I am ok assembling the machine and learning how to dial it in. I can do CAD work and make models by hand; I was a machinist in a past life. But, I am not very familiar with 'slicer' software yet.
If you want a large printer that's decent for tinkering, Sovol SV08.
If you want relatively good support and to support a company that has a history of giving back, Prusa.
If you want something cheap with a lot of features that tend to be more high end, Elegoo Centuri Carbon.
If you just want something cheap that's arguably incredible value with an active community, Creality Ender 3 V3 KE.
While I agree, I think it's heavily underselling Bambulab printers in terms of UX and print quality, they are the absolute best in the market and by a mile.
I went onto Reddit to get their recommendations. To someone completely new who hasn't followed any real developments occurring in the industry, it was confusing but it seemed like the Sovol SV06 was a good "starting point".
Well I didn't realize how far behind the industry still was. I thought surely at this point all printers much just be load file -> load filament -> click print. Just like regular printers no?
Nope, doing dumb things like using some third party slicer tool, transferring a file to a microsd card manually and then babying the printer for its super slow error prone prints feels like its still a toy not a professional device.
Imagine having to do that level of nonsense for your laser printer? Yeah maybe back in the days of "Office Space" but not today!
I was in a time crunch so out of desperation I took a gamble and dropped a wad of cash on a Bambu X1C. It is what I consider a professional product for normies in my eyes. Most everything else are just toys.
I was ready to say Bambu, Bambu and nothing but Bambu but then I read the user's last few sentences. Seems like he is not really looking for a end to end professional product and so hes got infinite options but for anyone else, its gotta be Bambu!
Prusa drives the slicer development ecosystem (Bambu Studio is a fork), so new production-ready advances typically come from them first, which is lovely to support.
The Bambu products are fine. They print well. But the "it's on another level" stuff is mostly paid influencer narratives (a rampant thing in 3D printer YouTube, etc.) that don't really hold up to any professional scrutiny.
With advent of EasyPrint etc. arguably Prusa may have also one-upped them on ease of use? Though this isn't first-hand knowledge as I haven't tried it personally.
The out of the box experience between a Bambu printer and a modern Prusa is not noticably different. You'll be onto your first print in 10 minutes with either.
Prusa's product history simply goes back longer to when 3D printers were more hobbyist kit. But they've grown up just the same.
It's a bit like saying a 2026 5 Lexus is superior to a 2025 Maybach because Mercedes' first car in 1886 was a rickety afair.
My experience was the same. I can just run the thing without having to tweak, tune, calibrate it. It takes care of that itself. I also don't let it talk to my wifi though. I just use the microSD card.
But my purchase was a while ago. While it is possible the industry has caught up, the reputation Bambu built still leads the pack.
I have an Elegoo Neptune 3 Pro. It was like $220. I have put approximately $30 into it for the Raspberry Pi I installed Octoprint on, and even that's a stretch since I already owned the Pi. It prints just fine. Sits for months. Fires up every time. First layers perfect every time.
The "printer being the hobby" is only true if you let it. Even cheap no name open source printers are really good these days, and in the high end there are plenty that are competitive with Bambu on print quality, out of the box experience, and features, often exceeding them.
I dunno, I guess I just don't think having to let a printer talk to some fucking cloud service in China so I can start an STL print from my phone is all that important of a feature.
It’s going to be hard to justify supporting open source hardware at these prices.
It's almost impossible to justify buying their printers today. The issues and concerns about Bambulab seem to be primarily driven by disappointment with how a new company that didn't open source their hardware was able to absolutely steamroll the entire market, rather than actual real issues you as a user will have.
The fact that the Bambu printers use linear slides means they have a huge accuracy advantage right out the chute. And the Bambu printers have a bunch of other quality of life improvements that really add up.
While you can certainly slag Bambu for their business practices, the other 3D printer companies are absolutely lagging on the engineering front. Companies like Prusa need to step up their game.
As for phoning home, we isolated the printer on its own network and it hasn't caused us any issues. Sure, some of the monitoring features won't work, but it seems to print just fine without network access.
Get your claims straight. My Prusa Mini has been super reliable. Is it less accurate? Maybe, but that's not the claim you're replying to.
Go on, why are you shilling?
My prusa has be far more reliable so far. admittedly it’s newer than the a1 so it’s too early to be super conclusive on that, but so far it’s been quite a bit better
Of course, it’s quite a bit more money too
Next door,3d items literally being built. No fight. No fuss.
Perhaps the grip.
Most serious 3D printed guns have at least a metal barrel. Often, 3D printed guns are just a lower receiver, that is the part you hold in your hand, the parts that actually fire the bullets (barrel, pin, slide, etc...) are bought off the shelf from real gun manufacturers.
This is a workaround for some laws that considers gun parts to not be a gun. For example, outside of a gun, a barrel is just a metal pipe and can be traded freely. The part that makes a gun a gun is the lower receiver, and you can 3D print that in plastic and still get good performance. In fact, Glock makes this part in plastic and these are some of the most popular and proven guns in the world.
GUI and UX are not the same. Prusa has pretty good print quality too but not as good a GUI as the Bambu.
UX would include the ability to easily tear down a hot end, replace a nozzle, tighten any belts, and anything else that would affect your ability to print high quality prints.
