Who Knows A Lot About 3D Printers??

[BPH102687]

Looking to get a decent one and start printing some accessories for my firearms, among other things, bc I'm tired of spending money on that ish. Seeking suggestions for middle of the road quality printer, necessary program/accessories, etc.

 

[Blackstar65]

Buy a Bamboo p1p or a Creality K1 or a Prusa. Printing is not as simple as you make it sound in your post. Some printers require a lot of fine-tuning. That doesn't include fine-tuning your slicer settings either. Good luck.

 

[K3LAG]

3D printing becomes a hobby unto itself. It is not plug and play. Regardless of what printer you buy, you will have to do a lot of learning and tuning to have good success. I've been doing it for over 10 years and I'm still learning stuff that improves my prints.

If you think you are going to download some design files and just print them and go along your merry way you will be disappointed.

I personally try to avoid Chinese printers so the Bambu and Creality printers would be out for me even though they are perfectly good printers. I do own a Creality Ender 3 but I got it for $99 so I broke my own rule ;-). The Prusa is about the best non-Chinese printer you can get and comes with pretty well tuned profiles. It's probably about as close to plug and play you can get.

I build my own printers these days but I'm building high performance, larger printers that definitely would not be suitable for a beginner.

 

[euler357]

I went through a couple before I got the a Prusa MK3S. Ended up doing quite a few mods too. It's dialed in now and prints ABS great.

Here is my website of my mods

Chris K Cockrum's 3D Printing Page

cockrum.net 3D Printing

cockrum.net

I publish most of my designs here

Thingiverse - Digital Designs for Physical Objects

Download files and build them with your 3D printer, laser cutter, or CNC. Thingiverse is a universe of things.

www.thingiverse.com

 

[K3LAG]

The new Prusa Mk4 is real nice. With input shaping turned on you can increase the speed a good bit and maintain good print quality.

I'm about to implement input shaping on my RailCore which should let me push speeds over 150mm/sec with PLA and other less sticky filaments. It's hard to push PET-G that fast but I routinely print it at 100mm/sec.

 

[DocPeanut]

3D printing can be fun but frustrating too. My wife has a lightly used ender 3 as she upgraded if you want to try it without breaking the bank

 

[BPH102687]

Appreciate all the replies. Looking for something entry level I can learn the ways with. Will do some additional digging from here!

 

[BPH102687]

Buy a Bamboo p1p or a Creality K1 or a Prusa. Printing is not as simple as you make it sound in your post. Some printers require a lot of fine-tuning. That doesn't include fine-tuning your slicer settings either. Good luck.

Does my post make it sound simple? I'd imagine like most things of this nature it requires quite a bit of learning & trial and error. Point being - I don't want to buy junk, but I don't to break the bank at the entry level either.

 

[Jake4now]

I got an Ender 3 Pro about a year ago to fool around with. I think most people start here. You can occasionally find a coupon for Microcenter knocking $100 off the price. I was out the door for $120 with a roll of PLA+ filament. I use "Cura" for my slicer software, which is free. I'm sure there are better options, but it has worked well for me.

 

[Blackstar65]

Yes, your post does. Buy one of the printers I suggested.

 

[Melnic]

There is a 3d printer thread here somewhere. I think it was based on the creality 3 but I think others mentioned what they got.
For entry level what I got was
Creality Ender 3 V2
Creality PEI magnetic steel plate
Creality CR Touch module

I print all with PETG. I make various indoor and outdoor parts.

I kid you not, I built it, set it up and optimized the bed leveling before adding the CR touch, then added the CR touch and its literally plug and play since I set it up. I have not done any maintenance on it, when I want to print, I run the slicer, put the file on the Micro SD card and print. No hair spray, no blue tape, just print and let it cool and scrape off the brim/priming strip. We have exact same set up at work.

IF you want to download and print stuff, you may be able to partner with someone here to print stuff and you pay for materials (filament) donations to them.

Figure out what you want to print and DO NOT get something that pushes the limits of the printer. If you need to print something say 4" wide, get something that prints 5" for example. Your part needs to be about 20% smaller than the max IMO depending on the printer.

 

[r3t1awr3yd]

Bambu X1C.

I went from looking at a creality to printing every day for the last 2 months straight. I joke you not. I've been printing PLA+ and burning through spools and have had no issues. It's 3D printing on easy mode. The only struggles I've had have been in Fusion360 but I knew what I was getting into with trying to build my own STL files for printing.

