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.
Do you want the printer to be a tool, or a hobby (i.e. you don’t mind fiddling with the printer itself to improve the results, you don’t mind spending more to upgrade components, etc)?
If the printer itself is a hobby you can go cheap, but if you want something reliable you don’t have to mess with or upgrade, I’d suggest getting something as nice as you can afford, maybe a Prusa mini or Bambu A1 mini if you don’t care about open source. Also consider something like a used Prusa Mk3.x.
Definitely more in the tool side. I want to print stuff that works. Thank you for the suggestions. Are used printers easy to find? How well do they hold up? I’m assuming I would be buying one from someone who is upgrading to something better.
I’m in the same boat as you. I print what we call “functional prints”, things that are tools that aid you in your everyday life than the little toys and other knick-knacks. Not to put down anyone who does print those, it’s just not my thing personally.
I had success with a used printer many years ago. I traded a guy my old Xbox One for his XYZ da Vinci Pro that was pretty pricey at well over $500. He said it didn’t work but parts for it were available directly from the manufacturer and it ended up just needing a replacement extruder for $90 and worked just fine after that. I’ve since made many modifications to it.
Used printers can be easy to come by depending on your location or if you choose online like eBay, and ones that are listed as broken can be fixed if you know what you’re doing and looking for. That was not my first printer but my third so I was aware of how these things worked and what issues might be present and how they would be fixed.
You may have similar luck but being new to the hobby, may not since you’re not as familiar with the process and how they operate. So you may want to stick to buying used in a known working condition.
But you can still get good deals on a used printer that does work and without the hassle of having to put it together like you do with some printers you buy new. But I think having to put it together can be beneficial as it helps you understand how the printer was put together and how you can take it apart if need be.
Most printers will last you a long time but you will need to replace parts on them as time goes on and it’s not uncommon for you to add new features to them over time as well. I’d say they’re more comparable to a house than a car. A car is only really good until 100k miles and then starts to break down and a house is similar, but usually lasts a lifetime as you make major repairs and make upgrades to keep it lasting. But being a 3D printer, we can sometimes print replacement parts in expectation of repairs and new upgrades, so it’s not all always as bad as it sounds.
As for specific recommendations…I’m largely happy with my decade old printer but the market has vastly changed and there are much better ones on the market so I wouldn’t recommend my XYZ da Vinci Pro to you (there are other issues with that printer too that have only gotten worse with time due to the way it was made) and I’ve since moved from FDM to SLA printing which I don’t recommend SLA for beginners or those not printing for things like miniature figures and models, so I’ll leave specific recommendations to others here.
In case you don’t know, FDM is the more traditional type of printing you’ve probably seen where it extrudes plastic onto a build plate to form the 3D object. SLA uses liquid resin in a vat and lasers to form the 3D object in that vat to stick to a build plate but upside down. SLA is more toxic and requires more safety attention on the user’s part and the printers and resin are more expensive and tricky, needing more post processing on prints than the FDM style but results come out looking more finished and layers are less noticeable. They are generally smaller and usually used by people who are printing small models like a Warhammer/Dungeons and Dragons figure. I don’t recommend it for your use case, but if you are curious, I have an Elegoo Saturn.
Prusa mini or bambu are definitely common. Mk3(s/s+) will also be common, maybe even more so.
Steer away from Creality if you want consistent and easy printing: it’s a tinker machine.
I haven’t bought used myself, but based on my own experiences with my printer (MK4; I love it) I don’t think there’s a ton to worry about buying a used quality printer. I would not buy a used low-end printer because the odds are much higher that the seller found it frustrating.
A used Prusa MK3S is probably an excellent choice if a Prusa MK4 kit is out of your budget and a Bambu printer is out of your budget or doesn’t meet your other requirements. The seller probably either realized they don’t actually print often, or upgraded to a MK4 (or XL if they had the budget). While you can upgrade a MK3S to MK4 with Prusa’s upgrade kit, the cost of the kit is so close to just buying an MK4 that it’s not worth doing (and Prusa admits this; they only offer it because of the flak they got for not doing such a kit in the past). The MK3.5 or 3.9 upgrade kits could make sense for some people…but in many cases someone looking to upgrade would likely leave the MK3S untouched and just buy an MK4.
I love my prusa mini, but if your using it for practical stuff, the size of it’s build area can be limiting.