27 October 2015

CTC Bizer Duplicator... My new 3D printer

I've always found it interesting, but until recently 3D printing has been just a little too expensive for me to pull the trigger on buying my own machine.

A couple of months ago I saw an auction on eBay for a decently-priced clone of a MakerBot Replicator and had my impulsive "Best Offer" bid accepted instantly...*gulp*

Je ne regrette rien
Before MakerBot went all evil, they put out a really sturdy open-source machine in the Replicator. 
Predictably there are now some really affordable clones of the original Replicator available, and the version I bought was from a company called CTC.

This was the version I got, plain black plywood with an aluminium heated bed
Out-of-the-box it was pretty good, printing with the included plastic and default settings from the SD card gave alright results.


A fascinating aspect of 3D printing technology is the ability of the machine to print upgrades and spare parts for itself.

So I set about browsing the numerous online 3D model repositories looking for bits and pieces I could print to add to my printer,


Part of the appeal of 3D printing for me was this tinkering about with the machine, a lot of the time the "upgrades" are just fiddling for the sake of it and that's great, I love messing around and taking things apart.

But there are loads of modifications, that genuinely do make a difference. Improving usability or increasing print-quality or reliability, it really is a deep-dark rabbit-hole of modding.

Initially the learning curve is steep but it quickly becomes very satisfying to download and print a useful and functional physical object and screw it in place on your printer.

Here're a few mods I made to my CTC:

There're still a few things I'd like to add, maybe an enclosure for printing in ABS, a Raspberry Pi running OctoPi to manage prints online/monitor a webcam feed of the printer, a proper cable chain for the x-axis wiring.

Lots of new posts coming up then ;)


3 comments:

  1. Actually, it's used in a wide variety of applications due to its toughness and impact-resistance abilities.

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    Replies
    1. Hoping for help from someone. Below is my situation.
      I am missing the SD Card files for my CTC Bizer series Dual Nozzle 3D
      Printer.
      Can anyone send me the link to download them.
      This link did not have the files to install the setup.exe which is on
      the SD Card: http://www.ctcprinter.com/download.php
      I wish the main page had English. None of the 'radio buttons' worked,
      therefore my copy is corrupt unfortunately. And who can read Chinese!
      Help! Can you send results also to bardukian43@att.net?

      Delete