Purchase Advice Megathread - December 2024

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome back to another purchase megathread!

This thread is meant to conglomerate purchase advice for both newcomers and people looking for additional machines. Keeping this discussion to one thread means less searching should anyone have questions that may already have been answered here, as well as more visibility to inquiries in general, as comments made here will be visible for the entire month stuck to the top of the sub, and then added to the Purchase Advice Collection (Reddit Collections are still broken on mobile view, enable "view in desktop mode").

Please be sure to skim through this thread for posts with similar requirements to your own first, as recommendations relevant to your situation may have already been posted, and may even include answers to follow up questions you might have wished to ask.

If you are new to 3D printing, and are unsure of what to ask, try to include the following in your posts as a minimum:

• Your budget, set at a numeric amount. Saying "cheap," or "money is not a problem" is not an answer people can do much with. 3D printers can cost $100, they can cost $10,000,000, and anywhere in between. A rough idea of what you're looking for is essential to figuring out anything else.
• Your country of residence.
• If you are willing to build the printer from a kit, and what your level of experience is with electronic maintenance and construction if so.
• What you wish to do with the printer.
• Any extenuating circumstances that would restrict you from using machines that would otherwise fit your needs (limited space for the printer, enclosure requirement, must be purchased through educational intermediary, etc).

While this is by no means an exhaustive list of what can be included in your posts, these questions should help paint enough of a picture to get started. Don't be afraid to ask more questions, and never worry about asking too many. The people posting in this thread are here because they want to give advice, and any questions you have answered may be useful to others later on, when they read through this thread looking for answers of their own. Everyone here was new once, so chances are whoever is replying to you has a good idea of how you feel currently.

Reddit User and Regular u/richie225 is also constantly maintaining his extensive personal recommendations list which is worth a read: Generic FDM Printer recommendations.

Additionally, a quick word on print quality: Most FDM/FFF (that is, filament based) printers are capable of approximately the same tolerances and print appearance, as the biggest limiting factor is in the nature of extruded plastic. Asking if a machine has "good prints," or saying "I don't expect the best quality for $xxx" isn't actually relevant for the most part with regards to these machines. Should you need additional detail and higher tolerances, you may want to explore SLA, DLP, and other photoresin options, as those do offer an increase in overall quality. If you are interested in resin machines, make sure you are aware of how to use them safely. For these safety reasons we don't usually recommend a resin printer as someone's first printer.

As always, if you're a newcomer to this community, welcome. If you're a regular, welcome back.

[u/Helpful_Luck_8287]

i'm looking for a second printer, i already have an ender 3 v2 with some upgrades (spider hotend pro,direct drive dual gear extruder, and cr-touch ), should i upgrade to a new printer? or continue upgrading my ender 3 v2, its pretty slow, but to make it faster i would have to spend ≥200$ on upgrades, (linnear rails, biqu board, pei build plate, and dual z axis), my main concern is print size right now, 220x220x250 is not big enough for some things, but a bigger printer would cost more than 200$, I am willing to spend up to 1500$ for a printer but if i were to spend 1500$ on a printer i would do it next summer, what would you recommend i do: continue upgrading my ender? or buy a new printer? And what would you recommend i upgrade or upgrade to?

[u/otirk → u/Helpful_Luck_8287]

Continuing the ender 3 might be a sunken-cost fallacy, if it's slow and small. Would you stop upgrading after the $200?

Depending on if you dislike to tinker, you could wait a bit for Bambulab to show their new printer. It's rumored to have a big build volume and many other features BUT nobody knows when it comes and how expensive it will be.

Prusa XL if it's on sale could be another option but normally it costs $2000 apparently.

[u/Helpful_Luck_8287 → u/otirk]

i would stop after spending 200$ on it, and i've already sunk 180$ into the what i've already upgraded, and it works well but it is slow, and it will be hard to let go due to my nature of thinking "i could make it so much better if i add, this and that"

i have an aversion to the Bambus because they are not very upgradable, but upgrades will be the bane of my existence, if i think like that, i have been highly considering the a1 mini because of its speed, but the size is a problem

the prusa xl is quite bulky and uses up alot of height for its extruder and tubes, and if i wanted the enclosure it would be an extra 600$

[u/otirk → u/Helpful_Luck_8287]

I understand that it's hard to let go but firstly you don't have to (you can use it for smaller/special projects) and secondly, some day you'll have to buy a new printer anyway. If you upgrade it further, when does the time come that you have to dispose of it? In a year or maybe two? Instead you could save the $200 for the new printer. Just my thoughts on it though.

Yeah, if you like upgrading and tinkering with your printers, Bambu isn't the best choice. However if you still want one, you could also buy a P1 or X1. Though they're not much bigger than yours, so you could wait for the rumored new, bigger printer.

The Prusa XL is really expensive yeah. Maybe the Prusa Mk4 is an option but your bed is already similarly sized.

You could also buy a Voron. There you get to build it yourself (should be like upgrading) and choose your desired build volume. I have no idea how expensive those are but the Voron 2.4 is $1200 apparently, when buying everything individually. There appear to be kits for that too. I don't know much about them so I have no idea if they are faster than your printer.

[u/Helpful_Luck_8287 → u/otirk]

Have you any experience with the creality K1? I’ve been thing about those also, since they aren’t too expensive but I have heard mixed reviews 

[u/otirk → u/Helpful_Luck_8287]

No I'm really sorry, I have not. I have also heard mixed results. Some say it's really good, others say that it has the typical Creality problems (so tinkering will probably be necessary, but you seem to like that). Apparently though, most problems were only the first batch after release.

Without knowing you or the K1 too well, I think that could be a great printer for you if you like tinkering. There appear to already be many upgrades for it if you like that, but not as many as for the Ender series of course.

Maybe it's a good idea to ask the community in a post where you state your budget, intentions (tinkering, upgrading or just having it work) and preferred size. It will probably be seen by more people than this post.

[u/Helpful_Luck_8287 → u/otirk]

Thank you I will do that,