For prusa, since that's the printer I have experience with the most. Replacing the nozzle and clearing filament jams are pretty easy. But tearing down the hot end to remove debris wrapped around the extruder gear was not.
But then for most stuff I use a .6mm high flow nozzle.
Prusa is widely known to launch their next-generation tool changer at Formnext in Nov, which is going to be a concept where you have a rack of nozzle+heatpipe+filament tube tools that the print head grabs and heats up inductively. And Bambu is more or less working on something similar they will probably launch some time next year.
This is totally changing the "nozzle swap" equation. It means purge-free and much faster multi-material printing without outright duplicating print heads like the XL does, and the ability to park and mix nozzle sizes as well.
It'll be cool to see which company pulls it off better. As someone who was never convinced by either Bambu's shoddy and wasteful AMS or Prusa's ridiculously humongous MMU+Buffer approach, this is the leap I've been waiting for for an upgrade.
Edit: Amazing move to downvote a comment that simply and neutrally adds new information to the thread.
With my Bambu for 18 months, problem just doesn't exist. I have spare parts because previous experience said I'd need it. But not yet.
The most egregious operational issue is the occasional hairball, even then, the printer often catches the issue and pauses the print to let me check on it - automatic hairball detection.
I don't like the Bambu company and I wouldn't buy one now thanks to their lock in practices. My Bambu won't get the "fuck you" firmware update.
But as to their hardware reliability for "just printing stuff" - it's pretty awesome. If other companies have caught up to this, then the 3D printing world is in a much better place.
It stands on soft rubber feet so the whole machine has a low natural frequency (similar to the drum of a washing machine). This has the advantage that the high frequency movements of the motors/axes never resonate with the casing.
In the beginning it does a lot of tests and seems to also shake the machine to analyse the frequency behaviour.
Your ears can immediately note that it is a nice feature for sure.
Would you mind visiting https://dotancohen.com? I'd like to see your IP address, if you don't mind.
I wasn't suggesting anything like that or even trying to pressure anyone into not being selfish: I merely pointed out that a sentence on the internet[1] would be untrue if anyone cares about Bambu's policies and practices for non-selfish reasons.
[1] "none of the supposed business practices/privacy concerns amount to anything tangible"
Prusa is by far the most "open" probably with the SV08 second because it uses so much from the open source community (it's Voron inspired).
If you have a lot of time to spend, you could build a Voron, but I would not recommend that to anyone new to 3D printing.
I did have to play around and use orcaslicer to get the printer set up using the network printing and camera feed working.
The one issue I do have is that it seems I would need to connect the printer to a internet enabled Network to get firmware updates, because the firmware version I have is ironically the one before they enabled SD card updating lol.
Back to the original question, I've had this printer for about a month and have been printing virtually non-stop with very minimal complaints. Coming from an ender 3 it is absolutely night and day in terms of ease of setup and general usage.
https://blog.bambulab.com/updates-and-third-party-integratio...
i have no idea if it works with modern ones but my "old" Ender 3 plays nice with it
Buying a Creality printer is like buying a hobby-grade RC car (ie, Traxxas, Team Associated, etc.). Decent out of the box, but you're likely going to be reaching for buying upgraded parts and it eventually becomes a Ship of Theseus.
I have an Ender 3 Pro, my list of upgrades:
- Replace the crappy flexible mat with PEI-coated flexsteel
- Filament runout detector
- Motherboard replacement (made flashing custom firmware 100x easier, and uses quieter stepper motor drivers)
- Automatic bed leveler
- Dual-gear extruder
- Customized firmware that changes the 3x3 bed leveling matrix to 7x7
- OctoPi
A decent printer will have half of these features already built in.
I added:
* Bed leveler
* Flexible build surface
* direct drive extruder
* second z axis screw drive
* octopi
Everything except for the octopi was a Creality kit. So it’s not like they don’t know their market is looking to tinker and do upgrades themselves.
If you want to make things because the end product is the goal, get something fancier. If you want to know how and why it works, spending a bit more time on the journey part (which might be frustrating), the Creality might be a good fit. It’s not going to have the same user-experience as a Bamboo or Prusa, but for me, that’s okay.
when I started tinkering there were none of those kits, and the Ender I have now has pretty much nothing in common with the Ender I bought back then except some parts of the frame and the drives. and still the whole journey cost was about the same as just buying Prusa and then learning nothing.
this is a bit philosophical, but when you do want to shape material, be it wood or plastic, you have to not only understand how it's done, but to feel it. or you will repeatedly end up with crap and then endlessly wonder what went wrong
this cannot be bought, it's experience. for 3d-printing the fastest way is to get something like Ender and then build your own perfect printer out of it over several years.
These being:
- Eddy sensor (for faster bed meshing, eddy-ng addon for Klipper adds auto z-offset)
- Mainline Klipper/Kalico (required for eddy functionality)
- Some motherboard fan replacement mod (the default is tiny, noisy, and always-on)
Of the others listed:
- Bambu printers and the Elegoo Centauri Carbon have locked-down firmware (possibly with hidden license violations).
- I think the only Prusa machine with that build volume is the XL, which is out of the price range
- The Creality Ender 3 V3 KE is okay, but the build volume is 220x220x240mm
You can buy upgrades for your Bambu too.
