Buying Advice
Buying Advice
Hi folks,
I've been watching too many video reviews and just want a little bit of advice before I make my purchase. I'm wanting to get into 3d printing with the most satisfying results possible for around $600 CAD .
I'm looking at the Ender 5 S1 , currently for $599 CAD on Amazon. It does what I want , I think, it gets nice and hot (300C) , can use lots of different materials, auto levels, uses.usb and wifi, is quick and has a cube frame.
I suspect I would be quite happy with it. But before I go and pull the trigger, is there anything else around this price range , say plus or minus $100 , that would be better? If so what advice can you give? What models should I investigate.
I have a handful of printers including an Ender 3v2 and a Creality CR10S4, and my experience with Creality printers is that while they are cheap & usually offer nice features they are lacking in quality control & overall quality of the parts used (though the sprite extruder is a beast). If you are willing to put the time into tinkering with them then you can still make out with a decent printer for less than most comparable manufacturers.
Based on the features you listed I think the Qidi X-Smart 3 might be down your alley. The first few months after release were a shitshow with the firmware but now it's in a really solid place & mine has been quite reliable. It has a smaller build volume than the Ender 5 S1 but can print significantly faster.
If you are willing to expand your budget a bit I've noticed that Bambu Labs has dropped the price of the P1P to $600usd/~$800cad. I don't have any personal experience with Bambu Labs printers & honestly dislike some of the companies practices, but everything I've heard about the P1P & X1C has been fantastic.
As a new owner of a p1p. It's the single best decision I've made as far as the 3d printing hobby goes. I cannot tell you how much time and money I sunk into my old bed slinger printer and the results never even got close to this thing out of the box.
The only downside? You're gonna absolutely tear through filament because of how well and fast it prints.
Truth is I am not able to tinker as much as I would like, 2 kids and a busy job gets in the way. I'd rather tinker with software and design than hardware these days. I am willing to expand the budget a bit to ensure.that experience. This is twice now the P1P has come up. I'll check that and the X-smart out.
I wound up going with the Sovol SV06 Plus over the Ender 5 S1. Have you looked into that one yet? Biggest difference is it's not a cube frame (which is one of the reasons I went with the SV06 instead).
I haven't but I'm definately interested in it being half the price. From reviews it looks like I should do some reading on it first, did you have issues with the auto level or anything else getting it going?
No, it printed almost perfectly for me out of the box. The issues I've encountered are just the nature of 3D printing and not specific to the machine itself. Having it auto-level makes me almost cry with joy after 5 years of manually leveling with thumbwheels!
I've bought and assembled a few different (3) 3d printers including an Ender 3 Pro. I was never able to get any of them printing well consistently.
My best recommendation is to pick a printer that does auto bed leveling.
If I purchase another 3d printer, it will likely be a Prusa. They're quite expensive, but worth it for the support.
Ugh that's my nightmare, sink all that money and never get the thing leveled well enough to print anything.
The Prusa MK3S+ is $1200 CAD assembled though, almost double my budget.
I definitely understand the fear. Auto bed leveling should make life a million times easier. None of my printers ever had it. If you decide to pull the trigger now, just make sure it has that feature. If not, Prusa is a pretty bulletproof option, even if you opt to assemble it yourself to save some cash.
The nice thing about 3d printing, is that the second-hand market is pretty good. So if you can't get it sorted, you may have some luck selling it locally. I ended up giving mine away lol.
The prusa mini also gets a lot of solid recommendations, it does have a smaller print area though. I can't recommend a prusa enough however as a first printer, they have solid support and they're a tried and tested tool, I've got nearly 3k hours on my mk3s+ that I got I February and other than slight tweaks like swapping to abs printed parts, I've not had to do much to it.
With the mk4 being out, you may be able to find people selling their used mk3s+, which I don't know that I'd be concerned about based on my experience with their reliability. Their instructions are super detailed, you could also save a buck going for the kit but I can appreciate wanting something you can just go with, I did that too this year for the same reason, but I'd do a kit now that I have a known good printer.
The bambulabs p1p. It just dropped in price to $599 USD. Not sure what that exchange rate is.
It is an absolutely freaking fantastic printer. I have been kicking myself for days now for not buying this thing sooner.
It sucks that it's not open source, but if you want a no fuss printer that just works, the p1p is hands down the best available on the market at that price point.
739$ CAD which I would say is in the price range. I'll look up some reviews and tutorials thanks.
Yea man. You have any questions just hit me up. Like I said I've only had mine a few weeks but holy hell is it night and day between this and my last printer.