Benbox Laser DIY Machines

This feature request has made it to the top of my list, so I am looking for some inputs.

It will be for vector only, but I don't know if it would only be necessary for Sketch or also for CAD import. The reason I wouldn't expect it to be necessary for CAD import is it would be much easier to apply the repeats before exporting.

Thoughts?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/edsbyxch6o0bviy/T2Laser_EleksEgg_Setup.pdf?dl=0

It arrived in a nice carry case and was super easy to assemble (even without instructions).

The funny thing though, after it's assembled the case is about 1/4" too shallow for the machine to fit and close the lid... it's sooooo close and you can flex it and make it close but it pops open again.

So after putting it together I clicked the new EleksEgg option in the T2Laser menu and it immediately started working. The axis were correct, or at least how I expected it to be (X is around the egg and Y is bottom to top), you could easily swap it.

The picture shows the very first thing it "wrote", a quick Sketch and it looks great.

Tomorrow I will try some golf balls and whatever else I can find to fit   

So now I can officially say that T2Laser supports the full range of Eleks machines; laser, cnc, draw and egg.

These were done using cheap felt tip pens, so I think the results are pretty good.

Simple! Use Sketch to draw a box and enable the new hatch feature with a custom spacing (10 mm in this example).

EleksMaker have released a new Inkscape plugin (download it from their forum) to replace the previous EggBot one, it does a similar job to CorelDraw's hatch output and gives you a pseudo fill.

I'm sure this isn't the desired result, but it's pretty awesome all the same. I call it "drunk fill". You can get it to work correctly, and it works well but I prefer the weird scribble results  .

Back in v1.3c I added support for most of the common DXF entities, which included splines and beziers (curves and other shapes were already supported, the only exception is text).

I don't really use beziers myself but following a post over on the BCL thread I did some testing.

Here's a quick example using TurboCAD, the bezier imports perfectly.

I've noticed that some programs don't do a great job of exporting them accurately in which case they won't be correct in T2Laser but I can't fix what another program does incorrectly. It will depend on the CAD software, in particular I've noticed some odd errors with Inkscape but not always. So I still recommend converting to polylines or curves when exporting.

I asked for advice on which printer to buy, for a complete newbie.

Thanks to Pawpawpaw85 and others I decided to purchase the Monoprice Maker Select v2. It's a rebranded Wanhao Duplicator i3 which is itself a Prusa Mendel i3 clone (pretty typical machine).

It came with a customized Cura 15.04, a very good manual and getting started guide, both printed and on an SD-card.

My first impressions were it's a very professional look and feel out of the box, full metal frame and solid drive gear / electronics. Assembly was practically nothing, 4 screws to get the machine together and a couple of motor / limit plugs to connect. It probably took 5 minutes, and then leveling was a breeze and within 30 minutes I was printing one of their sample files.

It adhered to their "special" bed mat (not sure what it's called) perfectly and the print was excellent, I was blown away by the quality considering I had no idea what I was doing.

If anyone wants a cheap and very novice friendly machine then I would also suggest this product. I'm currently printing some "upgrade" parts that were recommended.

Most of the cheaper systems seem to be using ANet or Melzi controller boards (all-in-one) rather than the Mega2560 and RAMPS boards.

What are your thoughts on these?

If you have any links to i3 type machines that are a good buy I'd be very interested.

Also, is there anything else I should be looking for. Like self leveling or dual extruders etc.