Recommended 3d printer models?
I'm thinking of entering this world for the first time, and I was wondering if there are any models that you feel you would particularly recommend, thanks to anyone who would like to share their experience!
Can you share more about how much you are willing to spend, what you want to do with the printer (print parts for outdoor use or fidget toys or minifigures etc.) and where you are located? That way it is possible to make a recommendation more specific to your needs and situation
I don't have any particular needs at the moment, other than that it be a printer that I can keep in my room and that it not be noisy; I would certainly prefer to avoid closed apple-style hardware systems. I live in Europe.
If you are willing to spend the money, I would recommend getting a Prusa. They are pretty good with keeping their system open (although not everything is open source, you can read about it here), their printers print well and their support is very good, which is nice, especially as a beginner. I would recommend buying a kit and building the printer yourself if possible, it's a lot of fun imo and also helps if you need to troubleshoot something later because you already know how the printer works.
The Core One is their newest model, it's a bit faster than the MK4S and fully enclosed, so its easier to print more technical materials on it. It has a bit of a wait time on the order tho and still needs some firmware patches to be as reliable as the MK4S and it has no support for multi material printing yet. I think it will probably be quieter than the MK4S if/when it gets a phase stepping update and you can easily put a filter on it if you want to print some of the more nasty materials.
The MK4S is also still a good option imo if you plan to mostly stick to using PLA and PETG.
I don't think the Mini is worth it at the moment unless you can get one used, and the XL is massive overkill if you are just starting.
If you don't want to spend as much, Sovol is one of the better Chinese manufacturers when it comes to respecting open source and not having shitty apps full of ads afaik, but I don't have any personal experience with them.
Bambu printers work great, but if you want to avoid a closed system I would not recommend them.
Aurora Tech is a good source for detailed printer reviews on Youtube, in addition to the channels mentioned by Derek.
Edit: Formatting and typos
Thank you!
I just got my Core One last week (also first time buyer), and my first impressions are very good.
ETA: I got a lot of helpful comments in a thread I posted last year: https://lemmy.ml/post/23563961
Yeah it had some issues with the door sensor and the nozzle cleaning directly after release, but those should be fixed now, and based on Prusas track record it will get firmware improvements for a long time.
Thank you too