I disagree about Sovol the company though. I have a Sovol SV07 in the garage gathering dust. Its printer head got all clogged up and when I complained to them, they just sent me a random part with no information on what to do with it. I guess I could get into the tinkering mode, but who has the time?
I'd just love to have a sub-$1000 printer which prints whenever I have something to print (which is not too often, I concede), and does a fantastic job of it.
Bambulabs is out.
[0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/snapmaker/snapmaker-u1-...
Someone in a HN thread a couple of weeks ago said when you turn one of these on the companies CEO's face is used as the boot screen...
They do have a bunch of cloud service BS and phoning home that runs afoul of the HN spirit, but there's a LAN mode that allows you to send prints from LAN without opening up to the wider internet. If that's still too restrictive, you can always do direct SD card transfers via sneakernet.
Software might be too closed for you, IDK if there are jailbreaks. Repairability is possible but fiddly – akin to current gen car engines, rather than 70s types. They're very popular printers, I've only needed to open the head once, and there were plenty of YT teardown videos to help.
The Bambu slicer is good. They've got niceties for basic operations like snapping to bed or scaling up/down by a few percent. I believe it's based on cura slicer, which is also excellent.
P1S is at the midpoint of your budget. Their next model up is $1200, depending on your flexibility. Might have some value if you're doing more obscure materials. Didn't realize how cheap the enclosed ones had gotten. I've got half a mind to upgrade myself now....
I agree that the Bambu printers are as good as it gets for plug-and-play printing, but I wouldn't trust the tiny carbon filter for toxic fumes in an indoor environment.
The better VOC filters use a larger amount of activated carbon and they recirculate a high volume of chamber air inside the chamber.
Activated carbon also needs to be replaced over time as it loses capacity to adsorb more VOCs.
This is not the way to go with toxic fumes or how to get good ABS printing performance.
With Bambu Labs printers, you just plug them in, turn them on, and feed them filament and your files. They work so well that you don't have to think about firmware or anything else.
I got my first 3D printer around a dozen years ago as well, and the comparison to the experience you get with a Bambu Labs X1C or H2D is absolutely night and day. It feels like with the previous generations of 3D printers, that operating and maintaining and tuning the machine itself was the "hobby". With Bambu Labs (and I'm sure some of the other competing printers that have come out since the X1C was released), the "hobby" is what you actually make.
It just works, requires no tweaking, no fiddling, no flashing firmware or bed leveling or hairspray, and it has totally changed 3D printing from a nerd hobby to something anyone can do (IMHO).
It's not a brittle system. I don't deny that Bambu makes a good product, an excellent product even. If you can't afford to support the general ecosystem get one and do your thing.
I just think the reason Bambu is where it is right now is because they are VC funded vampires on the ecosystem and supporting them will make things worse in the long run. If you can afford to support someone else you should because it helps make things better for everyone.
FWIW until recently I championed Bambu as just the default easy solution, recommending it to my friends every time, but I had a long conversation with Josef about the future of 3D printing and it really changed my mind.
This is exactly what I am talking about - you claim to have a reliable and easy to use solution, but it's not a solution that someone who wanted to print dragons for their grandkids could use. Bambu Labs is (and Prusa's current offerings, to some extent, are as well, although that is up for debate as you can imagine).
It sounds like your issue is not with Bambu Lab's products, but with their business practices, and I share your concerns there - but it still doesn't mean that "my old printer I've spent a lot of time getting to work the way I want it do" is a viable alternative to "I can buy it at BestBuy, plug it in, and hit print"
The upfront ont-time cost to get to something that works reliably with a non-Bambu printer is real, but I am perhaps naively assuming that if my ancient makerbot has been working reliably for years now the same one time cost can be paid with any modern printer and amortized over hundreds of hours of printing to be nearly negligible, and you still have a reliable printer AND you're voting with your wallet for a better future.
I am not claiming that what I've done is the same as "go to best buy, plug it in and hit print" but I do think the alternative is really really not bad at all.
This isn't "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially...". I'm saying "surely if my ancient makerbot is like this with really minimal tuning, a modern non-bambu printer is worth the cost of a bit of extra setup in order to fund people who are improving the space".
yeah, Prusa Slicer....who do you think Bambu labs got theirs from? All of the major slicers are forks of Slic3r. Hardly a "oh wow this is such a pain in the butt" change.
> no flashing firmware
BambuLabs have firmware, and they have updates too. Or are you complaining about, what, having to take an SD card out and drop a file on it?
It's like trying to compare installing Gentoo on an old Lenovo and a Macbook Pro - yes, they both work fine, but the amount of work that one might have to do to get one of them to work reliably is much different than the other. Once you get them working, sure, they are reliable, but obviously most people would rather not have to flash an alternative firmware, etc.
I regret it. Hands down. It is absolutely worse from a practical standpoint than the much older X1C I have, and the absolutely maddening part is that the "worse" bits are mostly software related.
You can hate on Bambu all you want (and frankly - a good chunk of it is well earned, but some is exaggerated or false) - but it feels like they use their products, and they care enough to fix the rough spots.
So while I like the ideals of Prusa... I can't say I'm super impressed with their latest offerings. Bambu's ecosystem is justly WILDLY better. The slicer is less annoying, the printer is more consistent, the monitoring tools are better, and most importantly - when I hit print, it just fucking does it.
