3d printer recommendations please!

I’m looking to buy a printer at the more budget end of the scale to have a play with making small widgets, component housings, and general STEM type things with my son (11) I’ve done some CAD before, reasonably competent technically, but would quite like one that doesn’t need a ton of setup of possible.

If possible I’d like to stay under £250ish, very open to suggestions!

Shortlist so far is

Creality Ender 5

Elegoo Neptune 4 pro

Any other suggestions/warnings? I think it will be mostly used for PLA(PETG

Thanks!

Our work ender 5 and 3’s have been really really dissapointing! Great to begin with bit S L O W and  Lots of TLC needed.  I’m going to suggest you double your budget…

My advice is to get a Bambu P1S for £509, which is a really great price.  I assume a replacement is coming soon as these just don’t get reduced.  It’s incredible, prints everytime with no intervention.

Bambu Lab P1S 3D Printer

The P1P is also very good, currently at £419 the main difference being the S is enclosed so the build volume temperature is more stable over a print – particularly affects larger prints but as a comparison to the ones you shortlisted this will be on another level.

Bambu Lab P1P 3D Printer

if they really are over budget though, then this from Bambu is £169!

Bambu Lab A1 mini 3D Printer

If you want to make things rather than spend time fiddling with the printer then the Flashforge Adventurer is pretty good. I have the 3 and sits on a shelf in the office and prints whatever I send it. No messing around, playing with settings, changing parts just warm it up and print. Nominally they are over budget but you should be able to pick one up cheaply.  A quick google shows this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/186487930707 or this https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/186403525884 which look OK or you will probably find one of the newer models with a bit of searching

I’ve got a Creality CR-10 Mini that I’ve had for ~5 years. No issues whatsoever & while it runs on old software, hardware & electronics it keeps on going. It was £225 delivered from China through Gearbest.

It took a while to set-up initially but that was before auto-bed levelling became standard. Now all I need to do to initiate a print is spray a bit of adhesive on the bed (old school glass bed) and send the job.

A couple of mates have Ender 3 Pro’s and they have mentioned no problems. The print quality from them seems great, but they are behind some of the newer printers like stuff from Bambu etc.

If you want something just to play around with, I would give the Creality printers a look.

Then all you need is the free version of Fusion360 & a slicer like Ultimaker Cura and you’re set.

That Bambu A1 looks pretty cool,

Depends if you want to print really big stuff. We used to have an Ultimaker “+” at work which was huge, but actually printing something big takes forever, and the longer it takes the more likely it was to fail (it desperately needed an enclosed bed).

If 180mm is big enough to do the jobs you have in mind then it looks great.

If 180mm isn’t big enough, then consider your budget as failed 8+ hour prints are a pain.

if they really are over budget though, then this from Bambu is £169!

that’s the one they had to recall as it was a fire risk? 🤔

As a longtime Prusa fan-boy I have no problem saying that Bambu Labs (as a company) are dodgy as ****, the printers are supposed to be OK though! (except the one that catches fire 🔥 😬)

I won’t give any recommendations though as would be way over OP budget!

Here is a cool 400% brick ninja I have just completed tho 😂:

What are the main downsides of hobby printers? Is it just speed and size, or does quality improve vastly with the more expensive printers? My son wants us to get one for printing miniatures, and I’m curious if some of the suggestions here would produce ok outcomes. Mainly thinking about finer details on miniatures and whether they come out poorly with budget units.

For miniatures, you probably want a resin printer not an FDM (i.e. all the ones discussed above). Much higher resolution print but the technology is actually a lot simpler so generally the budget ones are absolutely fine (although not sure what is currently the most recommended one out there!)

Cheers all, some useful stuff! Looking further into Creality they haven’t got the best rep so might avoid!

As much as I’m of the ‘don’t buy the cheapest thing’ persuasion it’s hard to justify over 400 quid for someone that may not get a ton of use.

I’m not sure the 180mm bed  will be big enough unfortunately – one of the projects I have in mind will need to fit in a car stereo DIN plate, which I think is 180 without the surround.

Definitely after FDM as opposed to resin, as that looks a massive amount of hassle and mess tbh!

One thing I’m rapidly learning is that this topic seems even more tribal than asking what the best wheel size is…

Don’t be put off an ender, they’re pretty outdated now but they also pretty much set the standard for years (people will be designing stuff for the 235mm build plate or selling upgrade parts for a decade just because of how completely standard the ender 3 became. And that cuts both ways, because for years now every idiot who wants a 3d printer but lacks the skills or commitment to do it properly got an ender 3 and then blamed it when they couldn’t instantly do perfect prints, at one point you could buy an ender 3 in Best Buy in the states and people bought them like they buy toasters and then took to the internet to rage about them.

