Advice on a Printer

What’s you’re price range? For a solid option with a decent size I’d say a Prusa Mini. It’s big enough to print probably 90% of commonly printed models and is high quality with minimal tinkering required, but it’s not a cheap option.

You should first consider how much time you want to out into it. Or I'm other words, are you interested in 3D printers or 3D printing? Difference is that the first has cheap printers and might need upgrades and tweaking to get everything rolling well but you save money (most likely) and understand more about them. Second option means you dish out more money up front but get reliability and quite possibly support from the company behind the printer should you run into issues.

Haven't been thay much looking into printers as of late but last time I checked the first option was 300-500e and second roughly 1000e. Like Ender 3 lineup vs Prusa mk3 (and now 4).

I started with a Prusa MK3s+. I don't regret it at all.

Depends on what you're looking to get out of it. Printing medium-sized toys or busts or things without a lot of fine details? Probably an fdm printer like an ender 3 to start with.

Wanting to print miniatures for tabletop games like d&d or Warhammer? Probably a resin printer like a photon mono 4k or something.

The fdm printer will have a much larger build plate but lower quality, and resin will be much smaller but higher quality.

I started with an Anet A8 years ago (do not touch this, it was and is an extreme fire hazard and a fairly shit printer to boot), and after a ton of mods, hours upon hours of tuning and struggling, and dozens of failed prints, I bought an Ender 3 S1. I would not recommend the base Ender 3, but I love my S1 so much. Quality is pretty damn good out of the box, I have had maybe 2 failes prints out of a few hundred. I have done no calibration since I assembled it. It eats whatever filament I throw at it using Cura's default profile for that material. Is it as good as a P1P or X1 Carbon? No, but it's half the price of the P1P.

Sovol sv06

There are many good begginner printers. Definitely don't cheap out though. I made that mistake and suffered for years. After I upgraded I couldn't believe how easy 3d printing actually was.

I followed the advice of r/3dprinter. There was a recommendation post somewhere and settled with the elegoo neptune 3 pro. However, a few weeks later the elegoo neptune 4 pro was announced and boasted much higher speeds so I just ordered that. The youtube reviews so far seem to be all positive and recommend them. I haven't received mine yet so I can't guarantee anything though.

Bambu P1P is on sale right now and is a good choice if you want to have high quality prints straight out of the box without any tinkering.

I am late to the party. I was in a position to try out something new so I picked 3d printing. My wife is VERY frugal, so even a cheap creality was a big ask.

I did a lot of research, and once it was determined that it was a reasonable plan. I settled on am ender 3 s1. It was inexpensive enough, yet out of the box, very well equipped. I wanted the s1 pro, but they weren't in stock at microcenter for their black Friday sale, so I got the s1, added a light bar, and picked up their pei sheet. I also bought the sprite pro kit, because it was a steal at $76.

I've since only added the sonic pad, and picked up a pex wham bam build plate, because I'm doing a could of gardening projects in petg, which can damage pei. I haven't needed the extra hotend yet. I am happy with the sonic pad, but would reconsider and look at the bigtreetech one, it want out when I got the sonic pad at launch. This is due to klipper and how creality kind of broke is license by not publishing their changes, etc.

I'll say this, I like printing. I haven't had a bad experience at all with it. And the S1 is a very good machine so far. Would I like a prusa? Of course I would, it's basically the standard, however, a grand, to me, would be an impossible get, so I had to do the best with what I could.

I would very highly recommend a few YouTube channels and checking out reviews on anything, before you buy.

My favorites are Aurora Tech Channel, Teaching Tech, Maker's Muse, and Modbot, but there are dozens more out there.

Take some time to look around. And buy whatever works. Certain people downplay the concept of modding, and tinkering, however, the more you know about your printer, through doing some things, the better you'll be at troubleshooting and resolving issues. My S1 runs nearly all day, every day, and once I learned some things about tuning it, which you'll have to do with ANY printer, it consistently prints good prints.

