I’ve had access to a roommate’s 3D printer, but they’ll be moving away soon :(
Wondering if people have takes on machines that are considered entry level today but may have evolved handy features since, well, when you were an entry level user.
If this isn’t the right place for this please be nice I’m sorry
EDIT: okay I left out way too much detail for this to be answerable.
I’ve been printing for a year, so im not absolute beginner tier, and can benefit from some of the fancy gizmos like auto leveling, multi filament, etc. but i dont really venture beyond PETG and PLA. I mostly use 3D printing in other maker/diy projects; creating custom fixtures, quick tools and jigs, attachments for sewing machines, table saws, tool organization etc. You get the idea. Im not a mechanical engineer or prototyping medical equipment. I just really enjoy the power of being able to model something i need, print it, and immediate use it to complete a project. I dont do any figurines.
My budget is a maximum of 300 canadian dollars, including filaments, replacement parts, and add-ons. I am impartial to any brands or companies, i actually would perfer something that doesnt have proprietary bullshit, but the printers my roommate have are a (GEETECH) Ender 3 Clone and a TwoTree SP-5. The two tree is really awesome, but also over kill for what i need personally.
Other considerations are that It should be relatively compact, not mini/micro or anything, I would rather print twice or rearrange the models on the print bed some times and have more space than the other way around.
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I think it would be better to say what your budget is since entry level is subjective.
Agreed, budget, and what are you trying to print?
Hey! Thanks for the reply! The fact that this is subjective is extremely true.
My budget is roughly 200$ for the machine alone, with a max of 300$ with filament, extras, etc.
Well then if you are not afraid of tinkering creality printers are great to dip a toe at that price point and also serve to give you a solid foundation of the hobby. I started with a standard ender3 and then upgraded for a while as I learned more and finally have settled for now with a bambulab.
I’m a huge fan of Creality printers. If I were starting over today and didn’t have my eye on any specific bell or whistle, I’d probably get a Creality Ender 3 V3 or Ender 3 V3 SE. The Ender 3 Pro and Ender 3 V2 Neo I have now are great. Very reliable and easy to maintain.
One bell/whistle I’d 100% pay extra for is autoleveling. (A z probe rather than a z endstop.) My Ender 3 Pro came with an endstop rather than a probe. As soon as I got the V2 Neo that does have a z-probe I immediately decided to upgrade my Ender 3 Pro with a z-probe. With just the endstop, I had constant issues getting the first layer to adhere, especially if I was printing something that used a significant portion of the bed.
Fuck creality. They have issues all the time, no customer support, no auto bed leveling out of the box, the firmware out of the box isn’t even good. I would go for Elegoo Neptune printers. They work perfectly out of the box, have amazing support, good firmware, auto bed leveling, and prints faster than the enders.
I’ve never had occasion to need to contact Creality customer support, and aside from bed adhesion with my Ender 3 Pro before I added a CR-Touch, I haven’t had any issues with my Creality printers. “No auto bed leveling out of the box” isn’t the case for most of Creality’s printers. (I didn’t mean to imply by “I would pay extra for autoleveling” that Creality makes you pay extra for that. Their bottom-of-the-line printers have autoleveling now-a-days.) And my experience with my two Creality printers was that they “work perfectly out of the box.”
I don’t have any experience with Elegoo printers.
Hmm ive dont know much about the players in the 3D printer market, nor the drama, but from the site Elegoo has reasonable prices for something that looks pretty decent
They’ve sent me parts free of charge 2 times already and their customer support is excellent if you ever need it. Their discord community is also very active and helpful should you need it.
I’m waiting for the creality k1 max to go on sale again. My manager picked one up for under 500 and he says it’s fantastic. Corexy with enclosure and bed leveling
Hey! Thanks for the reply! Auto-leveling is something my roommate has never had so i’ve never experienced what youre describing, but I do see how that would get rid of lots of faff.
I, like others have mentioned, would love to know how “locked down” a company/brand makes they products. I know there are a lot of Ender 3 clones, and I wonder if going with something like that would keep it really diy while also being based on a tried and tested product.
Yeah, good call. I’d definitely say Creality is good about being open. I’ve flashed the firmware on one of my two Creality printers. And upgraded it a couple of times, though admittedly only with official Creality parts.
I have a friend who had a printer that I believe didn’t have an SD card slot and the Wifi died on it, so it became roughly-speaking useless. I like to lean toward fewer moving parts even if it makes for some inconveniences like having to actually load it onto an SD card and put it in the machine.
If I did really care about wifi connectivity, I’d probably still buy a machine without Wifi built-in and attach a Raspberry Pi running Octoprint to the side.
Like others said, depends what is your budget. If I was buying a printer now I would consider Bambu lab P1S or Sovol SV08.
I’ve never been a fan of propertary printers but friend of mine got bambu lab p1s and that thing is a beast. Idk how good SV08 is, but its actually cheap Voron v2.4 so deffo promising
Bambu came out of nowhere that’s for sure. I sold my Prusa for an X1C with AMS. I am hoping Prusa makes a come back I will even spend a little bit more for them just to have the open source and all around good company
Yeah I hope as well, but I don’t think that will happen honestly. The thing is about low price of bambu (and other chinese brands)…it’s just too cheap IMO. Self sourcing parts would cost much more and on top of that bambu comes assembled and tuned. I know many people nowdays think 1k printer is expensive, but it just makes no sense having smartphone prices in the same range as 3D printers (with touch screen, wifi, camera,…). Just my 2c
You know, I’m sure it is great. But looking around at the absolute bullshit I see with 2D printers, I’m never buying a closed source machine for 3D. People are even complaining about Brother these days, seems like only a matter of time that proprietary machines go to shit.
Do you want resin or filament?
Posts in a forum asking for advice, doesn’t respond to a single comment asking for more info for 2 days. Nice
sorry i was kicking rocks
Fair enough. Haha.
Since you’re here now, I got a lot of use out of my Neptune 3, which you can get for like $100 from their site now that the 4 series is out. That being said, you can look at my post history and determine if that’s the printer for you. Though for a hundred bucks it’s a pretty solid grab.
I am very interested in the Neptune 3, especially for 100$, but does it actually hold up?
It took a little bit of tinkering to get it where I wanted it to be, but once it got there I had no complaints (until, see post history). I got it when it was new and I feel I got my money’s worth, for $100 it’s great, but if you want something to perform as good as even Elegoo’s newer entry level printers (like the Neptune 4 series), it’s going to take work.
