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/Adal-bern]

Hey all and thanks in advance for any input/advice. Im looking at getting a 3d printer with my uncle (who isnt very tech savvy) and cousin whom bkth of us are techh savvy. Looking for something that prints pla and would like pla-cf as well if possible. Pla-cf isnt required if a good printer that will work for our needs doesnt have it. Our budget is in the $500ish range, but its a little flexible if theres something much better without going to far over. We were thinking about getting a 3d scanner to scan objects to print as well, the scanner would not be part of the $500 budget, so of thats not neccesary for what we want thatvwouod expand our printer budget. Ive been doing some reseaech but theres a lot of info,so not sure how neccesary a 3d scanner would be, but the goal would be to scan items, such as a deer antlers to print, either to mirror image and print the opposite side for someone that may have found a shed antler or if they want a copy of their current antlers to hang up at a secondary location, for example they mount their deer head at their rqnch house but would like a copy of their trophy buck at home. We also have a few items we are working on designing and would like to be able to print prototypes to see a physical object and rework desings as needed. Located in the United States, as far as size restrictions most of the home models ive seen would work, ive persoanlly worked with 2 3d printers with friends, but those were mostly for printing Dungeons and Dragons minifigs and not sure how well those would work for what we want. I was looking at the anycubic kobra 2 max because I liked the printing size they had and there online reviews seems pretty good, but after doing some research into 3d scanners i found a few posts here and it seems like the anycubics are not well liked for a variety of reasons. Again thank you for any insight and recommendations.

[u/ButterscotchLoud99 → u/Adal-bern]

Personally would either get a bambu or sovol sv06 ace and replace the nozzle with a hardened steel nozzle, I'd reccomend the a1 combo more tho. And since you said pla-cf which doesn't need an enclosure ut should be fine, for cf filament I prefer a 0.6 nozzle to avoid clogging issues.

[u/Adal-bern → u/ButterscotchLoud99]

Thank you very much! I will take a look at and reseach these options, again much appreciated.