Anet is the new Pola?

Bringing our miniature worlds to life requires a lot of elements. Houses, streets, lamps, people, animals and much, much more. Those items can be purchased but they're not cheap. Or they can be made if you have the required skills. What can a software engineer like me (who barely knows how to hold a hammer) do in such case? Well, he can use his computer skills to 3D print whatever he wants!

3D printers have become pretty cheap lately. Or at least the Chinese clones have. A promising 3D printer can be bought for less than $200 dollars. And to satisfy my curiosity, I've decided do get such device...

The model I've picked is called Anet A6. It's a very popular printer with a huge and active community of users. It comes as a DIY kit packaged in a medium-sized but rather heavy square box.

The content is not surprising. A lot of mechanical and electrical elements. It all has to be assembled by the user.

It took me almost an entire day to build it. The parts are good quality and fit perfectly BUT the manual is a joke. The assembly is really fun however and it allows you to learn how the printer actually works. Not to mention the feeling of pride when it's finally functional!

And did it work? It worked right away! As soon as I managed to solve some basic issues, I was able to print my first 3D elements. And so it started: boxes, scissors a whistle and other useless stuff...

But this new purchase was supposed to help me with my train layout, wasn't it? So let's see how we can use the printer for that purpose!

It seems we could easily print a street lamp...

...or an outhouse...

...or a boat for my pond...

...or... anything we can imagine?

My first impression is that the cheap printer is not perfect. It requires learning, attention and maintenance. The print quality however is definitely good enough to support my G-Scale modeling. A smaller scale would require a much more precise device but for large items - Anet has the potential to replace Pola G (at least for basic cases).

This new experience opens also a new field to explore on my blog. I'm not going to stop writing about commercial products but I will be sharing my 3D printing successes (and failures), too. And I hope all of you will enjoy that!