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Ask HN: What's a good 3D Printer for sub $1000?

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Re: Ask HN: What's a good 3D Printer for sub $1000?

#261

Post by fooqux »

abhorrence wrote: post #124
cityofdelusion wrote: post #87

You are sadly getting a lot of answers completely ignoring your requirements. A Voron or RatRig are right up your alley. They are highly customizable, buy a kit as a base, then upgrade components as needed to do more complex printing. They are completely open source and repairable with no phoning home or any other shenanigans, the GNU/Linux of 3d printers. If you have CAD and machining experience it should be fairly…

As someone who owns both a couple Vorons and a couple of Bambu's printers, I do think for a lot of people the difference between the two can be "3d printers are my hobby" vs "3d printers are a tool". It's not that Vorons can't be reliable, in fact a lot of the reason why say the X1C is so reliable is because its design essentially started life as a Voron. But because you have to assemble them, they just aren't as "pl…

Sure, but go and read the OP's requirements again and tell me if you think they care about needing to assemble them.

Re: Ask HN: What's a good 3D Printer for sub $1000?

#262

Post by DocTomoe »

AngryData wrote: post #227
baq wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. Bambu is the difference between 'my hobby is 3d printers' vs 'my hobby is 3d printing'. The damn thing sits in the garage idle for months and then it just prints a whole spool of stuff perfectly without even a drop of oil (which it asked for in between plates, I'll grant it that).

What kind of problems do people expect to have with lesser models? I have a second hand kit build that I didn't assemble and was cheap years ago and just threw in my car seat one day to bring home, and the worst that happened was the poorly run temp sensor wires drooped and snagged on a print and pulled out. I don't even know what could go wrong or need any "tweaking" other than a drive belt someday failing. I just d…

The P1S was my first 3D FDM printer, mostly because what I saw in the scene, in Makerspaces, and on YouTube before was mostly people tinkering with their other machines ('use this hotend', 'this is my grandma's secret recipie for bed adhesion issues', 're-fasten this particular nut to exactly 1.32 newton, but only if that part has been printed from ABS, instead if PETG, use 1.29 newton' ...) ... and I didn't want to work the machine, I wanted to work with the machine.

Bambu were the first that gave me the feeling 3D FDM printing has become more appliance-like, less 'spend endless hours maintaining the machine'. Sure, the Bambu also needs maintenance. But it is not the main procedure with the machine.

Re: Ask HN: What's a good 3D Printer for sub $1000?

#263

Post by dotnet00 »

dceddia wrote: post #62
thanhhaimai wrote: post #45

> I would prefer something that doesn't phone home and can work offline. Opensource firmware/software and repairability are important. I built myself a Voron, and it's an amazing learning experience. I learn how things work, and the trade offs. I get to pick and replace the exact parts I want. I design my functional parts knowing exactly the printer's capability. There is something very fascinating about it. You can…

I love the idea of building a printer, but I know that my attention span is limited on these sorts of things. As in, I’ll be reliably obsessed until it’s done and tuned, and then I’ll forget everything until the next time I want to use it. So my big question, for someone who’s owned one a while: is the printer ever “done”? Is there a point after which it “just works”? Or is it always going to be more like “it’s great…

At least for me, the printer is never "done", but it isn't in the "I just need to tweak the blah blah setting every time" sense.

Rather, there's just always something to make better even if the current solution is fine. Say, swapping out the toolhead for a lighter or more modular one, or building another MMU because it can handle softer materials that I print maybe once a year and don't have to use the MMU for, or replacing the hotend with a higher flow or sturider one, or adding more lighting and cameras, or switching the motor mounts to a double shear design to be able to dial accelerations up, etc. Right now I'm working on building a TradRack MMU while planning out a teardown and rebuild of my backup Voron0.2.

I could stop at any point and still have a printer that's near the top end of what's accessible on the market, but the open source 3d printer community moves incredibly fast and it's nice to be able to participate in it.

Re: Ask HN: What's a good 3D Printer for sub $1000?

#264

Post by 0_____0 »

lkjdsklf wrote: post #214
SchemaLoad wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The A1 is a tiny fraction of the cost of the MK3 while having a ton of extra features.

