do you know any cheap and or goood oness
is there any very bad ones ( i heard bambu is bad but why)
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Despite the fact that I dislike the evil turn Bambu has taken, my A1 mini is a good piece of kit. Running it in LAN mode and with Orca Slicer it’s dependable and produces very good results.
My trusty Prusa Mk3s is the printer your momma says we have at home. Rock solid, dependable, and easily and cheaply repairable. Its biggest sin these days is that it is slow. But I was fairly easily able to run klipper with an old RPi 4 that doubled my print speed with adding an accelerometer and calibrating the input shaping. And it can be done for under $100.
I’ve only had an ender 3, been printing on and off since 2019. At some point I have it to my buddy and got a 3v2.
I know I should upgrade, but for my limited needs, I just haven’t needed to 🤷♂️
I print mostly PETG for functional parts, a little PLA for random stuff.
I enjoy printing, and it’s useful. But some months see no printing at all. Maybe that’d be different if the machine was less of a hassle to use.
Compounding the issue, most of the time my machine has not had a full time home on any desk. So I have to pull it out and set it up. But we just moved and now there’s room, I just haven’t configured the space yet.
We’ll see.
Always down for recommendations though, for a similar print volume and reasonable price point. Ie not prusa, as awesome as that would be.
I don’t “like” any of them, but I rescued an HP color LaserJet MFP from recycling and it hasn’t given me any shit. LaserJet is the way to go if you dont print often. Ink always clogged up on me, despite running the head cleaner (which was also wasteful)
Sir, this is a Wendy’s eehhrrr a 3D printing sub
Oh shit, I’m lost and need an adult
That’s okay, we’ll print you one!
So far I’ve been getting the most use out of my Qidi X-Max 3, although it appears they’re no longer producing or supporting it. It predates the current multi-material schemes but it’s been able to print every funky high temperature engineering material I’ve tried to throw at it thus far. I’d really like to get some kind of tool changer machine to replace or supplement it at some point but it doesn’t seem like any of those are worth a damn for high temperature materials.
In the meantime I’ve just been using it to make stuff like this and driving myself bats with manual filament changes instead.
Have you been printing in POM? (Because I’d love to start actually prototyping some of my designs in the real, and that or nylon seem to be top candidates for actually strong parts.)
No, but I’ve done both polycarbonate and Nylon, or at least PA-6.
Ah nice, read up a bit about trying to extrude pom and it looks like it’s an injection moulding job only (if you want decent results)
Avoid Bambu printers, they are locking down everything and a firmware update blocked the use of third-party software (e.g. OrcaSlicer) and hardware (e.g. the Panda Touch display for the P1 series). I have an A1 myself, and I wouldn’t recommend it anymore. There are also better value options from other brands nowadays! I believe Creality is also a brand to avoid based on what I’ve heard online
I know the Elegoo Centauri Carbon is a very good value, even better than the A1 since it is CoreXY w/ an enclosure. You also have the version without an enclosure for even cheaper. Sovol makes some excellent options, as does Qidi (in particular, they’re known for making very good value printers that work well with engineering-type filaments).
And of course, if you want the best reliability, support, and repairability, you should look at the Prusa. Their Core One is their flagship and is CoreXY, has an enclosure, and will later support an multi-toolhead upgrade (the INDX)! You also have their older MK4S+ (which is a bedslinger) as well as their Mini (which has a smaller bed size and is a bedslinger), as well as the XL if you need a huge bed area w/ 6 toolheads (very expensive though)
I mean I like prusa but for some the high price (what is it like 2x or 3x a bambu) isn’t worth the upcharge. So some would rather deal with the proprietary nature and spying nature of bambu (until it actually affects them ofc).
Looking to one day get a prusa myself in the future to replace my elegoo neptune
2x or 3x a bambu
I don’t think the upcharge is multiples, but it is significant comparing the X1 Carbon to the Core One. If you want better value machines, I would look at other brands (but you also have to consider the long term value and the openness, how much is that worth it to you?)
But I would avoid Bambu. They are no longer the best value, they are not open, and they are not as reliable either (it does not “just work”, the nozzle has clogged on my A1 and needs to be replaced, and regular maintenance is needed e.g. cleaning the bed like any printer), the worst of both worlds as I see it.
The X1C isn’t even in production anymore. The X2C would be the comparable printer to the Core One and the X2C is quite a bit cheaper.
I started with Prusa (MK3), bought a Bambu (X1C), then bought an XL for real multi color printing. The Bambu takes ages to print anything multi color and it produces so much waste it’s sickening. I rarely use it anymore and will never buy a Bambu again based on how they treat their customers. Buts it real hard to not recommend them to people because they are affordable and they do “just work”. I’ve rarely ever had issues with mine.
quite a bit cheaper
But it isn’t 2-3x…I never said they were price comparable, I noted that they were more expensive, but not multiples of Bambu’s pricing!
Better value options exist on the market now, like the Elegoo CC and Qidi’s lineup
If you already have a 3D printer, you might be interested in printing some of the parts of a Voron kit!
