I want to buy a 3D printer for about 200-250€ but I’m unsure which one to get. There are printers that a lot of people recommend but others say they’re a piece of garbage.
The ones I found so far are these:
- Creality Ender 3 V3 SE - 182,94€
- Anycubic Kobra 2 Neo - 199,00€
- Sovol SV06 - 239,00€
There’s also the open source firmware Klipper, which a lot people recommend but from what I understand, you need a Raspberry Pi for that. I do have a Pi 4 that I was planning to sell that I could use for that instead.
Would be great if some of you who know more than me could help me decide what to get.
I own the Sovol SV06, it was my first printer but it was also the cheapest option for me ($169 IIRC). The Sovol has given me two problems in the entire time I used it:
When it came in, the extruder was jammed. Wouldn’t print or extrude any filament for some reason. Followed a 2 minute video on Sovol’s Amazon page to resolve it (although it did involve disassembling the hotend).
The extruder decided to encase itself in plastic one day when I printed something on it. That was a bitch and a half to clean, had to take a heat gun to it to soften the plastic then scrape it off without burning myself. My best guess is it was caused by me forgetting to run bed leveling after moving the printer a bit, hasn’t happened again.
Other than those two times it just works every time I need it. It was sitting dormant for ~3 months and I just kicked off a print yesterday, no problems. Fired right up and everything printed perfectly.
With that said, is it €239 of “Just works”? Probably not. I immediately couldn’t do some prints I planned because of the build volume (although all three of your options have the same build volume). So I’m already considering upgrading to an SV06 Plus. So check some of what you want to print that it’ll fit in 220x220x250.
I did some research on your other options and as far as I can tell, the main difference between them and the Sovol is the all metal hotend and print speed.
Sovol SV06 has an all-metal hotend so you can print high temperature filaments (PETG/TPE/CFN/etc) without worry (does require a harder nozzle most likely though). The other two seem to have some metal but are not fully metal, so if you want to hop into the more exotic materials you’ll have to upgrade those.
Second is speed, my SV06 prints at 80 mm/s. It is slow. Smallest prints take around 2-3 hours. My current print will be done after 24 hours. This is fine for me as most of my prints need complex geometry, so I’d rather it take longer and be accurate than run it too fast. The others claim a max speed of 250mm/s which would be a bit over 3x faster than the Sovol. If they can actually print at that speed without looking awful, that’s a pretty big upgrade time-wise.
If you need exotic filaments and don’t want to upgrade the hotend yourself for it then consider the Sovol. Other than that, the price in your region makes it not an option in my opinion. The Sovol just is a budget printer, only makes sense at budget prices. The Kobra and Ended you mentioned look very similar other than that, they both have auto bed leveling (a must have), same build size, very similar designs. Personally I’d lean towards the Ender, just for the community support. But do some research and see how many community member posts you see online resolved with the two. They seem to be functionally identical to me otherwise (just looking at a spec sheet, I do not have irl experience with either of these printers)