Hi all.
My venerable ender 3 has likely printed it’s last benchy. Plus side, the tech has advanced significantly since I bought it. Down side, I’ve not kept track of the newer options.
Can anyone give me a rundown of which are worth looking at, and which to avoid?
I’m mostly concerned with reliability, but a speed boost would definitely be welcome. A heated chamber and/or multi material would also be very nice to have.
I would like to keep the costs closer to £500 ($680) but can stretch that, if there is a machine worth it.
I also have a complete no on bamboo printers. I don’t like what they’ve done regarding abuse of the open source movement.
Thanks all!
Edit to add. I’m not against non open source printers. I just have an issue with companies trying to burn the ladder behind them and lock their customers into a bubble.
Had the prusa mini from when it came out and made the jump to the Core One when the reviews came out. Absolutely love it, fast and reliable. But the main reason is that it’s quieter than other similar options, it lives at the edge of a living space, and that’s a big factor for me. It’s only gotten quieter with firmware improvements.
If I had that amount for a printer, I’d get an LDO Delta Flyer kit or an LDO BabyBelt Pro kit. Maybe even 2! They’re pretty cheap last i checked
I’ve only owned one 3D printer, a prusa mk3s which has done everything I’ve needed for at least 5 years. Assembled the printer from a kit and built my own enclosure to save some money. The mk4s kit is around $710 right now, so that’s the one I’d be researching first if I had to buy a new printer right now. Just my 2¢, good luck
I share your views on company policies. After the Ender S1, I went with the Ender K1C and can honestly recommend it.
The only prebuilts or kits I recommend currently are from Prusa. Fairly open and they have a strong track record for reliability.
If you’re willing to build, you might take a look at the Voron project. I hear good things about them, though reliability is largely up to your mechanical and electronics skills. I believe one or two of their builds are roughly in your price range.
That said, my wife recently surprised me by preordering the Flashforge Creator 5 Pro (Not really in your price range) as a gift. They seem to have a fairly solid track record for reliability, though they are not much better than Bamboo in terms of openness. They have other printers and I’ve heard mostly good things about their AD5X and Adventure 5M Pro which are more in line with your budget.
Honestly what isnt a bad approach, buying one used from a hobbyist. You get the full run down of the machine, rarely with a sales pitch and they arent afraid to tell you what theyre selling is NOT what you should be looking for. You also arent, normally, going to be buying a machine with tons and tons of miles on them. Most find craigslist because the machine’s owner upgraded or realized how long its been on a shelf for. Never bought 3d printer but have bought tons of tools like my cnc router, 2 desktop lathes, laser cutter and press brake, all small models I found not really needing them but always looking out for them… I learn more just going to look at them than i do running them loljkjk. Ive ran into this buying used cars too. There is a weird niche of things that cost so much new that most buying them are die hard hobbyists or trying to start a job shop. Either way they know so much about the machine youre buying amd love telling you everything they did with it.
Loving my prusa core. The indx system was just released for it, so I suggest you wait until the reviews are in, and if they are as good as I hope, then that’ll take care of your multi-filament needs.
I’m mostly happy with my qidi plus 4 but I’m not sure of they can be recommended. The prices are good but they have some problems with keeping up the quality as I heard. Also the qidi plus4 is quite loud and I heard they multi color unit is very loud. Speed and print quality are excellent though. I’m not sure if there is a better printer for the price but maybe paying a bit more might give you a better printer.
Snapmaker U1 is amazing, Elgoo Centuri is a great option as well
Both of those have a lot of bang for their buck. I had also missed both completely. 👍
I have the Snapmaker and I love it, better than my bambu p1s and Kobra 3 max
None of the manufacturers have been great with open source, other than Prusa, to my knowledge.
You can get a heck of a lot more capable printer than an ender3 at that price point, even with multi material. If you want to keep waste down though you would need at least a dual head machine, or a toolhead switching machine which I think goes above your price range.
If you don’t need a big printer, and can pass on multilateral (unless you want to get a small INDX system for it later… for a bunch more money), at that price I’d spring for a Voron v0. Doesn’t get more open source than that.
I like Prusa and the Bamboo P1S, but they are enshittifying rapidly also.
Is prusa starting to enshittify? I know bamboo is.
From what I recall, people were upset with the release of the Prusa One for a multitude of reasons: moving away from printing their own parts, it’s a bit harder to repair, etc. They’re still really open and mod-able, but kinda? Take everything with a grain of salt though, I haven’t looked into them in like a year.
Edit: edited the wrong comment lmao
I think prusa is fine, sorry for the ambiguity
I’d recommend trying some budget-y CoreXY-type printer, but I’d be very careful with Creality lineup on that, as many of their options didn’t really turn out well, basic K1 is straight up dogwater, but some later revisions like KE might be better.
Mentioned already Elegoo Centauri is cool. If you want multi-filament system as well - take a look at Centauri Carbon 2, although it gets a bit less efficient with keeping temperature inside the enclosure due to big silly hat, and using different materials (e.g. different ones for supports) is going to be quite tricky.
I have an Ender 3 V3 Plus. Huge upgrade from my Ender 3 V2, but either print locally or flash custom firmware before connecting it to the internet. The app/website is so locked down I had to publish a private model to my account before printing anything not on Creality Cloud.
Edit to add: flashing custom firmware can be dangerous and brick your printer’s mobo, please exercise caution. I can’t provide any advice, as I have not flashed mine yet, but it’s on my to-do list.
Abuse of the open source movement? What did they do?
Not even playing lip service to supporting the open source stuff they built upon. They’ve also recently been trying to lockdown and paywall (or just drop) features. Including legal action against people trying to undo the damage.
The general sniff test is they are trying to lock people in before milking them for all they can.
To be fair though, the reason Bambu Lab printers work so well for most is in large part due to the walled garden approach.
I still disagree with it and will vote with my wallet by avoiding them, but I can see the appeal if you don’t know any better (or just don’t care!).
Prusa kind of tries to navigate both sides of the issue (not everything is open source anymore), so you can still get caught there.
Prusa has at least built up some credit with the community. Bambu came in planning on locking people in.
Agreed, what Bambu did is essentially steal the work of everybody and close it up, and go against anyone trying to reopen it.
