[JMay]

Reading through your post would say that you are where I was @3 years ago, wanting to take the plunge but wondering if my fossilised brain (I’m close to retirement age) would wrap round the CAD and the printing process. I to have some 2D CAD experience which was years previous and had held back from 3D CAD after dabbling with AutoCAD and struggling to achieve anything.

I dived in buying a cheap printer Annet 8 kit for £137 and downloaded Autodesk123D Design (no longer available) which is modelling software not CAD. Many trips to Youtube where there is plenty of tutorials and I was off and running designing chassis’. I have now progressed to using multiple packages which are more complex as my skill grew and the need to draw bodyshells, but there are many free CAD/modelling programs to try. The learning curve on the modelling programs is not steep as you can see straight away what you are drawing as usually based on pre drawn shapes i.e. boxes, spheres, pyramids etc which can be modified, added or subtracted from each other. These programs are ideal for drawing chassis’ as fundamentally a basic chassis is a collection of 3d boxes, i.e. a flat plate with 4 upstand boxes for axle supports, 2-3 tubes for posts and a hole for the guide and a cut out to take a Slot It pod. Thingieverse website has several slot car chassis you can download and print and with some practice these can be modified.

For the printers the cheap Prusa clone kits are great if you want to learn the nuts and bolts of printing but will say you will spend a lot of time keep it running and modifying. Better bet these days are the sub £350 printers like the Ender 3 or Creality CR10 , which only required the tower to be assembled and the plugs connected, these will be more accurate and run @50% faster than the cheap Prusa clones, last longer plus much online support. I moved from the Annet to Creality CR10 Mini  then added a Creality CR10S (much larger print volume) which runs nearly twice as fast as the Annet did with a few mods.

For the chassis printing, typical times vary greatly as depends on the volume of filament needed, but to give some idea a 1/32 18mm wide F1 chassis is under 2 hours, a recent 1/24 design with integral motor pod was coming out at 6+ hours.

Cheers
                 JMay.

[MrFlippant]

Cheap clones from ebay or China are for people already familiar with 3D printing and/or those willing to put in even more testing, tuning, and tweaking, and usually mods and upgrades, to get it working.

If you have a tight budget, a Creality Ender 3 is a good place to start.

And Fusion 360 is not hard to learn with the free tutorials online.

[Savage GT]

In that case, as the dragon's say, "I'm out"
Maybe another time, but for now I'll hold off 

[Bazzer]

I went down the 3D printing road about 18 month's ago to manufacture parts for my RC competition models.

Whilst I am fairly capable in mechatronics, I did not want a printer where I was making parts to make the damned thing work, rather I wanted to be making parts for the models.

I bought a second hand Dremel 3D20 printer, I paid £200.00 for it, this printer is totally enclosed, this gives some advantages in that the chamber is not really effected by outside temperature.

There are all kinds of stories on the net about the Dremel only being able to use it's own brand filament, well this turns out to be absolute tosh, I have used many different types of filament including carbon fibre filled material that gives stunning results, I have also printed with flexible materials and clears.

Probably the most adventurous thing I have made is a fuel tank for an RC model, the PLA material looks to have a pretty good resistance to methanol and nitro methane. The tank is of the clunk tank style which are very popular in RC flying, I also printed the rubber bung and caps.

I have not printed anything for slot cars yet but will do soon.

There are very good 3D CAD programmes that are simple to use but they are not free in my experience, many people recommend Fusion 360 but that is a bit of an overkill for 3D printed parts and is not without complications on the licensing side of things.

I will post pictures of the work I have done if asked but remember they are not slot car parts.

Barrie

[Kevan]

My first 3D printer was an Ender 3 Pro, for the money they are great printers but they have limitations.

After a few months I decided 3D printing was my new hobby alongside Slot cars and decided I needed a better printer and bought a Qidi X-Plus which is a bigger printer with a bed that moves in the Z-axis as opposed to the Ender X-Y. It has an enclosure and sold as a commercial grade printer...not quite true!

Printing in PLA is easy but as a material has it's limitations, the better materials need much higher temps which means a much better 'extruder/hot end' and this is the Qidi achilles heel as it's very difficult to upgrade as the parts aren't the same as other printers.

If I was buying again (and I'm thinking of replacing the Qidi now) I'd get a current Prusa printer, they have a profound reputaion.

[MrFlippant]

I can say that, excepting my own mistakes due to learning the ins and outs of 3d printing, my Prusa machines have been unstoppable workhorses. They've more than paid for themselves in commissioned print sales and are printing more often than they are idle. Money well spent. :)

I hope to have a new 3DP design to share very soon, hopefully debuted on the Zoom chat tomorrow. Nothing ground breaking, other than it being something I have not personally done until now. :)

[daisy8]

For the printers the cheap Prusa kits are great if you want to learn the nuts and bolts of printing but will say you will spend a lot of time keep it running and modifying. Better bet these days are the sub £350 printers like the Ender 3 or Creality CR10 , which only required the tower to be assembled and the plugs connected, these will be more accurate and run @50% faster than the cheap Prusa clones, last longer plus much online support. I moved from the Annet to Creality CR10 Mini  then added a Creality CR10S (much larger print volume) which runs nearly twice as fast as the Annet did with a few mods.

For the chassis printing, typical times vary greatly as depends on the volume of filament needed, but to give some idea a 1/32 18mm wide F1 chassis is under 2 hours, a recent 1/24 design with integral motor pod was coming out at 6+ hours.

Cheers
                 JMay.

You are right. Adventurer Prusa 3d printer was the first ever 3D printer I bought.  I’m new to 3D printing. I searched for it on this article. I loved how simple it was straight out of the box to get set up and running. For me, plugging it in via ethernet was the easiest thing to do, and that way I didn't have to get up and fiddle with anything if I needed to update any firmware on the machine or when I wanted to print, I could do it all from my laptop.

[MrFlippant]

Prusa is a brand, like Kleenex is for tissues. It's important not to conflate "Prusa" with cartesian aka "bedslinger" filament (or FFF) printers. Prusa's wasn't even the first. The first one was a contraption of all kinds of off the shelf parts from hardware stores. Prusa (Josef et al) came up with some bespoke parts for bedslinger printers and started a business of it, eventually making their own complete printers under the i3 category. Prusa i3 MK1, Prusa i3 Mk2, Prusa i3 Mk3, and so on. 

You could say some printers are Prusa "clones" but most of the time, they're not even true clones, just another i3 bedslinger printer of some kind, such as the MANY Creality printers, Elegoo, Anycubic, and so many other brands pumping out the same old stuff with cheap parts and questionable designs.

The Flashforge Adventurer on the page linked above is literally none of those things other than it looks like it might be cartesian as opposed to Core-XY, which is a whole other discussion.

If possible, to avoid confusion when speaking of printers, particularly when recommending specific printers and brands, only use "Prusa" when referring to official, genuine, Prusa made printers and products. If it's not Prusa brand, just call it a 3d printer, or a bedslinger (if the bed moves forward and backward) or an i3 or cartesian.

"Cheap Prusa kit" is almost always NOT a thing.

Thanks!
- That Guy

[Kevan]

..."Cheap Prusa kit" is almost always NOT a thing.

Thanks!
- That Guy

Cheap Prusa kit isn't a thing at all unless it's 2nd hand, Prusa is Prusa, if it's not a Prusa it's something else.

[JMay]

Oh dear,
              Just to satisfy the 3d printing experts, have amended my post to include the word 'clone' which if you follow the context of the post was the intention when I wrote the post 19 months ago, highlighting clone kits and the pitfalls. 

Cheers

JMay