilogy, called "The Abyssal Void War").
I'm notoriously difficult to buy stuff for (especially birthdays) because I have most of the stuff I want and streaming knocks some of the "stuffing" out of being a BluRay/DVD collector. So, for my 61st, my wife bought me a CTC 3D Printer and being the busy/lazy [expletive deleted] I am, 6 months later, I've only just got around to setting it up. As one might expect I have questions
- Where's the best place for beginner tutorials? I've been looking around for tutorials and, while there are some, they seem either "iffy" or a bit too advanced for me at my current state of play.
- What filament can/should I use? The printer manual says I should source from CTC which is exactly what you'd expect a company to say if they want to maintain steady trade with their customers. There's a problem there because of the prices, though marginally cheaper than Amazon, which are in dollars so is clearly non-UK and also that there will be significant delivery charges. More than that, reels of PLA/ABS (1.75mm) are far cheaper than either on eBay so, is there any reason I should buy only from CTC (or even from Amazon)?
- Is there any better software out there? The printer comes with "MakerWare" and some samples so I guess I should ask if there's anything better out there, preferably free (I'm retired so I don't have a lot of spare cash), that would work with it?
- What's a good basic set of colours? Obviously, that will depend upon a given project but I'm after a good basic set.
James