Would be so kind as to suggest a printer for me? I have no experience at all with 3D printers or 3D modeling. But I am super interested and have electronics and coding knowledge. I would like to print things like brackets, enclosures for custom circuit boards, organizers, keyboard plates, etc. Ideally I would like to spend around $300USD, but I am open to going as high as $500USD if it would save me headaches and make the experience more enjoyable and streamlined.
Please suggest something for me and let me know if I didn’t provide enough information. One final note, I live in range of a microcenter if that is a factor.
Do you want the printer to be a tool, or a hobby (i.e. you don’t mind fiddling with the printer itself to improve the results, you don’t mind spending more to upgrade components, etc)?
If the printer itself is a hobby you can go cheap, but if you want something reliable you don’t have to mess with or upgrade, I’d suggest getting something as nice as you can afford, maybe a Prusa mini or Bambu A1 mini if you don’t care about open source. Also consider something like a used Prusa Mk3.x.
Definitely more in the tool side. I want to print stuff that works. Thank you for the suggestions. Are used printers easy to find? How well do they hold up? I’m assuming I would be buying one from someone who is upgrading to something better.
Prusa mini or bambu are definitely common. Mk3(s/s+) will also be common, maybe even more so.
Steer away from Creality if you want consistent and easy printing: it’s a tinker machine.
I love my prusa mini, but if your using it for practical stuff, the size of it’s build area can be limiting.
I haven’t bought used myself, but based on my own experiences with my printer (MK4; I love it) I don’t think there’s a ton to worry about buying a used quality printer. I would not buy a used low-end printer because the odds are much higher that the seller found it frustrating.
A used Prusa MK3S is probably an excellent choice if a Prusa MK4 kit is out of your budget and a Bambu printer is out of your budget or doesn’t meet your other requirements. The seller probably either realized they don’t actually print often, or upgraded to a MK4 (or XL if they had the budget). While you can upgrade a MK3S to MK4 with Prusa’s upgrade kit, the cost of the kit is so close to just buying an MK4 that it’s not worth doing (and Prusa admits this; they only offer it because of the flak they got for not doing such a kit in the past). The MK3.5 or 3.9 upgrade kits could make sense for some people…but in many cases someone looking to upgrade would likely leave the MK3S untouched and just buy an MK4.
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