I’ve had access to a roommate’s 3D printer, but they’ll be moving away soon :(
Wondering if people have takes on machines that are considered entry level today but may have evolved handy features since, well, when you were an entry level user.
If this isn’t the right place for this please be nice I’m sorry
I’m a huge fan of Creality printers. If I were starting over today and didn’t have my eye on any specific bell or whistle, I’d probably get a Creality Ender 3 V3 or Ender 3 V3 SE. The Ender 3 Pro and Ender 3 V2 Neo I have now are great. Very reliable and easy to maintain.
One bell/whistle I’d 100% pay extra for is autoleveling. (A z probe rather than a z endstop.) My Ender 3 Pro came with an endstop rather than a probe. As soon as I got the V2 Neo that does have a z-probe I immediately decided to upgrade my Ender 3 Pro with a z-probe. With just the endstop, I had constant issues getting the first layer to adhere, especially if I was printing something that used a significant portion of the bed.
I’m waiting for the creality k1 max to go on sale again. My manager picked one up for under 500 and he says it’s fantastic. Corexy with enclosure and bed leveling
Fuck creality. They have issues all the time, no customer support, no auto bed leveling out of the box, the firmware out of the box isn’t even good. I would go for Elegoo Neptune printers. They work perfectly out of the box, have amazing support, good firmware, auto bed leveling, and prints faster than the enders.
Hmm ive dont know much about the players in the 3D printer market, nor the drama, but from the site Elegoo has reasonable prices for something that looks pretty decent
I’ve never had occasion to need to contact Creality customer support, and aside from bed adhesion with my Ender 3 Pro before I added a CR-Touch, I haven’t had any issues with my Creality printers. “No auto bed leveling out of the box” isn’t the case for most of Creality’s printers. (I didn’t mean to imply by “I would pay extra for autoleveling” that Creality makes you pay extra for that. Their bottom-of-the-line printers have autoleveling now-a-days.) And my experience with my two Creality printers was that they “work perfectly out of the box.”
I don’t have any experience with Elegoo printers.
Hey! Thanks for the reply! Auto-leveling is something my roommate has never had so i’ve never experienced what youre describing, but I do see how that would get rid of lots of faff.
I, like others have mentioned, would love to know how “locked down” a company/brand makes they products. I know there are a lot of Ender 3 clones, and I wonder if going with something like that would keep it really diy while also being based on a tried and tested product.