buying advise 3D printer

[pharmacist]

Hello everybody,

Having alot of experience with 2D printers the last decades, I want to enter the world of 3D printers. Any tips about a good 3D printer that I can buy, using good aftermarket filament, heated versus non-heated beds, ease of cleaning of the printer, sound production, fitting on narrow IKEA Kallax (d: 37 cm), closed system. Not sure this is a good printer:

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Bambu Lab P1S 3D Printer​

Many thanks for the input.

 

[Artur5]

WARNING : You're about to open a deadly can of worms. Think twice (or thrice ) before entering into the 3Dworld, a land of no return.
I did the fatal mistake four years ago and, believe me, there's no cure once you're bitten by this bug...

 

[Artur5]

My first printer was a Prusa, still on good working order, but I won’t recommend any of their current models,
The reasons aren’t easy to explain in a few words but if I were starting now on 3D printing, I’d pass on Prusa,
Bambulab is the big name these days but I don’t like their business model, Proprietary software, dubious customer support, compulsory icloud account, etc..
So, my recommendations are what I wouldn’t buy instead of what I’d buy.
Of course, that’s just me. Thousands, even millions of users sure do love like their Bambulabs, Prusas or Crealitys.

If you’re totally new on 3D, don’t commit yourself too soon to a certain brand or model until you know more about 3D printers.
Take your time on Internet browsing forums until you get a better idea of how 3D printers work, how they’re build, what is a slicer, hotend, extruder, heatbreak, etc.

P.S.
My former message wasn’t totally a joke, not when I think of how much I’ve spent on this thing the last years..

 

[The Hat]

Many thanks for the input.

Of all the printers I have bought in the last 8 years, Creality have been for me the best, they make small as well as large printers so look at what they got and pick one.. Or go to some other brand, in a nut shell a 3D printer is a 3D printer and it will get you hooked whichever you choose very quickly..

You have to be born before you can learn to crawl, so burn your fingers on something small !

As far as advice is concerned, for me I like to stay away for these printer forums because everyone has their own agenda, loves / hates are expected, but some comments are downright nasty and not worth considering..

The best 3D forum I found was right here on Nifty, because nobody has an axe to grind and all advice is given in good spirit, my level of competence is all down to Nifty members advice and they have never steered me wrong, originally Rob got me started..

 

[x64]

I've had some experience with both Bambu Lab and Creality, personally would go with Creality for a cheap learning experience for understanding the printer, troubleshooting upgrading etc. You will be learning about Flow Rate, Pressure advance, Z offset, calibrating extruders and more. And there's plenty of substantial hardware upgrades to install.

Bambu Lab printers on the other hand are great if you want to just buy a machine and print reliably, but don't care much about tweaking parameters or pushing the limit. Most things are preset properly especially if you use their filaments. You can obviously tweak things yourself but that's not really what the product is intended for.

But beyond the big names there is plenty of DIY projects out there that make a better printer or push the limits in different ways. If you can follow an advanced guide, have some assembly experience and free time those are great projects. When starting fresh like you I would look there, as you'll be building everything yourself and learn and know everything about the machine. Watch some video's on Youtube showing the current up to date lineup of available projects.

 

[Redbrickman]

I'd stay away from Bambu printers if I was in the market for a new one. They are continually locking down their firmware to keep people in their own ecosystem, e.g. they are reportedly now making it impossible even to use 3rd party slicer software. There is also a lot of concern regarding their security.

Personally for a starter printer I'd try a QIDI plus 4. Reasonable priced and one of the few that has an enclosed and heated chamber so you can print some of the more exotic filaments. They are also introducing a multicolour add on box what will allow you to have 4 separate coloured filaments, much like the Bambu AMS system.

If you really want to tinker then you could build one of the Voron range of printers. There are kits available that pretty much has everything you need. If you go down that route I'd recommend buying an LDO kit as theirs is high quality and had good build instructions. I built my Voron from scratch befoe anyone made a kit. It was a long process but enjoyable, the wiring was the hard part but if I had to do it again I'd get a kit.

If you just want to dip your toe into the murky waters of 3D printing then there are cheaper alternatives with many "bedslinger" models available such as the Ender 3 V3 which is a solid little printer.

Whichever you choose make sure there is a good community forum for the printer. There are some great printer communities on Discord which would be worth joining if you are researching.

Voron - https://discord.gg/voron

Qidi - https://discord.gg/F4C6MjQm

Creality and others have Discord communities too but I don't follow them.

As far as a support or table is concnerned you really want one that won't wobble around as it can affect the print quality.

I think you will enjoy it as you have clearly spent lots of time tinkering with printers and inks so there is plenty of scope in the 3D world to keep you happy

The battle to get a good first layer and good adhesion to the build plate is the first level of apprenticeship that is the hardest part of the learning curve

 

[Artur5]

The long and winding road to 3Dland ..

Voron for me, but I guess that one must be a bit nuts to choose this road, isn't so Redbrickman ? .

Nevertheless, looking back after more than two years, I'm now totally sure that my choice was right.
When I've had trouble with a Voron, it was because of my lack of skills or experience in 99% of the times. That's not the case with most of the commercial brands. Endless iterations of buggy firmwares, poor quality components, dumb designs ,sloppy assembled parts and what not. Prusa, I'm looking at you, but I guess that this is to be expected with the vast majority of 3D printers whose manufacturers have profit as the main goal. This is where Voron is different. Their community team designs the machines for the best performances, regardless of the cost, because they don't sell the printers.