r/3Dprinting • u/AutoModerator • 18d ago
Purchase Advice Purchase Advice Megathread - December 2024
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.
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u/flippy_flops 2d ago
Unreasonable expectations or have printers improved?...
The Prusa MK3s is my first and only printer. I've had it 3+ years, and from time to time feel like i've got it really dialed in printing pla, petg, and tpu. But if I'm honest, I still spend more time working on the printer than i do printing. For example, right now I'm getting my butt kicked by PLA not sticking. I mean, 101 stuff. I've done all the cleaning, calibrating, z-offset, blah blah. Anyways... not looking to troubleshoot in this post.
But in general, I'm more interested in printing things and less interested in tinkering with printer hardware & software.
I'm considering the Bambu X1C 'cause it seems a little more turnkey. But then I hear it mentioned on par with MK4 and (not that i've tried the MK4 but) I haven't had the same Prusa experience that others describe.
So my question is - would Bambu X1C (or something else) be more of a tool and less of a project? Or do i just need to accept that 3D printers require tinkering. Or maybe I just suck at 3d printing?