3DPrinting

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3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.

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What's a good entry level printer these days? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 3 weeks ago by punkfungus@sh.itjust.works to c/3dprinting@lemmy.world

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Back in 2018 I bought an Ender 3 and over the years after a lot of tinkering and upgrading I got really sick of having to work on it, so I shelved it permanently a few years ago. I didn't have very much I wanted to print by then anyway, and another print failure that resulted in a giant ball of plastic covering the hotend for the umpteenth time tipped me over the edge. I could only disassemble it for service so many times before I started wanting to give it the Office Space treatment.

But now I would like to start printing again, only this time I want to actually just print things and not feel like an unpaid 3D printer mechanic. I don't need anything fancy, I'm still only going to print ~95% PLA with the occasional PETG or ASA maybe. Really all I want is the equivalent of an Ender 3 only reliable, quiet, and with auto bed levelling (also having an actually flat bed to start with would be nice). Any kind of mandatory (or pseudo-mandatory via arbitrary feature-lock) cloud connectivity is a hard no from me. I will use Octoprint to manage it.

Are there any cheap printers that fill that role these days? I'm well and truly OOTL

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[–] KaRunChiy@fedia.io 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

My local library got Bambu Lab A1's and those have been stupid reliable.

I also chose an ender 3 as a starter, not because it was cheap, but because i like messing with things, definitely not a printer for someone who just wants it to work all the time.

[–] nesc@lemmy.cafe 8 points 3 weeks ago

They were reliable now they started to make them cheaper and reliability suffered, also completely closed ecosystem isn't helping.