Welcome to the SeeMeCNC Community

Hey all, been following this tech for several years since I discovered the reprap open source projects. Finally I decided to dive right in, but the amount of information available today has been morally and spiritually crushing me. Today is the day I feel I finally decided to just go with it. I've been looking around the forums and they seem lively enough for me to feel I won't be throwing money down the drain like I love to do, reading about how the support and the quality of seemecnc's printers lives up the the photos posted on the site, since lets face it, anyone can post a pretty photo and yet fail to deliver in the end, I now feel the confidence to commit. However, since I live quite a far distance away from my family home in the US, shipping times, customs fees, and the fragility of this kind of precision tech has been giving me the chills.

I've decided on the Orion pre-built model to be the wisest choice for me, since I work around 12-14 hours a day, 6 days a week, building a kit would be extremely time consuming. Seeing the new packaging in the updated manual, has alleviated the fears of transit damage, and the customs and clearing fees I found are not a problem since I get customs relief from the government in the name of Science (hopefully, though they won't end up too bad based on the online calc).

So moving past that I decided the best way to boost my confidence was to ask the community two simple questions.

-should I get one?

-what else should I get right away? Any spare parts, upgrades, or any suggestion at all?

From the software point of view, I'm quite familiar with just about all the software components, arduino, and CAD software, since that was something I could study these past years without spending any money.

As a side note, seems that at the moment there is a free shipping sale going on that includes 2 rolls of filament which is great, unless I'm misinformed, half blind, or just crazy. Also even with no replies, it is more than likely I will still order within the day to alleviate the stress of dragging my feet for so long, this is more of a venting stress/ saying hi! kind of thread.

tldr variant- Greets from Haifa Israel, where Muslim, Jew, Christian, Druze, and Ba'ha'i live together and make things together in peace! Ordering an Orion Pre-built, what else should I grab right away?

Welcome to the forum!
I would get the ORION and the filament it comes with and use it for awhile before thinking
about upgrades. Once you have it and get to use it you may think of something you would
like to upgrade on it but I really think upgrades should come later. If you plan to use PLA
filament you would want to print out one of the fans that direct air down past the nozzle to
help cool the PLA. Thingiverse.com has many such ducts for this purpose. You will most
likely need something to aid in the adhesion of the ABS to the glass. Hair spray or glue sticks
are the most common items for this and you can search this forum to find threads about using
them. It's an especially good deal now with the free shipping and two spools of filament.
Happy Printing!

Orion seems to be the right choice for you since you haven't the time to build it. That is, to my mind, a little unfortunate as you learn a lot about how the machine functions and how to diagnose it by putting it together. As you also found, though, the forum here is vibrant and helpful.

One of the other members here, Cope I think, put it best in another post - this is still more art than science. Managing your expectations is the big thing. Don't expect it to print perfectly the first time, nor any time when you change anything, even filament brands. The Orion will give you a better chance, but it's not a guarantee. Expect prints to fail.

The technology in the printer is pretty mature and the parts fairly common and reliable. If I were worried about availability and shipping time, I might consider keeping a spare set of heating resistors and a thermistor around, maybe a spare nozzle or a couple in different sizes. If money were no object, I might even keep a spare Rambo on hand, depending on how critical it is for the machine to be operational.

I'm just beginning to calibrate mine, but it went together well and seems to be working fine right out of the gate. The SeeMeCNC guys have been great about getting one part replaced on mine that was off a little. It likely didn't need to be replaced, in hindsight, but they sent it right out to keep me happy

I think you'll be glad you did it, once it arrives and the angst eases a little. I've been watching the industry a couple years, like you, and finally made the move when I saw a Rostock MAX in person.

Welcome to the club!
Dave

Ah the building aspect doesn't bother me too much, since I've been following all the reprap projects since early designs and managed to watch plenty of assembly videos and such even though that doesn't amount to actual hands on experience, I get plenty of that working with slightly more complicated fabrication of complicated technology at the Technion labs, its something I will get to in time as more free time becomes available. Only hitch I snagged is my health insurance putting me just around 70 bucks over my monthly credit limit if I were to order the printer today and now I'm forced to wait till sunday morning to dash out to my bank and bump up the limit several hundred, not to mention stupidly not verifying my paypal account for an alternate payment route ahead of time.

Hopefully the free shipping option won't disappear when I finally get around to ordering, them vultures at customs count shipping as part of the actual product pricing!

Oh well, soon... very soon, I can experiment with lost PLA casting of aluminum parts... at least I have something to dream about.

Welcome to the Delta community!

I think you made the right choice on the Orion. I was in your shoes when i bought my Max and i had to spend a weeks worth of vacation to build it. It was just me and the kids putting it together for a whole week. Although it was alot of fun i would have rather spent my time printing with the kids. Good Luck and Happy Printing!!!

You should definitely get the Orion! The guys at SeeMeCNC and also the people on this forum are great and a huge help when you need it!

As far as getting the ABS to stick well on glass I suggest putting Kapton tape over the glass and whipping up some ABS Juice. With that combination you cant go wrong! The ABS Juice is easy, just mix about 4 ounces of pure acetone (no fingernail polish remover) with about 7 - 8 feet of 1.75 mm ABS filament cut up into an acetone safe container and shake it up until the ABS is completely dissolved.

I put a nice little how to to get the Kapton tape on your glass with no bubbles or anything, check it out here: http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php ... =90#p23611

I just put a good layer of the ABS Juice on my hot bed at temperature (80c for mine to print ABS) using a small painting brush and my parts stick so incredibly well, almost too well, the layer of ABS Juice comes up with the part so you might want to use natural colored ABS to make your ABS Juice or you could make different ones for each color you have if you want .

There you go , there's my two cents.

Yup, placed my order, now for the seeming eternity shipping takes to this far away land. As for sticking on the glass bed, I'll see what I can come up with out here, as advanced as the technology is in this country alot of things are usually not on hand or need to be ordered ahead of time. Even filament ordered locally is 40-50$ with unverified quality.

AndThenSome09 wrote:
As far as getting the ABS to stick well on glass I suggest putting Kapton tape over the glass and whipping up some ABS Juice. With that combination you cant go wrong! The ABS Juice is easy, just mix about 4 ounces of pure acetone (no fingernail polish remover) with about 7 - 8 feet of 1.75 mm ABS filament cut up into an acetone safe container and shake it up until the ABS is completely dissolved.

7-8 feet?!? Good Lord, that's not juice, that's paste. Be careful using that. With that much ABS you're liable to break your bed plate trying to remove larger parts from the bed. In 4oz, 6-7 inches is about all you need to get good juice

I tried it with less and it just wouldn't stick, yeah its quite thick but just a thin layer does the job well, as far as the Kapton tape I don't know if that makes much of a difference cause it ripped after taking a few parts off so I got frustrated and just ripped it all off and the parts still stick just fine with my "ABS Paste"! Lol