I've had the Core One for less than 3 months, and I'm already into the double digits for number times I hit print and I come back 5 hours later to find.... it hasn't even damn well started the job. Instead...
"nozzle wipe failed. Retry?"
"different filament is loaded. unload? Select No to start print" (side note - it's just fucking wrong here, the filament from the correct MMU slot IS loaded, I just did it manually at the printer because if I don't and I switch materials - the next print is a guaranteed failure. The MMU is a whole different clusterfuck of bad software design, cool 3d printed engineering, bad software design)
"Nozzle clean failed. Retry?"
"The bed appears to be unlevel. Perform leveling?"
"Bed heating disabled due to inactivity" (This one still stumps me, I hit print, and came back to this message - my guess is nozzle clean fail and this just dismissed the first one... but who knows).
"Nozzle wipe failed. Retry?"
---
Basically - I am fucking tired of "Core One needs your attention!" popups on my phone. Especially for the stupid things like approving a nozzle clean retry, or re-leveling. I am also sick of wasted time thinking the machine is printing when it's not.
Right now, I would absolutely buy a Bambu over anything else in the market for FDM.
It sounds like there may be a hardware problem with your printer. Did you buy it assembled or do it yourself? You may want to contact Prusa about this, because I can confirm this is not normal behavior for this printer.
10 years ago... I would manually level my ender, religiously monitor it, and still deal with a decently high failure rate (esp for anything other than PLA). Tuning the printer took easily as much time as I actually spent printing with it. I upgraded all the things, flashed firmware, ran octoprint, etc...
It was like driving - gotta keep the hands on the wheel and maintain alertness at all times. It was an activity that required my attention and focus.
Then I caved and got an X1C in 2023. It's... a really, REALLY good machine.
It's like flying somewhere. I get on the plane, start up a movie or a book, and someone wakes me up when the flight is over. It's a tool that is doing things for me while I do other stuff.
I'm at the point where I'm not really interested in the "middle" all that much. Either go with a Voron and get the "I'm driving" feeling if that's what you want. Or get a Bambu and get chauffeured to successful print.
People that buy expensive consumer grade printers are just satisfied with mediocre results because they don’t know any better.
To get great quality prints you need to actually know how the tool you are using works and what are its strengths and weaknesses.
A Voron or RatRig are right up your alley. They are highly customizable, buy a kit as a base, then upgrade components as needed to do more complex printing. They are completely open source and repairable with no phoning home or any other shenanigans, the GNU/Linux of 3d printers. If you have CAD and machining experience it should be fairly straight forward.
My Vorons are both extremely reliable, I just hit print for 99% of my stuff and it just works with either auto leveling or static fixed offsets (depends on the Voron chosen). If something doesn’t work out, there is an enormous community with many swappable components and the machines are upgradable year after year, or can be kept in a specific older configuration.
Now, for their QA - it is not on par with Prusa or Bambu, however, there are a few tips to avoid the pitfalls. 1. If buying the Plus 4, buy the US version of possible. The EU models are older units with a faulty part. 2. Buy from places that offer returns. If the printer is faulty, you can always return it 3. If something breaks, document and send to support. Expect free replacement parts shipped within a week.
By following the above, you will get an extremely capable printer at a fraction of a cost of a Bambu, with offline modes, open source FW a great community and hotend capabilities that are virtually unparalleled and venture into engineering grade machines.
Happy printing :)
I really wouldn't bother buying anything else as a beginner. Pick between these two.
It's a weird thing in 3D printing right now that if you don't have the open source stuff as a requirement you get better print quality and reliability for half the price with Bambu Lab.
My Voron is hands down a better printer but also required significantly more investments in components and especially time.
And the Q2 came out recently, looks even better, with multi-material feed support (similar to Bambu’s AMS)
and
> durable, temperature/chemical resistant materials such as PC/Nylon/ABS or infused materials.
are a little cart-before-horse. This is like asking what ink-and-paper printer to buy for making complex, multi-format printed books to specific criteria, while admitting that you've not used any form of publishing software or understand any of the non-software processes involved in making a book.
The slicer is by far your most important tool for _effective_ 3D printing with a variety of materials, moreso than CAD or 3D modeling. Get a cheaper, more plug-and-play printer that doesn't meet all of your criteria, and focus on learning how to effectively use its slicer.
Print basic things, experiment, and force and make hands-on mistakes with it on relatively forgiving PLA/PETG. Do these _before_ jumping up to a pricier, fully enclosed machine _and also_ before printing harder-to-use materials, each of which will add new difficulties. You don't want your first hotend blob to happen on a decent machine that you actually like while using a material that's difficult or dangerous to deal with.
A Sovol SV06 or SV08 meets most of your criteria at about 1/3 to 1/2 of your budget; I haven't had the best experiences with their reliability but they fit many of your criteria. Used Creality Enders might be even cheaper depending on where you are, and while also fussy are hackable and repairable to the point of often being used as platforms for entirely different printers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmMW6_7lrlQ
To make a CNC machining metaphor - Slicer software is basically just your interface to the dials and knobs on the CNC settings for speeds and feeds. There's more settings, because 3d printing is more like if a CNC had a baby with a welder and an injection molding press, only it's injecting and simultaneously welding up a blob of plastic. You're balancing the toolpaths, the temps, the adhesion, and the overall speed all at the same time, all for whatever material you're using.
