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Its been awhile since I've looked at 3d printers. When I did there wasn't much to choose from. Now there is so many out there. When I look on amazon and see some good some bad reviews of a printer it just makes the decision even harder. Figured people on this forum would have better knowledge as to what is a good 3d printer currently. Price range I'd spend is up to around 2000 or so.
The Creality 3D Ender-3X model is a good option. This model has not very high price. One more advantage is the low noise of work. This model comes in a disassembled form. Assembly will not cause trouble to those who are familiar with the technique. On the attached flash drive there is a video instruction, in which the assembly process is shown clearly.
I'm going to second kennystone's recommendation for a Creality Ender 3x.
I bought a Solidoodle 2 for $500 back in 2012 and then a Robo3D in 2014 for $600. We had what we thought were pretty good prints, although they were never up to the quality I would see others get on their 3D printers at MakerFaire. We had only printed in ABS on these two printers.
Both machines were down temporarily for repairs, so I decided to throw $220 at what I thought was an el-cheapo Chinese 3D printer and gave it to my son last Christmas. The el-cheapo Chinese printer was a Creality Ender 3 Pro and I didn't have very high expectations for it at all. I especially was skeptical over the little plastic wheels running in the V-grooves in the aluminum extrusions.
Holy crap !! After my son put it together on Christmas Day and after some normal tuning, he started producing prints in PLA that were absolutely stunning. Much much better than my best prints I had ever coaxed out of the Solidoodle or Robo.
The main thing, I think, is that the little Creality Ender 3 is just so darn rigid. The print head is markedly more rigid than my other two printers. Creality's (and many others) use of aluminum extrusions is just so much more structurally sound than my other printers. And somehow those little plastic wheels in the V-grooves are super accurate. Don't ask me how.
My son now has probably 600-800 hours of print time on the Ender 3. He prefers quality over speed, so his print times tend to the longer side. He thinks nothing of doing a 24 or 48 hour print.
He has done a couple of upgrades. He upgraded to a textured glass bed from Creality. And he went with an all-metal drive unit for the filament. Also he upgraded to a BigTreeTech SKR Mini E3 control board, mainly to quiet down the motor musical sounds.
Is the Ender 3 a perfect printer? No, but I think you'll have a hard time finding a better printer until you get to the $400 or $500 range. And everybody and their dog has YouTube videos on how to maintain, calibrate, upgrade, etc.
Funny how this little $220 printer has kicked butt over my older more expensive printers.
Rigidity, speed, and envelope are high on the priority list for anyone in the CNC community. Fortunately these qualities also separate the higher end printers from the knock-offs.
Take a look at these.
https://www.filastruder.com/collections/railcore
https://seckit3dp.design/price/sk-go
I am currently building my own printer to be able to make the prints I need. Envelope: X=24" Y=12" Z=12", 1" extrusion frame, 15mm rails, 1204 ballscrews, 110VAC heated bed, 700Watt hotend, NEMA 23 steppers, CoreXY design and Duet3 controller.
WAY OVERKILL.
Planning to get someone responsible for learning about the printer. It's really not just a turn on, and things work, even the best printers. To preserve it, you need someone. You will need to learn how to change the modeling to match what the printer can do (hole sizes, feature sizes, etc (at least in the 2k price range).
With Solidworks, both printers will work perfectly. Your workflow will export sldprt to STL, then introduce the layer heights, speeds, supports, etc. into a slicing program, and then either send it directly to the printer or copy it to the SD card.
To mitigate this, ABS is stronger but more susceptible to warping and requires an enclosed and heated bed. For smoothing bits, acetone post-processing is easy. PLA is easy to print and fairly effective even if someone is brittle. To make them stronger, there are several additives. Nylon takes on water, so printing is harder, but there are many good additives to make very solid and tough nylon prints.
For engineering prototyping, I use a 3d printer. In the past, I have designed them and for the last 5 years or so, I have used several hobbyist-level models. I purchased a mk3 prusa i3 and it works for my needs.
I think a good printer is dependent upon what materials you want to . For a few years I've had a monoprice maker select v2 (wanhao i3 clone) which is a turd . It's so poorly designed that I had to butcher it so the the z slides were properly distanced apart otherwise it would jam up the higher it got . It's worthless for abs and it ok for small petg parts . Having the motherboard go up in flames a couple months ago wasn't cool either but a new motherboard has it still working the same as always , until the next fire .
I've got a bunch of projects that I need printed and I recently bought myself a flashforge creator pro for Christmas and the difference is night and day . I printed one object out of pla to test it , then immediately put on a spool of abs thats been exposed to the elements for over 2 yrs and I printed off the whole spool without issue . An enclose printer is a must have if you want to print large abs parts . After the spool of abs I've gone through a couple spools of petg which prints really nice and provides good durable parts . I experimented last night with a .8mm nozzle . I've decided one extruder will always be set up with a .8 after seeing how well and fast the print came out , I'll keep the other at .4mm for finer work .
My experience with 3d printing is somewhat limited to making stuff at home , but , from what I've had to deal with on a cheap printer vs a good mid range I now know that I should have paid the extra the first time
I've been looking for a few days now, and I'm very set up on the CR-10 side... But a bit hit between the mini CR-10S and the mini CR-10. In the place in which I want to place the printer, I do not have enough room for the CR-10S, but I almost can fit a mini perfectly (it might be a little too tall for the space, but I can move it away from the wall enough it should be okay). There's another location where I can combine some stuff for the CR-10s, but it's less convenient.Quote:
Originally Posted by EyesFit
Construct size is not so much a concern as the size of the machine. A lesser price is definitely better, but I'm all right with the 10S extra
Already have a FlashForge dual extruder 3D printer. These 3D printer are great here https://43dprint.org/dual-extruder-3d-printer/ that boasts an innovative design and great features for the price. 227 x 148 x 150 mm printing size. Compatible with multiple filaments. Upgraded support and easy to use.