(even on here we had someone buy one, mess about with it for ages, ignore all the advice, think they could reinvent the wheel, then “discovered” thta the eccentric adjusters which are the most important part of the entire setup process and which they’d been specifically told to check were adjustable, after literal weeks of blaming the machine)

That said they are old and slow and basically the only reason to get most of them is that they’re cheap. But on the other hand, they are cheap cheap. I have an old, old ender 3 with a more recent direct drive hotend and a few minor upgrades and it prints reliably and well on demand, but then apparently being able to follow the instructions or make a good slicer profile is brain surgery 😛 I wouldn’t buy one today, because I’m not that user.

that’s the one they had to recall as it was a fire risk? 🤔

They have quite a bit of info on their website re what they’ve done to fix the issue.

I’m not sure the 180mm bed  will be big enough unfortunately – one of the projects I have in mind will need to fit in a car stereo DIN plate, which I think is 180 without the surround.

Thoughts:

1) Don’t forget you can print stuff in any orientation, a 180mm bed is actually 256mm diagonally on the base, and 311mm diagonally top to bottom as well. And that actually has benefits as you can align the layers so you don’t get weak dimensions / points.

2) You can always print small bits that clip together

3) Never try and print something you can buy injection molded.  Surely someone makes a DIN adapter for your car? It’s great for making some stuff, but if someone already makes it properly it will be better.

All good points., hasn’t thought about orientation in the 3d space! Unfortunately, nobody makes an adapter to fit a relatively old slightly obscure bit of electrical kit (Defi Link display plus a few extra bits) in a quite old, relatively obscure car. I have a plan, just need to be able to produce it and may take a few iterations.

But that’s just one use case, I’m not getting hung up on that but it’s raised some good points!

We have a bunch (7) of creality 3D printers for getting through easy prints at work. I find the CR-6 model much better than the enders.

Also quick thoughts….

I’d never want to go back to a printer with an auto level function.

Take maximum envelope size with a pinch of salt – I’ve found regardless of make the print quality and propensity for warping near the edge of the build plate is much bigger. You think you’d be able to print edge to edge – often it isn’t as good as that and big, long expensive prints fail.

Finally – you say you’ve got some CAD experience. What you planning on using? IMO this is where the magic happens, designing something interesting and designing something specifically for FDM. I’ve never really got the people who just download models or widgets other people have drawn or scanned and then printing them…but each to their own.

Finally -finally  don’t disregard the cost of running the thing. Keeping a build plate at 60 degree for 15-20 hours comes at a cost with leccy up in price these days. I nicked a machine from work and tried to run it in an unheated spare room this winter and many print failures. There seems to be a minimum room temperature for the kit to work properly.

I’ve an ender 3se… It’s fab…

No issues, cheap, and a great intro to 3d printing.

I’ve printed a mix of useful things, and silly things!

However..I must get good at onshape

DrP

Keeping a build plate at 60 degree for 15-20 hours comes at a cost with leccy up in price these days. I nicked a machine from work and tried to run it in an unheated spare room this winter and many print failures. There seems to be a minimum room temperature for the kit to work properly.

This is where the enclosed ones work better, and even then I tend to put a box over mine and put a couple of layers of bubble wrap round it

Ender 3 here, perfectly adequate for general tinkering and making the odd useful item. Download fusion 360 and Cura and you’ve basically got all the tools you need.

I just today took delivery of a Bambu P1S after 4 years on a Ender 3, that’s now highly modified.

Is your hobby the printer, or printing?  With the Ender, the hobby is the actual printer. It can be fine for ages, then throw a wobbly. With the Bambu you just go and it prints, and far faster.  A “Benchy” took me a couple of days to achieve, and prints in 1h 45m on the Ender.  With the Bambu it was printing within 30 minutes of delivery, and took 15 minutes to print!

The Ender was great if you want to learn the in and outs of the machine and stay on top of the tweaks.

I’d highly recommend an A1 or A1 Mini from the sale, unless you specifically need an enclosure.

Saying that, drop me a message if you want a 2nd hand well dialled Ender 3, with BL touch bed levelling, an EZR Extruder than handles TPU, all the printed add ons and a magnetic PEI bed!

With the Ender, the hobby is the actual printer. It can be fine for ages, then throw a wobbly. With the Bambu you just go and it prints, and far faster

this is a great summary.

There is lots of little things the Bambu’s do so well – detail like backing off the z plate for xy moves between extruded paths so you basically don’t get any stringing & you can easily nest multiple parts on the build bed and it just works, whereas the enders you’re very much print 1 part at a time.  I can fill the bed on the bambu and not get any corner lift, whereas the enders you get corner lift when using anything more than the central 50% area if not less.

