I'm really liking it. My only complaint is the carriage gearbox is very notchy to engage. I told PM about it when it was new, and they said give it a while to break in. I haven't got back to them yet. One thing about any small lathe is dealing with the gears to change for threading. I didn't want to spend enough to get a gearhead lathe but, maybe I get an electric lead screw one day.
It takes a lot of fiddly bits to make 3d printing work right. One of the main reasons I went with a Prusa this time is that it takes fewer of them to run. Make sure you go over all the screws and tighten everything up, they often forget that at the factory.
Like that i need to build me one to take on hunting trips
I thought about the Prusa. Almost I had went that route now.
The Benchy is the traditional first real print, it has all the things like overhangs that are a torture test for printers. If you can print a Benchy, you are likely to be able to print anything.First "successful" print . . .
A mini, Mini-14. Or at least that's what the file said it was . . .
View attachment 256774
I've see that around on various sites. Think I can just grab the stl file, slice it and print without a ton of modifications?
Should print fine, as long as your printer is dialed in.
And if the printer isn't dialed in, it will clue you to some things you need to dial in. There are a bunch of test print items at thinginverse called "calibration blocks" that will give you specifics of what you need to tweak. Gotta admit I 've not run any of them yet. I printed some small mini-lathe change gears on mine out of the box, and they meshed with original gears, figured that was close enough for then. That was a couple of years ago, and it's been sitting unused and buried since. Dug it out a few weeks ago, have some new things I need to print...