I am in the Prusa cult. I can leave at any time, I just choose not to, because Prusa is the best.
I have some Prusa, I have some not Prusa. Prusa is better.
I like my hand built voron 2.4. I’m very proud I sourced the parts myself and used it to bootstrap itself.
Now if only I could learn to stop fucking with it and letting it work instead of the months of downtime when I need to fix or upgrade something 😅
My voron2.4 is a real workhorse. Once i changed my head to use a orbiter v2, 99% of my problems disapeared.
How much did it cost to get all the parts?
Well this was in the early pandemic, so there were no kits and a lot of the parts were intended for more industrial purposes. I think with shipping and tax around $2k USD for a 350mm.
These days kits bring the price down a ton and make the build much easier.
I bought a Prusa and I like it.
I figured I was going to spend a bunch on this hobby anyway, I may as well lay out and cash to start.
If you buy one and it sucks, then have to buy a different one, you may as well just buy I higher entry level to begin with.
I learned this with my ender-3.
The Ender 3 was the frustrating entry point for so many people. I’d love to see a survey all Ender 3 owners to see how many gave up on 3D printing and how many switched to better machines.
Ender 3 was the perfect start if you wanted 3d printers as your new hobby. I learned enough modding, tuning and fixing that thing to design and build my second printer mostly from scratch.
If you instead wanted 3d printing to be the hobby, it was the wrong choice.
Ive been running a creality K1 for years now. Other than a problem with the extruder (which Creality replaced for free with an upgraded version) it has been a great printer.
Snapmaker U1 is incredible, not cheap but not expensive either and prints better and faster than almost everything out there.
I’m thinking this will be my next printer. Core XY with the 4 print head quick changer looks amazing. I’ve been using my Ender 3 S1 Pro for a few years, which works but has taken a lot of fiddling to get to work well.
Honestly just with the amount of filament I’ve saved from not having to poop out everything during color changes has been worth it. And it prints freaking flawlessly. I have a few other printers but this has been my main since I got it
Higher price != better printer.
My Qidi Q1 pro has has lots of print quality and reliability problems. I ended up fixing them by disabling lots of printer features, including filament width detection piezo bed height sensor. Despite it being housed I had to do a lot of modifications to duct it properly because it has lots of holes and fans.
My $300AUD bedslinger i3 clone has only ever had two problems, the non-metal hot end having PTFE tube expansion (great since I replaced it) and the gantry getting crooked (once I knew this it became 1000x easier to use). Not as fast acceleration as the Qidi but much more reliable.
I borrowed a Mk3 Prusa from work a few years ago. If I had to pay for it I would have been really pissed, out of the box it was really slow.
My old boss spend thousands on an even slower printer… lets not go there :D
I’ve heard that even the Enders are much better out of the box these days. Maybe try one of those?
Recently picked up a Flash forge AD5X. I been using a qidi x-pro since before auto leveling was a normal thing and I just wanted an easy and reliable machine.
Do the z-mod to get full control and honestly the thing is a work horse. Back to back prints all week without a single fail. It does Multi-Color, resonance calibration, self loads, the works. Flash forge gets some flack for not being innovative enough, but you don’t buy a prototype car for your daily driver. This thing is a reliable Toyota Camry of printers.
It was a pita to assemble but I’m liking my Voron Trident. I sourced my kit through Formbot. The Sovol SV08 was way easier to assemble and I think a little cheaper, their customer support is top notch. I say this as a newb who crashed my nozzle into my build surface when I wasn’t there to see it (dog needed out) and by the time I got back to it I had some nice patterns carved into it. Sovol have been good about sending me parts and helping me get it back online. Still when you assemble a Voron kit you get that sense of pride and accomplishment that EA wanted you to get from those Battlefront loot boxes, every time you pass by it, and I’m a sucker for open source projects. Next up Box Turtle AFC.
I love my Ender 3 V3 SE, haven’t had any major issues, print quality is incredible once you get a few slicer settings tuned, and you can get it for under $200.
Its not the best at anything, but its pretty good for the price and great for tinkering and learning
I feel that the “Enders are good for tinkering” is the Stockholm syndrome of 3D printing.
Mostly because Enders (I used to have a v2) need tinkering to give their best. Once you’ve upgraded the hotbed, replaced the molten PTFE Bowden, printed low friction filament holder and filament guide, upgraded to a PEI build plate, added a lot of accessories, calibrated the shit out of it and learned its quirks, they’re very good.
Ender’s get a bad rap from the older models, the new stuff is solid, and only invite the tinkering, instead of requiring it like the older ones.
I had mine printing very acceptable parts within about 10 minutes of opening the box, and I haven’t had a single problem with it in 2 years that couldn’t be solved by clearing a clog or tightening a belt.
I had a Neptune 4 plus and recently the x belt got ripped in half, I’m still not sure how that happened.
Anyway that’s all the advice I can offer for recommendations.
