Back in 2018 I bought an Ender 3 and over the years after a lot of tinkering and upgrading I got really sick of having to work on it, so I shelved it permanently a few years ago. I didn’t have very much I wanted to print by then anyway, and another print failure that resulted in a giant ball of plastic covering the hotend for the umpteenth time tipped me over the edge. I could only disassemble it for service so many times before I started wanting to give it the Office Space treatment.
But now I would like to start printing again, only this time I want to actually just print things and not feel like an unpaid 3D printer mechanic. I don’t need anything fancy, I’m still only going to print ~95% PLA with the occasional PETG or ASA maybe. Really all I want is the equivalent of an Ender 3 only reliable, quiet, and with auto bed levelling (also having an actually flat bed to start with would be nice). Any kind of mandatory (or pseudo-mandatory via arbitrary feature-lock) cloud connectivity is a hard no from me. I will use Octoprint to manage it.
Are there any cheap printers that fill that role these days? I’m well and truly OOTL
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If don’t care about open source or that you’re locked into a vendor specific slicer. The A-series from Bambu labs is a very good turn key printer.
If you care about the specifics of open source or how your print gets sent to the printer, then I suggest looking somewhere else.
Of course that’s a thing now. Yeah I would very much not like to be locked into a vendor ecosystem.
Probably the best bang for the buck printer out there if you don’t care about multi color, and it’s getting multi color soon
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I’d also recommend the A series (I got recommended the A1 from a friend when I was starting out), and it’s been pretty great so far. As for the slicers, I know you can use OrcaSlicer with Bambu printers (as well as with a ton of others too)
“Cheap?” Depends on your definition, but go for Prusa. Open specs, open ecosystem, open software, open upgrades. Tinkering is still completely possible (in some ways even easier) but unlike Ender 3 it is never actually necessary. The damn things just work, all the time, every time. They’re workhorses. Best of both worlds, in my opinion.
With the intention of getting into 3D printing myself, I spend quite some time researching printers. Prusa checks many of my requirements and I love their approach. But the printers really seem a lot more pricey in comparison to what the competition has to offer. I get where that comes from and I’m likely to get a Prusa in the end just because of principles. But this is something you have to consider I guess.
I recently sold my Ender 3v2 to buy a Qidi Q1 Pro and I’m very pleased with my purchase.
My X Max 3 kicks ass. My Ender 3 v3 SE was awful.
I would recommend stripping qidi’s shitty dirty klipper implementation out of the xmax 3 and throw freedi on it instead. The display layout is way better, but most importantly you get pure klipper with all the benefits of the latest additions and customizability from the community.
Just looked that printer up and wow, seems amazing value for the money.
After Elegoo provided the single worst customer service experience I’ve ever had, I strongly recommended anyone but them. To replace the Neptune that we had so many issues and lack of support with, we picked up an Anycubic Kobra S1 that’s been great. Would recommend for the price. Enclosed CoreXY, so it prints ASA and PETG very well without needing extra enclosures.
My local library got Bambu Lab A1’s and those have been stupid reliable.
I also chose an ender 3 as a starter, not because it was cheap, but because i like messing with things, definitely not a printer for someone who just wants it to work all the time.
If you want to print in ASA, you’re going to want an enclosed model. I recently bought a Qidi Q2 after going through the same frustration with my old Ender 3. My main selling points on it were that it was capable of handling stuff like ABS and ASA, and most importantly, gave me full control of the device. Unlike Bambu, I have the root password to the controller board (which runs Klipper), and the (admittedly mediocre) AI spaghetti detection runs fully locally. It also has a carbon filter built in, which is a must if you intend to put the printer anywhere indoors and print in something other than PLA or PETG.
I would recommend the creality sparkx i7. It’s a clone of the a1 but it makes some small improvements in every angle where a benchmark can be made, plus it’s not locked down.
Edit: just noticed you want to print ASA. probably should go for something else, then.
Thanks for the advice everyone. I’ve been researching the suggested printers, though options are somewhat limited in my area and pricing varies to US retail. I’d hoped the Ender 3 price tier had approached a more turn-key experience by now, but it seems pretty hit or miss with the Ender 3 V3 SE as far as I could tell. It looks like out of what’s available the Qidi Q1 Pro gets me what I want and is the best bang for buck in local pricing.
Recently upgraded to an Elegoo Neptune 4 Plus, although I wouldn’t exactly call that ‘cheap’. No complaints so far, but I did replace the firmware with OpenNep4tune straight away so I can’t speak to the bone stock, out-of-box experience. Initial calibration was a little annoying but it auto-levels before every print, works really well with Orca and has its own remote web interface. I’ve only used it with PLA so far, but now that I have it dialled in I haven’t had a failed print that wasn’t my own fault.
Are you open to buying second hand ? Maybe try to find a Prusa i3 MK3 in good conditions on the market. Mine has been super reliable for many years (excluding the MMU 💩). Not the fastest nor most feature rich printer by today’s standards, but a damn reliable one.
MK3S is noticeably better, I’d say.
Buying second hand usually means more tinkering and repairs, which can be a hassle.
Other than that Prusa makes good stuff.
It’s wild to me after building my own printers for 15+ years that people complain about Enders. Compared to my DIY printers, getting an Ender was like taking a holiday.
The Ender was good when it worked, which it did really well for a year or two after I spent a lot of time and energy getting it sorted. But then things started to go downhill. In the hot end I had the heater cartridge, thermistor and cooling fan all fail separately but fairly close together. I had Z screw runout issues and had to replace the brass nut. The extruder housing cracked and had to be replaced with an aluminum one. Limit switches failed. V rollers failed. It suddenly developed adhesion issues with the glass bed and glue stick I’d been doing for years. Scuffing up the bed didn’t work, replacing it with a new glass bed didn’t work, scuffing the new glass bed didn’t work. I switched to a magnetic PEI bed, that worked but it conforms to the horrific banana shape of the Ender’s factory bed and I can only print on a single quadrant of it at a time because of the massive dips in between the screws.
This is just the stuff I remember from years ago. I enjoyed tinkering and upgrading the Ender in the early days but I’m older now and have other stresses on my time. I just want something that works.