My A1 has lots of annoying issues. It did print great out of the box, but requires a fair bit of maintenance to keep that up. My prusa has be far more reliable so far. admittedly it’s newer than the a1 so it’s too early to be super conclusive on that, but so far it’s been quite a bit better Of course, it’s quite a bit more money too

My old work ran 6 FFF machines, the only one that seemed to have 100% uptime was the Prusa. Mind you this was several years ago, before Bambu hit it big. But we had several machines with autoswap beds etc, fancy stuff.

After that experience I got a Prusa, I'm only an occasional printer but I've put maybe 5 rolls of material through it over the course of a couple years and haven't had any stop+fix issues.

Re: Ask HN: What's a good 3D Printer for sub $1000?

#265

Post by cma »

riknos314 wrote: post #113
cma wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it have to be sealed? Thinking of fume hoods which aren't but are ok. Can you link the vid?

Fume hoods have an exhaust to outside the inhabited area, which allows the interior of the hood to operate at a negative pressure. This means air is drawn in through the gaps rather than allowed to escape through them.

If this filter itself is effective, not saying it is, then gaps aren't necessarily a problem depending on where they are and if it still maintains the right pressure/airflow to the filter. Brought up a fume hood because if one of those had a filter for whatever was bad inside, and instead of exhausting outside it went through the filter, it would work still work despite the intentional gap.

I'm not saying the gaps are intentional or in the right place here, but that there could be an ok design with gaps. If you are exhausting through a filter you have to pull in air from somewhere.

Re: Ask HN: What's a good 3D Printer for sub $1000?

#266

Post by cma »

lawn wrote: post #225
cma wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it have to be sealed? Thinking of fume hoods which aren't but are ok. Can you link the vid?

A fume hood isn't at all comparable to what typically exist in the 3D printer world though. He talks about it in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HD__e064_U4

What's the timestamp? I can't tell from the part near the beginning if the holes that aren't on the part with the fan (presumably with filter in front of it?) sealed to it would be intaking or exhausting, and/or if some of them are for heat from the electronics but not contiguous with the build chamber.

Re: Ask HN: What's a good 3D Printer for sub $1000?

#267

Post by marcosscriven »

trialect wrote: post #251
marcosscriven wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly we should be mindful of single-use plastic. For prototyping, PLA is biodegradable in the right conditions, and doesn’t come from petroleum. There’re all sorts of things 3D printing is good for. Do you think 3D printing shouldn’t be allowed?

I'm not saying it shouldn't be allowed. But people really should be thinking about plastic usage (and they don't.. they just need that stuff handy to print whatever.. ) and all the waste they generate when they don't need the said printed part anymore (for better or worse their descendant/successor will not need it anymore and will throw it away...)

What I’m trying to get at is why you posted that? It’s a post asking about what 3D printer to get.

Re: Ask HN: What's a good 3D Printer for sub $1000?

#269

Post by johnboiles »

I have a Bambu X1C and a Prusa MK3.9S (mostly upgraded MK3S).

The Bambu is incredible at PLA. It is so fast and consistently perfect. The 0.2mm nozzle makes unreal detail small parts. But I struggle to do other materials with it like TPU, PETG, ABS.

The Prusa takes generally whatever material I throw at it and does a great job just using the PrusaSlicer built in profiles. It's also the minimum viable printer -- it's 80% as good as the Bambu but a fraction of the complexity. I am 100% confident I could keep it running indefinitely where the Bambu is mostly proprietary parts and software.

Re: Ask HN: What's a good 3D Printer for sub $1000?

#270

Post by bmitc »

skhameneh wrote: post #8

If you don't care about business practices and general privacy concerns, Bambu. If you want a large printer that's decent for tinkering, Sovol SV08. If you want relatively good support and to support a company that has a history of giving back, Prusa. If you want something cheap with a lot of features that tend to be more high end, Elegoo Centuri Carbon. If you just want something cheap that's arguably incredible val…

> If you don't care about business practices and general privacy concerns

What are the actual concerns here? What has Bambu done that other 3D printer companies haven't?

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