I'm strongly eyeing the Monoprice 3D printer. 5 inches cubed is a decent workspace. And most importantly, it can handle every type of filament. I was thinking of experimenting around with different media. I'd shoot myself before doing that with a Makerbot, which has crap extruders that are the same price as the entire Monoprice 3D printer.
Tho I see Anet A6 is roughly same price and does 8.7 x 8.7 x 9.8. How expensive are replacement extruders? Also, try using two belt tensioners.
Other option I'm eyeing up is a Kossel parametric delta printer. Which can do a circular 8 plus inches by a foot. Any reason why you chose the A6 in particular? I figure that any < $1k printer is going to require a decent amount of legwork and not natively have networking.
I figure whatever I buy, I can network somehow. Absolutely worst case, I plug it into my media PC. And I figure I'll be making a case for whatever I buy anyways.
The Anet A6 is the newer version of the A8. The Z-axis lifter rails for the X-axis is more stable, a horizontal pair of slide rails ending in laser-cut acrylic boxes like the rest of the frame. Which also gives you another inch of vertical Z-area in your print. Probably the biggest improvement is a rotary click-push encoder which allows you to navigate the menu much much faster vs. the 5 button D-pad style arrangement on the A8.
I went with the Anet because it seemed like the printer with the most "community support" out there of the cheap printers. And went with the A6 because of it's minor improvements. I think the hot ends are like $6 or so. And then another few dollars for replacement brass nozzles.
I have been using brim and raft... if I want one, I just have the Cura slicer, either the embedded one in Repetier, or the stand-alone Cura make it. But then when I was having trouble, the brim or raft wasn't sticking either. However, getting extra-anal about bed leveling, using thin receipt printer paper instead of typing paper to gauge my first layer gap, adding the PVA glue stick layer, and turning off bed heating after three layers, and turning on fan cooling after three layers seems to have fixed everything.
As a Prusa clone, it runs the Marlin firmware, so it's got a lot of mods and updates out there you can add to it. And as such you can add networking, or a Raspberry Pi WiFi webserver to Running OctoPi/OctoPrint to monitor/control the printer and use it's camera to watch the print.
If you want to go even cheaper, there's a Clone-of-Anet-A8-Clone-of-Prusa-i3 called the Tronxy. (Tron-XY? "Tronksy"?) that has decent reviews that's only about $150.
I'd add an additional belt tensioner, but the way it's laid out, I don't know where they'd fit. Although there are 3D printed mounting blocks on Thingiverse for the belt that go under the bed carriage that have some extra adjustment over the two acrylic blocks and screws that clamp the belt down.
I thought about a Delta/Kossel printer, but I'll wait until I've got something tall enough I really want to print before I get into that. I hear they're not that hard/different to operate. Bed leveling/adjustment while thinking in polar coordinates seems to be the biggest challenge/learning curve for most people.
Here's all the 26.5mm stuff I've made in Sketchup to date. It needs some work. Mainly the projectile is a bit under-bore, but that could be good if you want low pressure, or it's being fired from a 26.5 flare pistol that really just generates all it's pressure at the case anyway. I was just going to add some "driving band" ribs to the body so they had some "squish" in the bore of my RV85.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B3G7qcjFKpsVZFVtQ2dhS095QUk?usp=sharingThe plug end and fins are sized for a tight fit in the single-stage American Specialty Ammo 26.5 lathe-turned aluminum case that uses black powder and a 209 shotgun primer. If you're re-using a European 26.5 flare case, you're going to want to re-adjust the size and make it wider so it fits snugly.
http://www.americanspecialtyammo.com/26_5mm.html(note, you want to put a 1" OD plumbing O-ring over the body against the rim to get good headspace in an RV-85 so the firing pin will contact the primer properly. Or on any 26.5mm flare case, since the RV85 has the thicker chamber rim for it's high pressure CS gas rocket/darts.)
If you want to play with the files and tweak the design, I recommend importing the .skp files from SketchUp to whatever you're using for CAD. Importing them straight as .STL puts a ton of unnecessary angles and vertices into the model.
I also need to go back in and re-work the fins and the fuse hole, make a fillet or web between the center and the fins for more strength, and make the fuse hole bigger/wider to accommodate green or red Visco fuse. My ultimate aim was to make a master for molding in silicone and then using Smooth-On brand 2 part polyurethane. Although a well adhered ABS projectile or nylon might hold together under firing with a modest charge. Maybe they'd work even better if you acetone vapor-smooth it to get complete fusion of the external skin of the print...
