I am looking to buy a 3D printer for my son (and for myself too). We want to print, not tinker, so it should be something that gives great results right from the start.
Can you guide me to a sensible choice?
My first choice would have to be the Prusa MK3S Plus but it is outside the price range I am shopping for, except if I buy used – would that be bad to do?
Realistic choices:
- €380 used Prusa MK3S+, with 10 days printing time
- €400 new Prusa Mini+
- €250 new Ender 3 V2 Neo
Criteria:
- High quality, no hassle. I want to print, not tinker.
- Preferably (semi)assembled.
- Auto bed leveling.
- Auto error detection (filament, power, etc.?).
- Budget up to 600 EUR/USD including extras, excluding filament.
- Speed is not important.
- Size is not important.
- Must not be cloud-based.
Questions:
- Surface?! Smooth, os satin, or textured? (Why) Should I have more than one kind?
- (Why) Do I need an enclosure?
More systems means more that can go wrong and more difficult trouble shooting. No matter what printer you get, stuff needs to be tuned, stuff needs to be maintained and stuff breaks.
Getting the biggest best do-it-all device with all the bells and whistles (like a fully speced Voron) means not only that you spend a massive amount of money for a machine that does the same thing just a bit faster, but also that you have tons of things you need to watch out for.
Auto bedlevel, for example, is by far not a fire-and-forget solution.
Upgrades are also a thing. Once you get into printing and understand what it’s all about you will learn what you want and need. This allows you to upgrade the machine and make it better. Especially the Ender 3 series is built with upgradability in mind. They have a lot of drop-in upgrades that are as simple to integrate as the (very simple) initial setup of the machine was.
If you buy your first car you also don’t start out with an 800 PS super car or a semitrailer.
Sure it’s fun to upgrade but there are things you should just want to have on your 2023 machine from the start. It’s more like you’re suggesting a starting driver that they don’t need electric windows, cruise control or whatever because they have to learn why they’d want it first…
That’s why I got the v2 Neo and am very happy with it, as it’s got the stuff you’ll want after one week anyway but pre-installed and very cheap as a bonus: ABL, all metal extruder, improved hotend, better springs. There’s no reason to pain yourself and your wallet by waiting with these ‘until you get more experienced’ IMO
Better mechanics are never bad. But the points we where talking about weren’t that at all. We were talking about automatic alignment of multiple Z motors. That doesn’t apply to any stock Ender 3, because they all only have a single Z motor. No alignment needed, and actually no alignment possible.
Regarding the other points:
- Metal extruder is nice if you want to print hotter materials and it’s a bit less maintainance, but the trade-off is that it’s a fair bit worse for PLA, which incidentally is what most beginners print exclusively.
- The older stock hotends for Ender 3 wheren’t great. The new one isn’t exactly great either, but better. So not a bad thing.
- Better springs are better mechanics.
- ABL doesn’t do much at all if your hardware is set up correctly and is mostly used by beginners to mask a badly calibrated bed, which in turn creates non-dimensionally accurate prints.
But of course the recommendation would be for the newest version of Ender 3, because there’s no point in starting off with an outdated machine.
Again, the upgrades the other guy mentioned where not that.