So it's complex, but these companies have a ton of data and experience in order to make sure their preset settings are damn good out of the box. And these days, they get it right more often than they get it wrong!
Long story short - you should probably just get a Bambu. You'll learn what you need to learn from it, while having good quality output the whole time. If you find out it's not suitable for what you're looking to do, then you can sell it used with decent resale and get the best printer for your specific application.
Your manual controls on pretty much all 3d printers suck. But that's because manual operation is considerable far down the priority list. I've never seen one that did jogging other than setting an increment and tapping a touchscreen button to make it move 1 increment.
Every CNC machine I have ever ran did way better with the jogging. Even the ones from the 70's. You set a speed with a knob and then hold down a button. It goes till you let up. Or you use a rotary wheel for fine control.
And don't even get me started on homing. The homing sequence on all the printers I have dealt with is home X and Y before homing Z. Most machinists will be aghast at this as if you are homing all 3 axis's at once you home Z first to get the tool out of the way.
EDIT: to be specific, this is for "bed-slinger" printers, but the concept is the same for fixed height tool head printers (eg where the bed is what's raised and lowered).
Get a Prusa Core One kit, or build a Voron.
Bambulab should be off the table for their bait and switch behaviour. AMS is not particularly impressive and very wasteful. Get a Bondtech INDX down the road if you want true multi material printing.
Are you sure you aren't just running older firmware (my A1 mini is a recent acquisition)?
Also probably AGPL infringement, since the slicer is a fork of priser slicer which is AGPL, and you can't build the slicer from source, because if you could, then you could use the binary plugin for communicating with the printer in other slicers -- but you can't.
It's pretty blatant IMO.
But it's also a printer that just works.
After maybe 10 years of printing this is what I initially imagined it would be, now its finally there for consumer - I want this part in plastic let’s go
Oh and it’s also fast.
Hmm, I wonder if bambu gives me a cut for the sales pitch, but if not it is also ok - i just have to give credit to good engineering when I see it
PS: no prusa or clones, no creality, dont mess with that nonsense
And your suggestion is Bambu with AMS?
Bambu make excellent machines. There is nothing comparable out of the box, especially at their price points.
Before Bambu, Prusa was the 'no tinker just print' brand, though I haven't used one I agree Bambu's taken the lead now, but I think given OP's desire for more openness and repairability etc. Prusa makes more sense.
Fwiw: I have a Prusa Mini, and I'd buy Bambu today, I'm continually tempted by an enclosed model with AMS. But I'm not OP, and I don't think that's right for them with their description.
Add an AMS later if valuable.
The step up from P1S to X1C isn't worth it for someone with a budget who doesn't need the incremental improvements of the X1C.
The price difference is low enough now that I'd just take the upgrade. Sure you don't "need" the better screen, better wifi, quieter fan, and default installed hardened nozzle/gear. But they're nice. And OP will want the hardened nozzle/gear if they're printing CAD designed structural parts - PLA is a bad pick for those, you really need to be in the ABS/ASA/PETG/PP materials, and those benefit heavily from the Carbon Fiber/Glass Fiber additions in the filament (PETG-CF and ABS-GF are fantastic).
Back when the difference was closer to $500, sure - get the P1S. But the X1C is frankly a steal at $799. And if you catch the occasional sale, you can get the X1C + AMS combo at literally OPs sticker price ($999).
I built myself a Voron, and it's an amazing learning experience. I learn how things work, and the trade offs. I get to pick and replace the exact parts I want. I design my functional parts knowing exactly the printer's capability. There is something very fascinating about it. You can look at a print, and can tell different issues at a glance because you have seen (and fixed) them while you built and tuned the printer. The majority of 3D Printing quality issue are due to Hardware constructions / trade offs, and not Software (slicer settings..). Without building a printer from scratch, it's hard to tell the root cause.
https://vorondesign.com/voron2.4
- Fully open sourced
- Repairability and updatability. Lots of fun mods.
- No phone home / privacy issue like Bambu
I think before going down the rabbit hole, it's best to make sure you have a clear answer for this question: Do you care about the learning / tinkering / optimizing part, or do you care more about "it just works" printing?
- Many recommendations in this thread is for the "it just works" printing case. The top candidates are Bambu, Creality, and Eiegoo. The quality is good for most cases.
- If you're an engineer and into tinkering like me, you would be much happier with a Voron v2. Depending on your effort, you can match Bambu's quality, or _greatly_ exceed it.
Regarding Slicer, don't worry much about it. You can learn one very fast. The top ones are Cura and Orca Slicer. I use them both, and they have pros / cons. Personally on my Voron, a well tuned Cura profile yield better result. But Cura is missing one important feature: it can't limit the speed based on Flow Rate.
Another quick tip:
- Take the advertised number with a grant of salt. For example, many printers advertised 600 mm/s print speed. The mechanical frame may be able to handle 600 mm/s, but the Hot End is the limit of the build (e.g. it can't melt material fast enough, friction, the ability of extruder motor to quickly change speed, etc).
Hope you have a great time!
If you have the time and patience for tinkering, the Voron is great. I built a Voron 2.4 and Voron Trident this year. Both printers are designed with automatic bed leveling as a base feature and I modded them right from the start to have automatic z offset calculation as well with a fancy probe. With these 2 features I have print it and forget it operation 99% of the time with no issues. There have also been some open source multi filament/material projects that you can add to the printers since you have full control of the hardware and software.
