Printable PC/Nylon/ABS are not the same as the injection molded equivalents, you may want to research this more if that is an issue. I've printed every material under the sun trying to chase various material properties, and I usually just come back to printing in PLA due to it's excellent mechanical properties (up to a certain temp), excellent layer adhesion, and near 100% success rate. When you stray from from PLA, you will start running into warping, shrink, layer adhesion, and other issues. If you need parts in PC/Nylon/ABS, get the design dialed in in PLA (I as almost all others recommend bambulab), and then send the part to FirstCut/Protolabs to have it machined out of whatever you want.
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?
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
this isn't always true. i live somewhere so dry PLA is fine left open for several months w no water uptake
OP specifically mentioned "PC/Nylon/ABS".
same applies for those, i was using PLA as an example as its more hygroscopic.
not that it's hard to store a spool of filament in a plastic bin
Re: Ask HN: What's a good 3D Printer for sub $1000?
#93First up: If you were a machinist and can model in CAD (especially constraint based, not mesh based), slicers are trivial. You'll spend a bit learning about materials & how to deal with their inadequacies by fiddling with support structures, but it's really not an obstacle.
If OSS firmware and repairability matter to you, prepare to invest a lot of time fixing and improving your tooling. (But... if you've machined before, you likely know that drill :)
The Sovol SV06 is almost there in terms of build volume - and it clocks in at $350, so it might be a good starting point. The Voron 2.4 is 350 mm^3 and almost $1000, also a decent machine. Elegoo's Neptune 4 straddles the edge of open source - it's a branded klipper build.
All of them are enclosable (i.e. you can buy enclosures, or build one)
From what I hear, the Voron's the most likely fit for your material requirements. (But, worth keeping in mind - an alternate path is a cheapo PLA printer for prototyping, and then shipping of files to a printing service. Depends on what you plan to do)
Re: Ask HN: What's a good 3D Printer for sub $1000?
#94If 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, Bambu. While I agree, I think it's heavily underselling Bambulab printers in terms of UX and print quality, they are the absolute best in the market and by a mile.
+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).
Re: Ask HN: What's a good 3D Printer for sub $1000?
#95I picked up an Ultimaker 2+ with 15,000 hours on it at an ewaste junk shop for $100. Really was expecting it to need some TLC, but I plugged it in, leveled the bed, and it spit out an absolutely passable benchy in a couple hours. Cura (Ultimaker's slicer) isn't open source, but it is free, fairly unobtrusive, and works fine. The printer itself isn't connected to anything but mains power, and loads gcode from an SD card.
Re: Ask HN: What's a good 3D Printer for sub $1000?
#96I hate to say this. Bambu A1. I'm operating a farm of mixed plumage: 20 Prusa's, 12 Creality K1s and 24 Bambus. Of all of those the Bambus are by far the least troublesome and I would definitely recommend those to a beginner. That said, Bambu is a crap company and they can't be trusted not to do a rugpull sooner or later. We don't have them connected to wifi for that reason alone and tbh it doesn't really add anything to the experience. I like the fact that they're all stand-alone and as long as the power is up the printers are printing. In the last year we've processed about 3000 Kg total with these. In some more detail:
- The Prusa's are real workhorses. They are not the fastest, but they're expensive and they break. But you can always fix them and the degree to which you can tinker with them (especially while they're running) is much higher than the others. I've made a couple of custom ones (one 1x1 meter x 25 cm build volume, five more that are the regular width and length but 60 cm height), with adopted firmware. It's an insanely flexible platform. If you can think of it, handle a hex key and do some minor firmware hacking you can probably make it.
- The K1s... well. Initially we were very impressed. Got a couple to test with, decided they work and ordered 10 more. After a few days the first extruder broke. Gears just snapped their teeth right off. Turns out the extruder gears are plastic. So, ordered upgraded extruders. Next, one after the other, power supplies dying. After that print fans, Then cpu fans. They also had many screws loose right from the factory, we had a whole inspection list made just to structurally address all of the shitty stuff that would be wrong. For $10 more in parts and better QA it could have been a winner.
