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3DPrinting @lemmy.world periwinkle @lemmy.world

Christmas buying advice?

Hey 3dprinting! I want to buy a 3d printer for my little sister for Christmas. She's big into cosplay and engineering. I expect her to make props/and little container for things. Nothing crazy. I was looking at the ender 3 models but was unsure if that was the right pick. Just wanted to know if you had any advice. Budget is 2-300.

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  • I own and have owned precisely one (1) 3D printer, and that's the Qidi X-Plus. I notice there's now a new version, the "X-Plus 2," but I'm not entirely clear on what the difference is. I can recommend it.

    Anyhow, I did a lot of reading on various Ender and Prusa models, and their various clones and the impression I got at the time was that it's a bunch of tweak this, tune that, did you calibrate your e-steps, and so on and so forth. The Qidi, conversely, has been basically plug and play for me. In addition to already coming built into an enclosure, it comes with two extruder heads, one for low temp filaments (PLA, PETG, etc.) and another for high temp stuff (ABS, polycarb, nylon). And basically all I had to do with it was take it out of the box, unclip all the binder clips holding the belts for shipping, perform the bed leveling and z-height adjustment steps (the procedures are built into the printer) and slap filament in it.

    It's been chugging away flawlessly for me for going on two years now, though who knows how many spools of filament, and hasn't given me any problems I did not cause myself by being a dumbass and/or a newb.

    Full disclosure: Qidi is obviously a Chinese company so you don't get much product support and what you do get is in Engrish, and their web site is pretty jank. I think their printers are clones of the Replicator models, but at a lower price? Or at least their earlier models are. Don't expect a lot of after care from these guys, but then again I haven't needed it. I recommend buying your printer from a reputable seller or even Amazon in case it all goes tits up; at least then you could return it. There is basically zero aftermarket support for these things, unlike the more popular platforms, but again I haven't needed to buy anything but filament and nozzles, and the nozzles are normal M7 MK10 style ones. The belts seem easy enough to replace with commodity parts, and I don't know what else in there you might consume unless you have a massive technical catastrophe of some description.

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