Would be so kind as to suggest a printer for me? I have no experience at all with 3D printers or 3D modeling. But I am super interested and have electronics and coding knowledge. I would like to print things like brackets, enclosures for custom circuit boards, organizers, keyboard plates, etc. Ideally I would like to spend around $300USD, but I am open to going as high as $500USD if it would save me headaches and make the experience more enjoyable and streamlined.
Please suggest something for me and let me know if I didn’t provide enough information. One final note, I live in range of a microcenter if that is a factor.
Right, lots of suggestions for Bambu and Prusa and rightfully so. But their prices are high and while they are worth it, they wouldn’t be what I’d suggest for a first time printer.
The Ender 3 is what I’d suggest, though not the V1. The S1 or the v3 and good starting points for being in budget and having some modern features.
This isn’t like the mid 2010’s where it was hit or miss and the printers will have a slight chance of burning your house down. Hictop anyone? But these days even a $200 printer is good enough to start printing.
That said software is going to be your biggest pain point.
For the slicer make sure its compatible with PrusaSlicr or Cura. Preferability the former. This makes the models to print, and some cheep third party slicers makes their own with questionable quality and support.
For modeling, you have some options. Blender if you are looking to design 3d shapes like clay. Fusion360 is a cheap and free (while limited) solution for parametric cad design. With TinkerCAD is a good in between. But like Photoshop is to gimp, Fusion 360 is to FreeCAD and it may be worth learning how FreeCAD works since its an extremely flexible tool.
TL:DR Ender 3 V3/S1, Prusa Slicer, Cura, Blender, TinkerCAD, Fusion360, FreeCAD and you should be too to start printing and making brackets.