So my big question, for someone who’s owned one a while: is the printer ever “done”?
Is there a point after which it “just works”? Or is it always going to be more like “it’s great! I just need to tweak the blah blah setting every time and retighten the frobnitz every 3 prints, no big deal really!”
I always see the quote about “if you like printERS, build, but if you like printING, just buy one” - but nobody talks about the timescale on the fiddling and whether it ever stops.
(currently own a Prusa mk3s I built as a kit and it’s been pretty solid as a tool!)
I grease it about twice a year, and clean any gunk from the nozzle (takes a few seconds) every so often. I wash the print bed thoroughly about 3 or 4 times a year.
I'm interested in 3D printing, but not interested in fiddling with the printer itself. So, I have fiddled to print soft rubber filament for example, but for every experiment with something strange like that I have 50 or more routine prints in PLA or PETG.
The Prusa mk4's we use are extremely reliable; most problems come down to users doing dumb stuff... or at least, doing risky stuff and not monitoring the print.
I find that I usually have some /kind/ of print I'm making (say, very hollow terrain pieces for tabletop wargames) get my printer settings dialed in over the course of a few failed prints, and then can print more of that kind of thing very reliably. In other words, good printer settings are project dependent, but can usually transfer reliably across simlar projects. And then I don't have to think much about the printer - it just does its thing.
The printer is never "done" :). But there are plenty check points where it's "pretty good".
For example, here is my rough timeline:
- I sourced the parts and built it. Took around 4 weekends.
- The initial tuning took a while (like a month). But this was very fun. I tried almost all the Slicers. I fixed constructions issues (square angle, deracking, belt tuning, ...). After this step, the machine becomes "good enough". I can print various parts in the house and I was satisfied with the quality.
- I started pushing for speed and redid many parts of the printer. I learned about various limitations (like Flow Rate is the real limit for speed). This phase last a long time for me (like a year). I ended up replacing like 75% of the printed parts with CNC parts. During this time, the printer is still online and printable.
- I didn't modded the printer much after that. I found my sweet spot between speed / quality. I want to mod it with a 120W Hot End heater to increase the Flow Rate (already bought it), but it's not quite a necessary thing. It's more for fun. The tinkering goes on as long as you feel it's fun. But I wouldn't say you _need_ to tinker to _keep_ it working.
> Is there a point after which it “just works”? Or is it always going to be more like “it’s great! I just need to tweak the blah blah setting every time and retighten the frobnitz every 3 prints, no big deal really!”
After the first tuning phase, the Voron was "just works" for me. Or at least, if there was any issue, I could immediately tell what went wrong. And no retightening needed so far except one time the printed feet cracked (that was the reason I switched to CNC aluminum parts).
Edit: I built a large Voron (350mm), and it is really _heavy_ (almost full metal in my case). That's why the printed feet cracked. Beside that, maintenance is almost zero. I don't even wash the spring steel bed. Just click print and walk away.
Excellent print quality out of the box Automatic bed leveling and calibration Very user-friendly with great software Compact size, perfect for beginners
Creality K1 Max (~$599)
300x300x300mm build volume Fast printing speeds (up to 600mm/s) Auto-leveling and enclosed design Good balance of features and price
Prusa MINI+ (~$429 kit, $529 assembled)
Exceptional reliability and support Magnetic flexible bed Excellent community and documentation Great for learning and consistent results
My day to day goto is the creality K1 line. I have 3x K1Cs and a K1 Max. The K1 Max is for you. It costs about $800. 300mm cubed build area. Runs every material I throw at it. PLA, PETG, TPU, Nylon, ASA, PC, etc.
It has a cloud option, but I don’t use. They all run on a separate vlan so no phoning home. Doesn’t cause any issues.
They run unlocked klipper firmware, so if you want to mess with it feel free. Also means most slicers work well with them. I typically use OrcaSlicer but the CrealityPrint and Cura work also.
I don’t recommend the K2, it has quite a few annoying bugs. The Enders are hobby machines for sure. Go with K1C or even K1 Max for the bigger bed. You won’t regret it.
Depending on volume, your total cost would likely be lower. I know you mentioned privacy concerns so this may not be an option. But it significantly simplifies your work, letting you focus on the parts themselves.
I've printed small stuff just to get the fitting right, before I finished the part with fillets, etc.
Also there is lots of small fun stuff, small fixes you'd never do with a 3d printer if you had to order prints online.
Example, I designed a printed a M8 nut cap with room for the 3mm sharp rod sticking out. I could probably have gotten a metal file to mill down the sharp edge, but it was hard to get at, and this gave a nice finish.
Sure it costs more, but if you will only do it once that is still cheap. And some of the things they can do for you are not safe to do at home.
So you might as well buy that and have a lower-spec iteration, because you're going to run into all sorts of design problems before you get to finer constraints.
I would double check what kind of air filtration setup you want. In the voron/sovol space there's the StealthMax filter system kit which is going to add on a couple hundred bucks at least.
As others said, you could consider a sovol sv08.
Another option is a used voron 2.4 or trident to meet your budget. My regret in going down the new printer rabbit hole was not waiting a couple months and checking used listing because theres usually a used printer that comes up, sometimes saving you quite a bit of money and assembly time.
