3DPrinting
3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.
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Watching this thread; this might be slightly off topic, but I’m interested in finding a good “starter printer” for someone with limited working knowledge, but something with a pretty good size print bed and higher print quality. Maybe one of the three OP mentioned is it?
If I were starting printing today, I'd probably get an Ender 3 S1. You also can't go wrong with Prusa printers, but you'll pay a bit (a lot) more for them.
Really anything from those "best beginner printer" lists will work, as long as it has ABL (auto bed leveling).
Regardless of what anyone else says, you'll want ABL at some point, so just get it right off the bat. Because adding an ABL sensor afterwards can sometimes be super annoying.
But I wouldn't recommend anything from Bambulabs. Lots of gear on those printers is proprietary, and you will need to buy parts at some point.
With other printers you can get cheap parts everywhere. With Bambulabs printers though, enjoy waiting months for a $180 part that's $20 on every other printer.
The dual extruder and auto bed leveling are really appealing, but this seems to limit choices a lot. My budget would probably be $500 give or take $200, does that change your recommendation at all?
Not Really.
I'd get maybe $300 worth of printer, and then save the other couple hundred bucks for filaments and modifications that you'll want after spending a while with the machine. That's where the Ender 3 S1 fits right in.
I don't really recommend spending more as a beginner, because you wont know what you actually need until you start printing stuff.
Though, if you don't like to fiddle with stuff at all, the Bambulabs P1P ($599) is a thing that makes good parts. I still don't recommend it, especially for a beginner. But for someone who just wants stuff to work in an Apple sort of way, (expensive, locked down, a bit contrived, but mostly seamless) that might be the best choice.
Yea I mean, I think I have a pretty low appetite for modding and tinkering. I would describe my ideal 3D printer as like, “what if Apple made a 3D printer”. I’d want to load filament and have it “just work” as much as possible.
So in that case, Bambulabs P1P is probably the printer you want, despite it's proprietary nature.
I probably should have asked what you were looking for in a printer before starting to recommend stuff, but at least we figured it out in the end.
Awesome, cheers! I'll check it out! Thanks man.
These new generation printers seem to be a lot more user friendly. My starter (and current) printer is the Sidewinder X2 which I got for the larger build volume, 32bit board, TMC2209 stepper drivers, direct drive extruder, etc. It's been pretty good but I've also replaced/upgraded a ton of stuff including swapping out the stock glass bed for an aluminum bed due to major warping.
If I was to buy a new printer today I'd 100% go with a CoreXY machine to eliminate the bed swinging back and forth and causing so many issues. Other neat features would be multi color/filament extruders but that's also something I could live without.
You can either go cheap up front and upgrade parts/tinker later or spend a lot up front and have a more user friendly experience. Most printers are capable of the same quality so you're really just paying for reliability and features.
The dual extruder and auto bed leveling are really appealing, but this seems to limit choices a lot. My budget would probably be $500 give or take $200, does that change your recommendation at all?
I don't have any specific recommendations buy your budget is enough to buy something midrange and have money leftover for filament and any mods you'd like to do. I'd suggest starting your search by figuring out what print volume you'd like to filter down your options and then further filtering by features like auto bed leveling, direct drive extruders, and 32-bit mainboards. Whittle the list down to a handful of options in your price range. Once you have a short list, you can check reviews on each model and pull the trigger on something. The Ender models are pretty popular and have huge community support. I have the Sidewinder X2 like I mentioned and it has been good to learn with, but I haven't kept up on all the new printer releases to suggest anything better.
I second every bit of this. My first printer was a sidewinder I upgraded like crazy and converter to klipper. Ended up just wishing I started with a corexy. Mine had a bit of a bend in the x gantry that took me forever to figure out and was not possible to compensate for. Went to a 300mm voron 2.4 afterward and have been super happy
I'm also trying to fix my perpetually-broken X2, fun times.