Built vs Bought?

Introduction

Within the world of 3D printing, before the boom of i3 style printers from Prusa, Creality & others and certainly before Bambu Labs' iPhone of 3D printers the X1C. People designed and built their own printers. RepRap was founded in 2005 and became a noble effort to create and design a printer capable of self-replication — Rep from replication, Rap from rapid prototyping — and ideally make it out of easily sourced parts. These RepRap printers were certainly not pretty, but paved the way for makers to obtain additive manufacturing for their workshop or home. Additive manufacturing opens the door for creating parts out of plastic that are typically unfeasible or impossible with normal modes of manufacturing.

While RepRap was chugging along, Josef Průša created the Prusa i3 printer. A bed-slinging design with an aluminium frame that is straightforward to manufacture en masse. Prusa's printers exploded in popularity and other companies began joining in on the new market. Companies like Creality, Lulzbot, Ultimaker and others started selling readily assembled printers to the masses and the 3D printing craze soared to new heights.

Then came along the VORON design group and their CoreXY printers like the V1, V2, V0 and Trident. They produced incredibly well engineered designs and documentation to back up the building process, people were able to build very nice machines at home that are capable of high quality, high speed operation. Which at the time could not be said for their retail counterparts. Slowly, enthusiasts would flock to building VORON printers as well as other design groups who provided their own spin on what a good 3D printer should be — Vzbot, Rook, ZeroG and others.

Then Bambu Labs stepped in with their new offering taking inspiration from the likes of Apple to create a ready-to-use 3D printer with advanced features to remove the guess-work out of learning correct operation of a 3D printer. You could buy an X1C and be up and running within an hour of opening the box, that's hard to compare to say a VORON V2 where assembly can take upwards of 20 hours alone excluding setup and calibration.

The question then needs to be asked …

Should you build, or buy your next 3D printer?

Choosing whether to build or buy your next 3D printer depends on your goals, preferences, and level of involvement in the hobby. Building a printer from scratch offers a truely unique opportunity to familiarize yourself with every aspect of the machine. It's akin to the enthusiast who enjoys tinkering with their car or electronics, gaining a deeper understanding of how things work and learning a lot along the way.

However, it's important to recognize that not everyone has the time, resources, or inclination to embark on a DIY printer project. Just as CNC machinists may not necessarily build their own 5-axis machines, many individuals opt to purchase pre-assembled printers from reputable brands. These ready-to-use printers offer convenience and relative reliability, sparing users the hassle of assembly and calibration.

Today, one could choose to buy a Bambu Labs X1C or a Creality K1 and use it as is, very much a turnkey solution. Alternatively, investing in a Prusa printer, while not as feature-rich as some other models, offers a balance of reliability and performance with the added benefit of being well-calibrated and user-friendly. Ultimately, the decision between building and buying comes down to your individual preferences, priorities, and level of involvement in the 3D printing community.

However, tomorrow's list of readily-obtainable 3D printers will be very different to today's. While we have incredible machines like the X1C or even industrial offerings like the 22 IDEX. It's hard to say how much more advanced printers will become in the future. The market has been disrupted and it's an arms race to create the next best machine. Design groups like VORON and VzBot are too trying to keep up with open-source alternatives and I do see them staying in this race a little while longer.

Whether or not you build or buy the printer you use, learning how to operated it and obtain maximum performance is the real skill. The future of manufacturing is 3D printing, while not always producing 3D printed parts but even using them in other methods of manufacture as well. Whether using 3D printed parts as fixtures in milling or turning, creating moulds from printed parts or even other methods not yet invented.