So I’ve been exploring the fabulous word of additive manufacturing for a few months now with my company’s 3D printer - a Prusa Mk4 - that we employees are welcome to use for our own personal use when it’s not busy printing tooling for work of course.
I’ve gotten really good at squeezing the most performance out of that thing: some of the functional parts I made with it at scales that are pushing the boundaries of what regular PLA out of a 0.4-mm nozzle can be coaxed into becoming, I’m properly proud of.
And I’m having a lot of fun finding ways to overcome the limitations of FDM. I don’t really want a more precise printer: half the fun is witnessing a part that shouldn’t exist come out of a printer that doesn’t really have any right to be this good. Pushing the envelope… It’s the spirit of hacking in the world of 3D printing and I love it!
But now I’m wanting a printer of my own. The company’s printer is fine and all but when it’s doing work-related things, I can’t use it. And I have to wait to go back to work the next day to print something I modeled the evening before.
So I’m on the market for a good fast FDM printer that can print prints with different filaments at the same time, because I’d like to experiment with stretchy materials but keep using rigid and cheap materials for the supports, and also to play with colors. And I think I want a core XY printer because I’ve run into problems with big heavy prints with the company’s bed slinger.
And finally, something that’s really important for me: I want something as open source as possible that doesn’t phone home, and ideally not made in China.
Money is not tight. The kids are out of the house and I have a well-paid job. I set my budget to 5k - dollars or euros.
So with those requirements in mind, from what I read, the best option for me is to stick with Prusa: it’s more expensive for what it does but it’s not sketchy Chinese spyware. Also, I know the brand already and I’ve been nothing but happy with it so far.
And in the Prusa line, I’m tempted by the XL with an the bells and whistles - namely 5 heads and an enclosure.
But here’s the thing: I hear this machine has problems. Is it true? Would you have a better suggestion? Possibly another brand that I should consider?
Since you mention tweaking/adjusting/etc a Voron may be right for you.
There are kits for sourcing the majority of the stuff and then you build it yourself.
The Afterburner and Stealthburner are great for ABS out of the gate but there are toolheads that can also work with PLA such as DragonBurner.
The entire ecosystem is open especially if you’re using Klipper
Kits by LDO are a good starting point.
or
Note that V2 (currently V2.4) is not a successor to V1 (currently Trident). They are different printer designs. They also come in different sizes. More information can be found on their website.
There are multi material systems like the ERCF and toolhead changer like Tapchanger or Stealthchanger.
If you don’t want to print the ABS parts for the printer yourself there is a program called Print It Forward where you get your parts printed in an existing Voron. There is also a ton of commercial vendors.
A Kind of mantra in the community is that you dont build a Voron but your Voron.
Jumping in here, a lot of what you said checks Voron boxes. Fast, CoreXY, can print a range of material, completely open source. I really like my 2.4. You can self source the whole BOM from wherever you want. There are a few BOM in a box options, including some put together by US companies (West 3D) but with whatever you buy a decent quantity of the BOM is going to originate overseas.
There’s a very large community around the printer, along with tons of mods. The only thing it doesn’t do out of the box is multi-material, but there are mods for that.
I think you got a lot of good replies, but at a glance no one said “Prusa good!” so here’s that reply. Prusa printers are workhorses. They run their own machines in a print farm printing parts for the printers they sell and iterate/bring tweaks into production.
If you look at posts from a year or more ago they’ll frequently appear as trustworthy/hassle free options. They’ve somewhat fallen out of favor from a price to performance ratio, but if you want a hassle free printer so you can just worry about printing they’re still a good option.
I didn’t know about the Voron, but it looks great! But it also looks like it’s quite a project and not something I could get going quick.
But I wonder if perhaps it would be a good idea to buy a cheap second-hand Prusa and build a Voron with it. Then I’d have a printer to print stuff at least as good as the one at work, and also work slowly towards building me a better one.
Some vendors that sell LDO and other kits
https://west3d.com/collections/kits/LDO
https://kb-3d.com/store/151-shop-full-build-kits
There are others and you can check out the discord, YouTube channels like Nero 3D “The Canuck Creator” and “Steve Builds” for more info
not sketchy Chinese spyware
People are going to suggest Bambu printers, but if avoiding Chinese spyware is one of your criteria I would advise avoiding anything and everything by Bambu, regardless of how shiny it is.
Look into the Qidi I-Fast, which is a dual extruder machine, i.e. with two separate toolheads. Its multi material capability is superior to the Bambus in that regard, working more similarly to your work’s Prusa, albeit only supporting two materials at a time. Qidi is also Chinese but I have owned two of their printers so far (an OG X-Plus, and a current Gen 3 X-Max) and I can find no evidence that they engage in any spying or other misbehavior. The I-Fast is $1800 USD right now which is well within your budget.
Honestly, for $5000 you can buy a lot of printer, or multiple printers. Plan B I think would be to just get the Prusa XL as you have already suggested, which is a sound strategy. Me, if I ever manage to accumulate enough Prusameters to do so, I am 100% cashing them in for a Prusa XL.
Despite claims to the contrary (largely by their manufacturers and fanboys, myself sometimes included) there is no such thing as any 3D printer from any brand using any technology that is truly plug-and-play, and 100% problem free. The damn things are inherently full of moving parts, tiny clearances, consumables, and wear items which will all at some point or another require your attention either via tinkering, tuning, or occasional parts replacement.
I own a Prusa XL and I love it. it’s the most reliable printer I’ve ever owned by a long shot. The only thing I’ve been unhappy with is the somewhat lackluster support for Octoprint, but I’ve heard that others have been able to fully use the printer with the right configuration.
Glad to hear that!
Do you have more than one extruder with yours? I read it’s not possible to have several nozzle sizes. As in, say one extruder with a large nozzle for quick printing and one with a smaller one for details. Is this true? Did you try that yourself by any chance?
I just have the 0.6mm nozzles mine came with. I recall hearing something like that, but I’ve felt that the phat 0.6 lads were good enough for the stuff I’m printing. If that’s a limitation, then I hope Prusa can fix it. Seems like it shouldn’t be a big deal to make that configurable.
I usually use 0.4 because it lets me print connectors that holds pogo pins with a 0.05" pitch. But it’s slow for big things.
I don’t usually print big things with tiny features, so I could have one extruder with a smaller nozzle and one with a larger one and use one or the other. But if I could use both at the same time, it would speed up printing of even my small connectors - because obviously not the entire connector requires fine features.
What is your tolerance for tinkering? One option, which would give you a lot of control and flexibility over the printer would be to build a Voron. It’s tough to get more “open source” than a fully open source design. The 2.4 is also a CoreXY design and should cover just about everything you want.
What is your tolerance for tinkering?
High. My problem is time. Between my work and my other activities, I don’t really have the time to spend hours messing about with a 3D printer. So if I can’t get it going good once and for all over a weekend, I suspect it’ll be sitting there for weeks and that’s going to be frustrated.