The other factor to consider is you ever plan on having any expansions requiring a better MCU or additional motors. The sovol is a more 'integrated' electronics design so you'd need to possibly replace it if wanting to do certain mods later.
Prusa Core One would be a bit more complete OOTB. It is 220mm in the smallest axis (Y) though. Slicer and firmware are open source, but the hardware is not (unlike previous Prusa printers).
Bambu gives you the same capability for much less, but the firmware is not open source (third party open source firmware does exist). I believe the stock firmware also has to "phone home" at least once before it can be used offline.
Even cheaper are less-well known Chinese companies, like Qidi. Firmware is usually a proprietary fork of Klipper or other open source projects; some people have had success flashing the mainline version.
Bambu is nice for the community, it's much more popular, but the specs for the Qidi are bit better for engineering materials and so far I am very happy with it.
That being said, it isn't quite open source, but I do believe it can be run offline.
Elegoo Centauri Carbon: I know lots of people will recommend the P1S but this printer has 95% of the features at half the cost. Also extruder temp goes higher (320C), for more exotic materials.
Looking into GF infused PLA, or PETG for come up-coming projects, and wondering how things will work out with their "Filament Switching System" which was promised for Q3.
If money hadn't been a concern, I'd've chosen a Prusa XL w/ multiple print heads.
They aren't the free open source dream machine, but it also works quite well and needs little messing with.
I've played with 3d printers back to the RepRap and Makerbots - but those always required so much work to get a successful print.
I haven't seen something clearly better in the price range.
Flashforge Adventurer 5M https://www.flashforge.com/products/adventurer-5m-3d-printer
Isn't it? https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura
I used to like the tweaking, but once I got a Bambu P1S, I've gotten spoiled just being able to hit print and let it go.
Prusa isn't fully opensource, but has the worst enclosed chamber printer imo.
Bambu isn't open source in the slightest (beside the slicer).
You are never going to print PC on a bambu either way, at least not Pure PC. Blends, sure, you need at least 100c chambers for pure PC.
diy kits are the way to go, but it is going take you a LONG time. a voron, ratrig, or annex k3 are your best bets with the requirements you want. each kit has their weaknesses, and most of them, are going to require upgrades from their BOM.
And yes, I think you're absolutely right. DIY kits are the way to go with OP's requirements.
Is your goal to earn or learn?
How much time do you have to spend on 3d printing?
I can do what I need to do in CAD, design my own parts, etc. Other than the above, I'll use it for gifts, stuff around the home, rasPi and ESP32 electronic projects with home assistant, misc. enclosures, etc. I have a broad set of use cases but running production 24/7/365 isn't something I see myself doing unless I stumble upon a niche as I mentioned.
What kind of temperatures/pressures/chemical exposure are you expecting for your prints? You should probably start there, check for 3d printing materials that can actually handle those requirements, and then filter for printing technologies that fit the bill. I would imagine that would already break it down a lot.
Using a service would be better for a final part in a better material for the sake of longevity, not just 3d printed either, but cnc'd aluminum for example. Plastics can only go so far, but for short durations in some stressful situations, like intake manifolds, they can give you information. Having a printer in house will let me prototype to verify functionality of some engine parts, and being able to print in resistant materials will let me make final parts of less stressed parts in areas exposed to fuels, oils, etc.
Small jobs from small customers are not a high priority for job shops. Neither are cheap jobs.
Having a printer means you are able to work on projects at 2am Sunday.
Regarding slicer software, Ultimaker Cura is great for beginners, Orca Slicer has a slightly steeper learning curve but they both have their pros and cons such as different support generation algorithms, having an alternative when something doesn't seem to print right with one.
- The Prusa's are real workhorses. They are not the fastest, but they're expensive and they break. But you can always fix them and the degree to which you can tinker with them (especially while they're running) is much higher than the others. I've made a couple of custom ones (one 1x1 meter x 25 cm build volume, five more that are the regular width and length but 60 cm height), with adopted firmware. It's an insanely flexible platform. If you can think of it, handle a hex key and do some minor firmware hacking you can probably make it.
- The K1s... well. Initially we were very impressed. Got a couple to test with, decided they work and ordered 10 more. After a few days the first extruder broke. Gears just snapped their teeth right off. Turns out the extruder gears are plastic. So, ordered upgraded extruders. Next, one after the other, power supplies dying. After that print fans, Then cpu fans. They also had many screws loose right from the factory, we had a whole inspection list made just to structurally address all of the shitty stuff that would be wrong. For $10 more in parts and better QA it could have been a winner.
- The Bambus. We plugged them in. They work. They still do.
People in this thread are mentioning the SOVOL, if you have the money, that's probably the best printer. But I'd get a couple of Bambus instead and get that many more kilos pushed through. At 200 bucks for the mini and 350 or so for the big A1 it's insane value for money.
Does that help? Feel free to ask more questions.
What are you doing with all those printers?
For printing ABS and ASA, insulate the enclosure with XPS and heat the chamber to above 55C for good results.
Printing Nylon is difficult. You have to control not just the temperature but also humidity.
It's nice for simple stuff, but wouldn't recommend for anything needing precision. In the beginning it was laying out perfect layers, but after 6 months just lost it. Been doing every possible maintenance stuff and it just doesn't go back.