There is lots of little things the Bambu’s do so well – detail like backing off the z plate for xy moves between extruded paths so you basically don’t get any stringing & you can easily nest multiple parts on the build bed and it just works

coming from Creality you might not realise this, but any printer that isn’t shite will do all that ^^^^

I appreciate they’re cheap, but recommending Enders etc is the equivalent of people on a 3D printing forum recommending Halfords Apollos when someone asks, “What MTB?” 😂

Wow. There’s a lot of Creality bashing on here. Not that long ago they were THE recommended budget printer when people were fiddling around with full build kits like the Tevo Tarantula and wanted something a bit less DIY.

A lot of the criticism I do not recognise at all. Is the Ender 3 that much worse than my much older and more basic CR10 Mini?

Unless I have misunderstood, comments like the one above about having to print 1 part at a time is just wrong. I regularly print anywhere between 4 and 10 parts at a time without issue and no stringing. Stringing is largely a slicer profile issue.

I can’t really comment on corner lift on the ender 3 myself, although I know friends have printed parts that were almost too big for the bed with no lifting/warping. The largest I’ve printed on my Cr10-Mini (build plate of 300×210) is about 280×200 with no lifting or warping issues. That is on a glass bed though. I don’t have much experience of modern build plates.

I’d love to try a more modern printer, but for my use case would find it very hard to justify given that my current one works fine. Speed and quieter operation would perhaps be the main things I’d gain.

father has 2 bambus p1s and p1p i think. he thinks they are great. they just work.

im very close to buying the mini as i spend a chunk each year on plastic bases for minatures. it would pay for itself quite quicklu. but im struggling yo justify more spending to the financial controller

i have 2 resin printers, elegoo saturn3 ultra and mars4 ultra. both work really well and ive printed a ton of minatures. the mars is more needy than the saturn and ive had a few fep issues with it.

resin really isnt that much of a faff if you have a dedicated space for it. ive turned part of a bedroom cupboard into a print enclosure.

only issue is that youll probably spend the same again as the printer and then aome on all the extra stuff you need

with fdm other than pla you dont seem to need much else to get going.

If you want something that will just work, then at the moment you’ll struggle to beat Bambu. It is essentially a proprietary eco-system, but it’s an eco-system that works well.

If you want something that can be made to work well on a budget, but require a bit understanding and time to get working well, I think Creality Enders are still hard to beat. Enders have probably the most options available, with lots of people knowledgeable about them.

I’ve personally got a Bambu X1C (P1S is the far more economically viable option for an enclosed printer, it’s just that I wanted the hardened nozzle/extruder for some experimentation), along with two Ender 3s that have had various upgrades. I should really sell one of the Enders, but I’ve just not had the motivation/time to give it a clean and list it anywhere.

cp
Full Member

There is lots of little things the Bambu’s do so well – detail like backing off the z plate for xy moves between extruded paths so you basically don’t get any stringing & you can easily nest multiple parts on the build bed and it just works, whereas the enders you’re very much print 1 part at a time. I can fill the bed on the bambu and not get any corner lift, whereas the enders you get corner lift when using anything more than the central 50% area if not less.

Um, for the first it seems like you’re just describing Z hop? I think the most parts I’ve ever printed on my ender 3 in one go was about 30 but it might be a bit more. I don’t really understand either of those comments tbf.

Corner lift is definitely just a setup issue. I mean, there’s inherently nothing about the ender platform to cause what you describe, and I’ve done prints using most of the bed.

Also surprised by the Creality bashing, especially as the proposed alternative Seems to be a £700, much newer printer (ok on discount currently to £500). Typical STW ask about a simple entry level bit of kit, essentially get told you should be richer.

As for an Ender “Becoming your hobby” that only really happens if you want it to, mine is pretty much stock, maintenance is primarily noticing when the filament feed tube needs replacing and giving it the odd clean. I’ve replaced the nozzle once (had it almost four years I think. For me it’s a tool that I use a handful of times a month and invest minimal time and effort in.

Not sure if it’s pointed at me but just to be clear – I think the Creality Ender 3 is a great piece of kit.  I have a lot of love for it and really enjoyed my time on it.  I also wasn’t recommending a £700 machine, but using it as my experience of the Bambu world.  If this scales down to the A1 Mini, which I believe it does (and in some ways is beaten by the Mini) then I highly recommend the £169 Mini as a plug and play experience – unless the build volume isn’t enough.

The Ender was a great piece of kit and served me well.  I was consistently amazed at what it produced, especially for the price, at the time.  I had time on an industrial £30k FDM machine in the early days and I had arguably equal or better results in the spare room with a well dialled Ender less than 10 years later.  Amazing developments. As stock it took a lot of dialling in (on the ‘OG’ version) such as bed level, z offset, e-steps, print profiles, firmware compiling, which was also my goal at the time!  However it did benefit massively from a silent main board, a new extruder, auto bed levelling, a host of printed upgrades, a print server and a new bed – all of which come stock on a lot of newer machines and I wouldn’t be without. A tinkerers delight!