I recommend learning the settings in a slicer program, I use Cura for filament printing. That was the biggest hurdle for me so far, and once you kind of understand it, adjusting those settings will improve your printing experience.

Since this is a maker kind of thing, do expect failures. The single biggest issue I had starting out, was heat settings and, for some reason, my creality pei build plate. I had significant adhesion issues and most of the time I use the oem s1 build plate... Hence the reason I bought the wham bam systems lex plates.

Just get a printer that works for you, and have fun.

People have made the same recommendations here already but I'll throw my opinion in: the two I always recommend are the Ender (V2 or S1) and the Prusa (Mk4 or the Mini)

If you're unsure about how much you'll use it or if you're on a budget get the Ender.

But if you're confident this is something you'll use a lot and you can afford it get the Prusa.

The Prusa has just too many nice features to ignore, their support is amazing, and their upgrade path makes it something you can (likely) keep upgrading as new features come out.

For example I have a Mk3 and I have the upgrade kit to make it a Mk3s+. And now that the Mk4 is out there's upgrade kits to make it a 3.5, 3.9, or a 4. They're really great about trying to keep your printer as feature rich as possible without having to buy a whole new one.

I second that question.

I would like something that a beginner can learn a lot with but that’s reasonably good that I wouldn’t want to replace it for a while.

My first printer was a creality cr6 (kickstarter edition), and it's been absolutely fantastic. I use my printer to solve problems mostly by designing my own parts for things. My printers really are tools to me. My cr6 doesn't get used a lot, but I turn it on, run the auto level, and hit print. I've printed roughly 2000 hours with it, and I've had one jam, and zero failed prints (I've stopped a couple for various reasons, but I've never walked in to find a spaghetti mess). I upgraded to the community firmware, a dual drive extruder, and capricorn. Also, I print almost exclusively in PLA.

My second printer is a kingroon kp3s. I've printed very few parts with it. I got it as a toy, and plan to install klipper and just be able to print fast. I like the small for factor, direct drive, and linear rails. It's a decent printer, but it's not as "easy" as my cr6 (no ABL, and my bed seems to have a high spot right in the middle). The prints I've printed for testing are small, and the quality has been really good. I just haven't had a lot of time to play with it and really dial it in.

All this said... I'd by a mk4 in a split second for my use case. Again, as a tool that I turn on every few months, prusa is a known workhorse. My only complaint with my cr6 is it's slow... And the mk4 would take care of that.

I typically split my recommendations into 2 camps. Do you want to learn a ton about 3D printers, how they work, how to troubleshoot, etc. Or do you want to "just enjoy printing things"?

While the ender isn't a fantastic printer, it's a great starter printer with loads of mods available that will turn it into a decent printer with some time and effort. This route will help you learn about tuning, troubleshooting, and building to the point where you'll know your stuff once you're happy with it. Plus, it's not a large investment to just get started.

On the other hand, some people want to print for the sheer joy of being able to make things with a printer with minimal fuss. Completely understandable! If this is the case I'd echo others here in saying go with a Prusa mini. Prusa gear is amazing if you want to hit print and walk away and come back to a great finished print. If you want to have a taste of the world of the mechanics of 3D printing, grab a kit and build it yourself. It's a great way to get to know your setup and it will help you troubleshoot when the odd (albeit rare) problem arises.

I don't think there's a wrong answer with either route here. You just need to decide what you want out of the hobby!

There are plenty of options, I will have to look up which are currently the best.

But I would recommend starting out with a normal "cube" like design. Delta printers seem cool but are not really beginner friendly.

To further ease the search I would look for a direct drive extruder. It's easier to calibrate and you don't have the hassle with potential problems regarding the Bowden tube.

Creality and Anycube are the goto brands for big community support, as far as I know.

It’s a bit dated, but I had an excellent beginner 3D printing experience on my Flashforge Creator Pro. The OG.

It’s a bit slow, but very consistent out of the box. It was also pre-built, which was nice.

It was heaps easier to get going compared to my Anet A8. But I learned a lot on the A8 by putting it together.