Task: Purchase a 3D Printer for Designing and Printing Parts for Retro Computers
Needed: 3D Printer
Time: 30-60 minutes
Disclosure: Note that as an eBay Partner Network Affiliate, I may earn from qualifying purchases.
Introduction
Over the last several years I have found myself purchasing more and more 3D-printed parts for my retro computers. For example, I recently paid nearly $20 to a U.S. seller on eBay for a bracket to hold my Gotek flash floppy drive inside my Amiga 500 (see photo below). I knew when I was buying this that it cost the seller pennies to print this small item and that I should have my own printer for these kinds of items. After seeing several additional items I wanted, I finally decided to pull the trigger and purchase a 3D printer.
Instructions
There are lots of choices out there for entry-level, mid-level, and professional 3D printers for sale. The process of choosing a printer can be a little intimidating. Several things to consider are price (what is your budget?), brand quality and reputation, and size. As for price, I decided I did not want to spend more than $1000 on my first printer. To pick a brand, I watched a ton of YouTube videos, read a lot of reviews online, and followed several Facebook groups to see what people where buying and what the comments were.
Ultimately, I decided to purchase a Bambu Lab P1S from Micro Center. I paid $650 for the printer. I added another $200 for their warranty which allows me to bring it back after a year or two and apply the purchase price toward a better model. I am making the gamble that this endeavor will be successful, and I will want a bigger and better printer after a year.
Other brands I have heard good things about include Prusa and Elegoo.
Comments
Key features of the P1S included the Automatic Material System (AMS) shown on top of the printer below. This came included with my unit and allows up to four filament spools to be automatically fed to the printer making it easy to print objects with four colors. Another feature I was looking for was an enclosure to keep the particulates, fumes, and noise contained. My Bambu includes a carbon filter for fumes. I ordered a HEPA filter for it as well from Voxel. Also, Bambu comes with an easy-to-use phone app for interacting with the printer and easy to use slicer software (Bambu Studio) that prepares the object for printing. This was all seamless and user-friendly. I got from boxed item to doing my first print in about an hour. Setup of the unit was super easy. This is a popular printer and there is a very active community of users out there to learn from and interact with.
This is a good time to get into 3D printing. There are lots of STL files for retrocomputing. For example, here are some Commodore 64 objects available on Thingverse. Here are some Atari items also from Thingverse.