Bambu takes the plug and play approach – a very much a closed system though, which may or may not appeal.  The ability to hit print from the app and a model just appears is nice, but of course that brings down sides.

That’s my thoughts and depending on the path, you’ll be great with an Ender 3 or something like a Bambu A1 Mini/A1 if budget allows.  I’d love to add a Mini to my setup.

Seems to be a lot of love for Bambu, but I just can’t justify the £400+

The a1 mini looks great and tbh the thought of more plug and play is appealing. But I don’t want the size to be restrictive.

Any reason why the a1 (non mini) isn’t being suggested? It’s£289, and would seem like a reasonable middle ground.

Edit: apologies @diggery, just seen your reference to it!

Depends if you want to dip your toe in as cheap as possible for the experience, or want the size for functional parts.

A1 for £289 in the sale would be my choice for one printer.  Only reason I pointed out the Mini was to be mindful of budget, you said small widgets so it’d meet that but size could be limiting. One tip I saw is make a cardboard 180mm cube and see if your models would fit inside this (diagonally as advised above).

I’d say 95% of what I make would fit on a Mini – bearing press tools, brackets, spacers, functional part, but I’ve printed absolute corner to corner on my Ender a few times (needed a flat plane for surface finish).  The speed and larger build plate means you can load multiple parts then just step away and leave it.

The AMS does have some uses over multi colour – like support material. You can use a layer of material that doesn’t stick to the main part for easy support removal – but it’s not by any means needed.  I think Bambu are pushing it, but their product page is a little misleading as it defaults to the combo kits, so they may lose sales based on price some times!

I only went P1S as I make functional parts and am looking for an enclosure, and hardened gears, for more exotic components – but that’s a much more specific use case.  A1 gets amazing feedback for all round use.

There’s also a few fun projects in the sale at the moment, like the mouse.  £7.15 if you buy 3 qualifying spares/accessories!

Wireless Mouse Components Kit 002

I got an Elegoo Neptune 4 (non pro) as my first 3D printer and I’m very pleased with it – after a bit of a learning curve to get the basic parameters down it basically “just works”.  The ‘pro’ might be worth it for the WiFi (you can add WiFi to the non-pro if you’re keen though).

Elegoo runs the newer ‘Clipper’ firmware and can print very quickly if you want it to.

I can model something in F360 and just load the appropriate filament and print it out. I’ve printed PLA, PETG and ASA on it, but I had to add a ‘tent’ to be able to print the ASA successfully.

I have a Bambu P1S and its great. Its very easy to use and the print quality is amazing. Pretty much everything ive printed has worked 1st time. If i was on a budget i’d get the A1.

Thanks all, really appreciate the input, all taken on board. I’ve ordered a Bambu A1. Bit of budget creep but not too bad, and by most  reports seems to fit the ‘minimal faff’ brief.

I was thinking about this the other night and I think what I want right now, is a Bambu A1, and an AMS Lite-er. Not a Lite, but something inbetween I don’t care about multi-colour printing, that’s just something I have no use for, it’s pretty much for printing baby yodas and shit like that, but 2- filament printing for supports, that I would use all the time. But I don’t want to pay for 4 colours, 2 of which I would never use 😉

Give me an A1 and an AMS Lite-er 2 drum version please Bambu.

The other thing is, I’d really like to see Bambu support and aftermarket open up a bit. This is kind of chicken and egg, the thing that’s making Bambu such a great beginner printer is the simplicity and purity that you get from it being a relatively closed system. But what made the ender so good was the infinite choice you got from it being the enthusiast and the china-aftermarket printer of choice. But that makes it kind of the wild west in terms of what works and what doesn’t, to take advantage of the enthusiast layer requires enthusiasm.

All the way since my first printer (an original Tevo Tarantula, the first affordable metal-chassis diy printer ever) what’s made a printer great or not has been entirely about the aftermarket and the enthusiast community. My Anet was an above-average printer, with zero uptake from community, so it just never grew at all. The Ender speaks for itself. It feels like it might be kind of on teh cusp, with frinstance good Orca implementation (I bloody love Orca) Choice is good.

The other thing is, I’d really like to see Bambu support and aftermarket open up a bit.

lol, good luck with that 😂 They are anti-innovation, anti-community. Happy to monetise the work of others, though, including the open-source community.  Not a company I’d hitch my wagon to, as a 3d-print enthusiast.

Yup, that’s my feel too. But then a lot of the 3rd party stuff in the past has been entirely independent/ignoring of the manufacturers. Guess we’ll see. My gut feel is that if the machines themselves continue to get popular, and not go on fire, then that’ll just by its nature attract the sort of expert enthusiast, and a bunch of those will be very happy to do stuff and just completely ignore bambu except as a hardware start point.