Hello, I am looking to buy my first filament 3D printer. Any printer or printer brand you recommend and why? What 3D modeling software is usually used to design? Any tips are welcome! (my budget would be 200-300€) I would like to eventually get into resin printing as well.

  • @[email protected]
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    21 year ago

    Why first fdm, then resin? If you want resin printer just go that path. Resin is good for miniatures while filaments are better for mechanical properties and bigger size. Fdm is faster, but still extremely slow. For 20x20x20 cm model you need like 1 day or more to complete. Get something that supports klipper firmware, like ender (probably most cheap printers) and expect extra cost on upgrades.

    ^this, verbatim. My advice is, think about what it is you want to print and go from there. If you’re going to try to make functional parts with the occasional “cute” gift for someone, chances are you’d want to go with FDM and Fusion 360, then it’s dealers choice on which slicer you prefer. Then think about what you’re using those parts for, and figure out what filament will be best for that part, whether it needs to sit in a hot car, for example, you’ll be looking at ABS / ASA versus something that sits inside on a desk and doesn’t need to support weight, where PLA is your cheap and generally easiest filament to use. Then, research what printers are capable of printing said filament, as not all 3d printers can handle higher temps, need enclosures, etc.

    On the other hand, if you’re going to make tabletop miniatures or need the properties of resin for whatever reason, you’ll want to go with resin, and modeling software such as Blender as others have suggested

    • BudgieMania
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      1 year ago

      Thirding this, having a clearer idea of what kind of stuff you are going to print will help you a TON.

      That’s why I would suggest to dabble into modelling for a while first, see what kind of stuff you find more interesting/fun to make, and dial in your decisions from there. I say this, OP, because I was in your position of thinking about doing both resin for miniatures and FDM for buildings/dioramas/useful things… But I ended up doing mostly miniatures, because that’s what I found most fun to do. So I would have been better served investing the FDM money in a bigger and better resin printer.

      For software, since you mention that you may get a resin printer, I assume you are considering eventually making miniatures, characters, monsters, etc. If so, you will want to look into software that has sculpting tools. Blender has them, Fusion 360 as well, there are many others. I use ZBrush but a lot of people find it weird to use. Blender would probably be the best starting point because it is free, extremely well documented and has everything you need.

      As a last note, if you are not familiar with this world, you should know that even with the best of printers, you should expect to spend a lot of time tinkering, troubleshooting and tuning. If your expectations are to assemble it and immediately start printing cool stuff, you will need to adjust them. It is a really fun hobby, but requires you to be willing to deal with days in which your prints suddenly come out wrong and have to spend the whole day debugging the issue instead of having fun.