- The Bambus. We plugged them in. They work. They still do.
People in this thread are mentioning the SOVOL, if you have the money, that's probably the best printer. But I'd get a couple of Bambus instead and get that many more kilos pushed through. At 200 bucks for the mini and 350 or so for the big A1 it's insane value for money.
Does that help? Feel free to ask more questions.
Re: Ask HN: What's a good 3D Printer for sub $1000?
#97After having owned many 3D printers I can recommend Bambu Lab X1C with AMS. It will be a bit over budget but does not matter, you will spend time just printing and not messing with settings or bed leveling, it’s a workhorse and just prints what you tell it to reliably, no tuning or tweaking required. When using official filaments it will automatically recognize them, switch them during print etc. After maybe 10 years…
In this case the P1S without AMS is a better starting point. Add an AMS later if valuable. The step up from P1S to X1C isn't worth it for someone with a budget who doesn't need the incremental improvements of the X1C.
Personally, I'd still just get the X1C (and I'm not the person above you).
The price difference is low enough now that I'd just take the upgrade. Sure you don't "need" the better screen, better wifi, quieter fan, and default installed hardened nozzle/gear. But they're nice. And OP will want the hardened nozzle/gear if they're printing CAD designed structural parts - PLA is a bad pick for those, you really need to be in the ABS/ASA/PETG/PP materials, and those benefit heavily from the Carbon Fiber/Glass Fiber additions in the filament (PETG-CF and ABS-GF are fantastic).
Back when the difference was closer to $500, sure - get the P1S. But the X1C is frankly a steal at $799. And if you catch the occasional sale, you can get the X1C + AMS combo at literally OPs sticker price ($999).
Re: Ask HN: What's a good 3D Printer for sub $1000?
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reality is that “just works” is going to outsell just about everything, including high ground on morals and privacy. If competitors want to keep up they’re going to have to offer models that don’t require any tinkering/tweaking even if doing so is possible, supported, and encouraged.
Yeah... The market is still shifting in response to the X1C. 10 years ago... I would manually level my ender, religiously monitor it, and still deal with a decently high failure rate (esp for anything other than PLA). Tuning the printer took easily as much time as I actually spent printing with it. I upgraded all the things , flashed firmware, ran octoprint, etc... It was like driving - gotta keep the hands on the wh…
The 3D printing community is really two different groups: people who like to actually print things and people who like to tinker with their printer.
Re: Ask HN: What's a good 3D Printer for sub $1000?
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do repair and modernizing of cars/motorcycles/dirtbike/ATVs, that kind of stuff. Fuel injection conversions are something I specialize in. That is why I would like durable/resistant materials as an option. I won't be trying to earn with it intentionally, unless I stumble upon a niche. There are already more than a couple 3d printing services around here, no need to compete there. I can do what I need to do in CAD,…
How many parts are we talking? I sounds to me like you are the perfect candidate for send-cut-send or one of the many many other services that take your CAD and build parts. You get to choose from materials your printer couldn't do (not matter what you have something cannot be done)
When you have a printer, cycle times can be much shorter…and a few fast cycles with a job shop will pay for a printer.
Small jobs from small customers are not a high priority for job shops. Neither are cheap jobs.
Having a printer means you are able to work on projects at 2am Sunday.
Re: Ask HN: What's a good 3D Printer for sub $1000?
#100I picked up an Ultimaker 2+ with 15,000 hours on it at an ewaste junk shop for $100. Really was expecting it to need some TLC, but I plugged it in, leveled the bed, and it spit out an absolutely passable benchy in a couple hours. Cura (Ultimaker's slicer) isn't open source, but it is free, fairly unobtrusive, and works fine. The printer itself isn't connected to anything but mains power, and loads gcode from an SD ca…
> Cura (Ultimaker's slicer) isn't open source
Isn't it? https://github.com/Ultimaker/Cura