 

[King Chicken]

Do not get the Ender 3 if you don't have experience with 3d printers. It will be a long and steep learning curve for you. It requires many upgrades that will cost time and money. Even though i had previous experience with printers the Ender 3 was super frustrating at times. Wish i had saved up more and gone with something more expensive....it's almost like you get what you pay for

Youtube has good materials on learning all the software.

 

[King Chicken]

If you need help Reddit. I've had several people on reddit edit and write code for my printer's firmware before out of sheer kindness. Amazingly helpful community.

 

[kshaw]

I have an Ender 3 v.2 and set if up for a Raspberry Pi running Octoprint with a camera. Octoprint is a nice improvement.

 

[crabjoe]

I've got a Tronxy something upstairs. When I 1st got it during Covid, I was all into CAD and printing stuff, but once life started happening again, the printer just sits... My kid uses it at times to print models and such, but it more of a novelty. The one thing that I made with it, that I still use to this day is a phone and 12v charger mount for my bike. I've had a few friends, over the years, tell me I should start printing the mount and make available for sale. Personally, I feel that's too much of a hassle... 3D printing is super slow!

 

[Cool_Moo5e]

3D printing becomes a hobby unto itself. It is not plug and play. Regardless of what printer you buy, you will have to do a lot of learning and tuning to have good success. I've been doing it for over 10 years and I'm still learning stuff that improves my prints.

If you think you are going to download some design files and just print them and go along your merry way you will be disappointed.

I personally try to avoid Chinese printers so the Bambu and Creality printers would be out for me even though they are perfectly good printers. I do own a Creality Ender 3 but I got it for $99 so I broke my own rule ;-). The Prusa is about the best non-Chinese printer you can get and comes with pretty well tuned profiles. It's probably about as close to plug and play you can get.

I build my own printers these days but I'm building high performance, larger printers that definitely would not be suitable for a beginner.

I know you are against the Chinese 3d printers but for a beginner who is a tinkerer would you say the Ender 3 is worth the money? or does Prusa have a sub $200 printer they sell that's just as good if not better? I did ultimately decide I would be using Prusaslicer and well obviously their slicer software has their machines and at least another good 2 or 300 machines on it and a lot of them are Creality.

 

[K3LAG]

I know you are against the Chinese 3d printers but for a beginner who is a tinkerer would you say the Ender 3 is worth the money? or does Prusa have a sub $200 printer they sell that's just as good if not better? I did ultimately decide I would be using Prusaslicer and well obviously their slicer software has their machines and at least another good 2 or 300 machines on it and a lot of them are Creality.

If you catch one of the occasional 'new customer' sales at Micro Center you can sometimes pick up an Ender 3 for $99. That's how I got mine. For the price, they are a decent printer. It is a pretty basic, bare bones printer though. If you end up really getting into it 3D printing you will either end up applying a bunch of mods and upgrades to it or just replacing it with something better. The fact that Prusa Slicer has profiles for the Ender 3 is helpful.

The cheapest printer Prusa sells in the Mini, and it is a better printer in some ways than the Ender 3, but it has a smaller print area and is over $400.

I really don't have any complaints about the Ender 3 from a value perspective. I just try to send as little of my money to China as is possible. I'm in a quandary at the moment, I need an R/C radio for a project and I can spend $120 for a FlySky that will do everything I need or I can not buy Chinese and spend over $500 for a radio that does less. Darned annoying.

 

[Cool_Moo5e]

oh good, I will pick one up for $99 with their new customer program next time I am in the area.

I don't like to support China as much as the next person but without other competition in the price bracket for a newcomer it is hard to not buy one just to try it out, I am not going to pay $400 for something I may learn I don't have enough interest in and use maybe once a year.

 

[K3LAG]

oh good, I will pick one up for $99 with their new customer program next time I am in the area.

I don't like to support China as much as the next person but without other competition in the price bracket for a newcomer it is hard to not buy one just to try it out, I am not going to pay $400 for something I may learn I don't have enough interest in and use maybe once a year.

It actually looks like they have the deal going on now. You need this coupon.

$100 Off Creality Ender 3 V2 3D Printer | New Customer Exclusive

New Customer Exclusive! Sign up to get your coupon via text. Limit one coupon per person. One time use in-store only coupon. While supplies last.

www.microcenter.com

They have actually updated the deal a bit. It used to be for a Ender 3 Pro and now it's for a V2 which is a newer, somewhat improved, model.