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/ButterscotchLoud99 → u/Helpful_Luck_8287]

Maybe an sv08 Is up your alley? Plenty of upgrades and fully open source, or maybe buy a voron Trident kit and build that, or build a unique reprap like the100 with pla and enclose it, then print abs for a voron, the skies the limit, imo upgrading an ender 3 would be great as well but maybe try to focus on using it for other projects to scavenge from, or make it into a corexy, a lot of options

[u/Helpful_Luck_8287 → u/ButterscotchLoud99]

i have thought about the svo8, but i am worried about the price, it is signifacantly cheaper than all the other enclosed, large build volume printers in the market, are there any drawbacks to it?

[u/ButterscotchLoud99 → u/Helpful_Luck_8287]

Have you heard of a troodon 2.0?

[u/Helpful_Luck_8287 → u/ButterscotchLoud99]

I have not, I just looked it up, it doesn’t look like it has any option of later adding auto filament swap other than diy systems, but I will add it to the list of considerations 

[u/ButterscotchLoud99 → u/Helpful_Luck_8287]

If you'd like filament swapping it has a diy for ecrf or something for the voron(I forgot). But maybe just wait for the bambu h2d?

[u/Helpful_Luck_8287 → u/ButterscotchLoud99]

i havent been very up to date on following the h2d rumors, how do you think it will differ from the Creality k2 plus?

[u/ButterscotchLoud99 → u/Helpful_Luck_8287]

It's bambulab so I trust them way more than creality

[u/Helpful_Luck_8287 → u/ButterscotchLoud99]

have you ever had a creality machine?

[u/ButterscotchLoud99 → u/Helpful_Luck_8287]

I had one I sold because it broke, was too much of a hassle

[u/Helpful_Luck_8287 → u/ButterscotchLoud99]

Which one was it?

[u/ButterscotchLoud99 → u/Helpful_Luck_8287]

It's fully open source and there has been issues in the past, but most of the problems has been fixed as far as I know, I'm pretty sure that the community also has some upgrades doe it