Advice on a Printer
I am very interested in 3D printing and I want to get into it. What would be a good printer for a beginner that is also of reasonable quality.
I don't want to make anything huge but I don't want to limit myself to any size that's unreasonably small.
Edit: Wow, you guys were all so helpful. While I haven't made my decision I have a lot more to go off of, I'm gonna do a bit more research into it based on what you have all said.
What’s you’re price range? For a solid option with a decent size I’d say a Prusa Mini. It’s big enough to print probably 90% of commonly printed models and is high quality with minimal tinkering required, but it’s not a cheap option.
The thing about Prusa is, not only do they make good products, they also have fantastic support. They may be a little more expensive, but that support is also what you’re paying for. You can either spend a ton of time hunting for troubleshooting posts in random forums and communities where YMMV, or you can rely on the Prusa docs and resources.
Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of great printers out there too, and many work fantastic right out the box. However, when you get in a jam (pun intended), there’s nothing more comforting than knowing a company has your back.
I am late to the party. I was in a position to try out something new so I picked 3d printing. My wife is VERY frugal, so even a cheap creality was a big ask.
I did a lot of research, and once it was determined that it was a reasonable plan. I settled on am ender 3 s1. It was inexpensive enough, yet out of the box, very well equipped. I wanted the s1 pro, but they weren't in stock at microcenter for their black Friday sale, so I got the s1, added a light bar, and picked up their pei sheet. I also bought the sprite pro kit, because it was a steal at $76.
I've since only added the sonic pad, and picked up a pex wham bam build plate, because I'm doing a could of gardening projects in petg, which can damage pei. I haven't needed the extra hotend yet. I am happy with the sonic pad, but would reconsider and look at the bigtreetech one, it want out when I got the sonic pad at launch. This is due to klipper and how creality kind of broke is license by not publishing their changes, etc.
I'll say this, I like printing. I haven't had a bad experience at all with it. And the S1 is a very good machine so far. Would I like a prusa? Of course I would, it's basically the standard, however, a grand, to me, would be an impossible get, so I had to do the best with what I could.
I would very highly recommend a few YouTube channels and checking out reviews on anything, before you buy.
My favorites are Aurora Tech Channel, Teaching Tech, Maker's Muse, and Modbot, but there are dozens more out there.
Take some time to look around. And buy whatever works. Certain people downplay the concept of modding, and tinkering, however, the more you know about your printer, through doing some things, the better you'll be at troubleshooting and resolving issues. My S1 runs nearly all day, every day, and once I learned some things about tuning it, which you'll have to do with ANY printer, it consistently prints good prints.
I recommend learning the settings in a slicer program, I use Cura for filament printing. That was the biggest hurdle for me so far, and once you kind of understand it, adjusting those settings will improve your printing experience.
Since this is a maker kind of thing, do expect failures. The single biggest issue I had starting out, was heat settings and, for some reason, my creality pei build plate. I had significant adhesion issues and most of the time I use the oem s1 build plate... Hence the reason I bought the wham bam systems lex plates.
Just get a printer that works for you, and have fun.
wham bam systems lex plates
I'm in a similar boat where I couldn't justify getting the prusa but am super happy with Ender 3 S1. You will always have to dial in a new printer, and I have the S1 to such a state where its print and play for 90% of the objects that I'm printing.
It’s a bit dated, but I had an excellent beginner 3D printing experience on my Flashforge Creator Pro. The OG.
It’s a bit slow, but very consistent out of the box. It was also pre-built, which was nice.
It was heaps easier to get going compared to my Anet A8. But I learned a lot on the A8 by putting it together.
I started with a Flashforge Dreamer - which is relatively close to the Creator Pro. Bed leveling was annoying from the beginning - though after adding some locking nuts at least stayed leveled for a while.
With PLA I was getting good prints without much effort - though quicky ran into limitations with flashprint, build volume size, other materials. I did some PETG printing, which was a pain - extruder slipping on the material, so compensating with overextrusion which somewhat worked, but gave nad tolerances.
It is now my experimentation printer -rebuilt with microswiss hotend and extruder and flashed with marlin.
People have made the same recommendations here already but I'll throw my opinion in: the two I always recommend are the Ender (V2 or S1) and the Prusa (Mk4 or the Mini)
If you're unsure about how much you'll use it or if you're on a budget get the Ender.
But if you're confident this is something you'll use a lot and you can afford it get the Prusa.
The Prusa has just too many nice features to ignore, their support is amazing, and their upgrade path makes it something you can (likely) keep upgrading as new features come out.
For example I have a Mk3 and I have the upgrade kit to make it a Mk3s+. And now that the Mk4 is out there's upgrade kits to make it a 3.5, 3.9, or a 4. They're really great about trying to keep your printer as feature rich as possible without having to buy a whole new one.
I typically split my recommendations into 2 camps. Do you want to learn a ton about 3D printers, how they work, how to troubleshoot, etc. Or do you want to "just enjoy printing things"?
While the ender isn't a fantastic printer, it's a great starter printer with loads of mods available that will turn it into a decent printer with some time and effort. This route will help you learn about tuning, troubleshooting, and building to the point where you'll know your stuff once you're happy with it. Plus, it's not a large investment to just get started.
On the other hand, some people want to print for the sheer joy of being able to make things with a printer with minimal fuss. Completely understandable! If this is the case I'd echo others here in saying go with a Prusa mini. Prusa gear is amazing if you want to hit print and walk away and come back to a great finished print. If you want to have a taste of the world of the mechanics of 3D printing, grab a kit and build it yourself. It's a great way to get to know your setup and it will help you troubleshoot when the odd (albeit rare) problem arises.
I don't think there's a wrong answer with either route here. You just need to decide what you want out of the hobby!