Getting into 3D Printing [Aurora Z605]

Getting into 3D Printing [Aurora Z605]

Thanks to my buddy Eric at Geekbuying.com, I was able to purchase a reasonably priced 3D printer for my son for Christmas. He's 15...and kind of an engineering type...and for the last 6 months he's been bugging me about getting him one....LIKE REALLY BUGGING ME. His other love is baseball...so it didn't surprise me that the first print job was a baseball cap as you can see in the picture.

I've decided to start this thread to share our experiences in getting the thing built and set up.

Now, my wife was not in agreement or the least bit supportive about this project...but at the last minute we both convinced her that the $1,000 printers she was looking at weren't all that necessary. A few days before Christmas, Eric came through with a discount and I purchased an Aurora Z605. You do need to figure in a little more in the budget for shipping costs, because there is no free shipping.

Because of the delay in making the decision to buy...the box didn't make it until the day after Christmas. But my son was extremely happy...because I let him know he was getting it. There was also a delay in actually getting a variety of filaments to print with...so until they arrive, we are trying to conserve the included demo filament.

Overall, it took us 2 days to put the thing together. The directions come on a DVD with a PowerPoint and some videos that show you each step in the assembly process. Because of a few Chinese/English translation kinks...towards the end it became a little bit rocky...but I'm happy to say that we now have a working 3D printer...after another 2 days of trying to figure out the software.

The problem with the instructions is that once the printer is built, it doesn't explain at all what to do to get your first print job started. I will try to add a post with how we got the thing to finally print. It involves a proper mix of extruder heat and fan cooling among other things.

I have an old Avertech laptop with Windows 7 on it I was planning on dedicating to just 3D printing, but due to the unique device driver setup on the laptop (with many proprietary parts)...I gave up even trying to use it...and went to the family Windows 7 Acer desktop (for now, anyway). The drivers and software loaded right away.

I will be adding some pictures and videos on this thread as we get more relaxed with the features and have a few prints under our belts.

This has been a very cool father and son project...that neither one of us has totally lost it. I've just watched and offered suggestions...and he's done all of the work.

I can't show you the unboxing part (which is usually pretty dry anyway) because the box showed up while I was at work...and the framework was already put together when I got home. The videos provided on the DVD were very good examples. Except my son put the frame together backwards and didn't discover it until the thing was pretty much built...so we had to do our own design adjustments to keep from having to disassemble and start over again.

One thing I must warn you about if you get one of these is that the DVD contains an app called Driver Genius. DO NOT USE THIS APP UNLESS YOU CAN READ CHINESE. While it may actually contain the ability to load the drivers for you...this app is FULL OF CHINESE SPAM that you can't get rid of unless you can read Chinese. I was able to install the drivers the hard way by turning off the option that makes Windows search Windows Update for the driver before allowing you to browse your drive for the real drivers.

Stay tuned for future posts...and feel free to chime in if you have anything to add. Jackson and I still have a bunch of learning to do with these things.