Several years ago I leapt enthusiastically into the realm of 3D printing by buying a massive, expensive delta-type printer. I had to put it together myself, which was fun, but after that I struggled to get it to print well. Even simply trying to get the prints to stick to the bed were difficult, leading me to add huge brims to all my parts which were a pain to cut off afterward. Eventually I gave up fiddling with it and it’s been gathering dust ever since.
I know that a lot of you treat the hobby as an opportunity for endless tinkering and optimization, which is great, but I think I’ve realized that what I’d prefer is something that just works out of the box with a minimum of adjustment.
The best low hassle printing is going to be resin. You can get a decent Elegoo or Anycubic model for only a few hundred dollars. The only real hassle is cutting supports, washing your prints, and curing the resin. In my experience, water washable resin is the way to go.
Of course, depending on what you are printing, you may not have as much use for a resin printer.
Obligatory ventilate your work area and use your ppe.
Edit: not sure why downvotes. Is this sub anti-resin?
I suspect people feel SLA is a lot more hassle then FDM overall. That said I am still learning about resin myself.
I guess I understand where the idea comes from. That said, I print with both materials and I have had so many more issues with FDM. My resin prints almost always come out right on the first try, and I’ve never had to tinker with my Elegoo Mars Pro; it just worked out of the box.
Bambu A1
I recently got into this and picked up the A1 with AMS. It’s been a lot of fun to play with and other than the routine maintenance like cleaning the bed and lubing the rails, it’s been zero trouble.
How much of a difference does the AMS make in terms of a general printing? If someone wasn’t planning to do multi color prints often or at all would it still be worth it?
The P1S by Bambu Labs, while not the cheapest (on sale now for 550$ without an ams) pretty much just works.
I’ve done PLA and PETG (various brands) using default settings and the thing just works. I’ve also used polycarbonate but that required a small amount of tweaking.
I guess it also depends on what you’re trying to print. If you are going to be printing figurines that you will paint, you might be better off getting a resin printer, though I can’t speak much to those as I haven’t used them, but we do use anycubic at work and I’ve seen some pretty good looking models come out of them.
I’ve also heard good things about the A1/A1 mini (also Bambu) from coworkers.
We probably have 30 or so 3D printers at work including a nylon powder 3D printer which is amazing but I’m not sure of the brand, and it’s probably expensive because it stands about 4.5 ft tall.
Do you have pets or live in a dusty environment? Buy an enclosed printer (I recommend the Bambu P1S)
If not: A1 or A1 mini (200$, got me back into 3D printing)
Qidi X-Plus 3. If it’s anything like my Max 3, which is the bigger version, it ought to be plug in and use (after running the included calibration). It’s on “sale” right now for $500, but it’s always on sale. It’s also not made by Bambu, and if I were you or anyone else I would not give one rusty penny to Bambu for anything.
The draw with this thing is it comes with a fully enclosed chamber with a heater and PID to control it, and it’s the easiest time I’ve ever had printing ABS and PETG if that’s what you want to do. You can slap a 0.2mm nozzle on it easily enough if you want to print tiny stuff.
If you don’t care about high temperature materials you can get the X-Smart 3 which is based on the same system but is smaller and minus the heater, and is even cheaper.
They’re slimy. Their machines use proprietary software and parts, and their software has a highly questionable always-online requirement that phones home back to their servers, which is something that really ought not to be happening with anything that may be able to identify what objects people are 3D printing. Even if they’ve walked back the always-online thing and allowed local only operation on some of their printers, that still demonstrates that they are not to be trusted. There’s nothing to say that they can’t prevent your slicer from slicing some object the CCP has deemed should not be printed, or remotely brick your printer, or just simply refuse to allow their slicer software to connect to it anymore.
Their company was founded by former DJI employees. That should really say it all.
Qidi is also a Chinese company so what’s the difference? Most printers come from Chinese companies outside of companies like Prusa.
Bambu’s Chinese warrant canary.
I think I would recommend the q1 pro over the x plus 3 since it’s a difference in size by about 2 inches but saves a lot of money for the same components with a few upgrades even for leveling and the processor.
Though I really want the plus 4 but am waiting for the inevitable revisions for that price point.
The first gen 3 series machines definitely had some teething troubles, so waiting on the 4 is probably a wise plan.
Me, I’m mostly interested to see if they backport compatibility for their “Qidi Box” filament changer thingy (which thus far is vaporware in the first place) to also work with the Plus/Max 3. I don’t care about multicolor printing that much so I’m not about to buy a new printer just for it, but if I can slap on an add-on I just might.