Your time and money is worth more than trying to make some open source diy kit printer do what you want. Bambu has body slammed the market with printers that work.
Get a H2S or X1C, run it in lan only mode if you're paranoid, and don't look back. H2S is a better option for your material choices.
My comment will probably get flamed because I'm not saying Prusa makes the best printers and only support open source, but do you want a tool that makes things, or do you want to waste time baby sitting your tool trying to get it to do something others can do out of the box.
I WISH my machine was open source, but the reality is it's not. It's like asking what mill to buy, but rulling out HAAS and Bridgeport because you're ok with trying to machine around crazy slop.
Wish the resin printers didn’t have the toxic fumes problem though, then I’d get one of them too.
Anyway, I have a Bambu, and it is a nice printer, but it wants to phone home and it is difficult to use when you put it behind a firewall.
I have been using 3d printers since 2015. I've never seen anything close to Bambulabs, and the first time I used A1, I almost cried thinking about the countless wasted hours with Creality and Prusa printers I have. Don't get Creality because they have quality control issues. Prusa is currently behind and more expensive. Bambulabs is lightyears ahead of the game.
Can work offline, but you'll probably need to block it at the firewall level if you care enough about privacy.
[0]Unless that's what your looking for.
If OSS firmware and repairability matter to you, prepare to invest a lot of time fixing and improving your tooling. (But... if you've machined before, you likely know that drill :)
The Sovol SV06 is almost there in terms of build volume - and it clocks in at $350, so it might be a good starting point. The Voron 2.4 is 350 mm^3 and almost $1000, also a decent machine. Elegoo's Neptune 4 straddles the edge of open source - it's a branded klipper build.
All of them are enclosable (i.e. you can buy enclosures, or build one)
From what I hear, the Voron's the most likely fit for your material requirements. (But, worth keeping in mind - an alternate path is a cheapo PLA printer for prototyping, and then shipping of files to a printing service. Depends on what you plan to do)
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Option #1:
Just buy the X1C. It's the best printer at your size range and price category (I own this, a Prusa Core One, and several creality machines).
Frankly - spend the extra 100 dollars and get the Combo with the AMS 2. Even if you don't want to do multi-color prints, it saves more than enough time switching filaments quickly to make it worth it if you're printing with any regularity.
This will let you use a 3d printer like it's a tool, and as someone who is printing CAD designed structural parts - it excels at just popping out decent parts, in all of the materials you want for structural parts.
Lock it into LAN mode. Despite claims to the contrary it's quite repairable (ex - I just replaced the hotbed on mine because a lightning strike damaged the torque sensors [side note - it fucking finished the print on resume when my power came back up - even without working torque sensors on the z axis]). Parts are available, they aren't outrageously priced, and the instructions are plenty clear.
Personally - I would strongly recommend this path. Understand what "good" looks like in the space before branching out into other requirements.
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Option #2:
Build a Voron Kit. It's going to take you several days of full time assembly, It'll cost more for the same quality, it's going to have some maddening "dial it in" moments.
But you get a machine that you fully understand.
You'll need to be very comfortable with both hardware and software for the assembly. If you want anything like the remote control & monitoring of corporate printers, you'll need to be comfortable hosting your own services and exposing things on the public internet (ex: tailscale/wireguard or just plain public).
Personally - DO THIS! but don't do it first. First get an X1C and understand what good printing looks like.
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Everything not a Voron probably isn't really "open" in the sense that you want. (Sure - you can flash a lot of machines. You still own that machine - it doesn't magically become higher quality, and most things run a Marlin/Klipper variant anyways)
Everything not a Bambu is a step backwards in print quality and ecosystem experience.
The middle sucks on all most fronts except price, but 1k is enough to get the better machines.
Bamboo Labs shouldn't be recommended as OP doesn't want a printer that phones home and is open source.
Then there's cheap printers that are either too small or aren't enclosed, again not suitable for OP.
DIY kits fit OP's requirements better IMO.
Even the Core One just barely misses.
Prusa XL hits your target but is twice your budget.
Also honestly build volume can be a little overrated unless you're printing helmets. You can make things in smaller parts. More build volume brings with it more print issues you have to deal with. But also yeah look at a Voron maybe or the SV08.
If you're new to printing, start smaller anyway. If you've done machining you know there's a materials learning curve and the same thing applies here to the nth degree. Print material, volume, orientation, density, first-layer adhesion, temperature, etc all are things you will have to account for and will affect your print quality/strength. You want to learn about these things in smaller prints that waste less time and material rather than more/larger.
E.g., get the MK4S Kit.
If you want to assemble your own premium machine, Voron for which there are kits. Still a premium price though.
For more budget options that still have a good out of the box experience, I've heard good things about the Qidi 4 and Creality K1 series.
If you want a mostly pre-built Voron lite of sorts, Sovol SV08, but expect more tinkering.
It was about a month later the problems started. Plastic extruder broke like they all do, and the extruder gear was done.
A bed leveling probe is a game changer. A PEI bed plate is great. Those tubing couplers are super fragile. Klipper is nice.
Now it just works and I expect it to for a long time.
The trouble is that people don't want to spend the time and effort to get there. Me? I like that any replacement part is going to be 20 bucks or less. Everything wears eventually.