I’m looking to buy my first 3d printer, does this group have a section for complete newbies and in particular review guides?
I’m looking for a printer that can perform small to medium prototyping work and something that’s quite compact. Right now I’m zeroing in on the Monoprice Select Mini, the Wanhao i3 Duplicator V2.1 or the Creality CR-10 Mini. I don’t mind if I have to build from a kit, but like the idea of the pre-assembled unit (thus the Monoproce). I would be looking to get something with good community support as well as a fairly robust MODS path.
Does anyone have any recommendations, my budget is up to 300ukp.
I’m not sure about long term size but would expect prints to be small to medium. As far as accuracy is concern the more the better in this price range. Thanks for the reply.
Right, what is small to you? 10mmx10mmx10mm? What types of things do you want to print? Are you planning on printing in anything other than ABS and PLA?
I have a monoprice and access to multiple types of printers…
The monoprice is excellent with these caveats:
you need to take the bed apart and strain relieve the thermistor/heater wire bundle better
you cant use it to print with flexible filaments like ninjaflex
in many of the units, the microSD card needs to be reformatted with FAT16 and may need it again after a while. The claim is they go a bad batch. I dont believe them.
That said, it prints better than the makerbot, the prusa type and the mbox printers i have access to.
I highly recommend you get this to start with, and spend the extra money on Simplify3d, with that software, you get excellent control over your prints.
I have to agree with the caution about the bed size, but I have no idea what I may want to do in the future as my confidence and requirements change. It’s THE major reservation about the Monoprice. I would like to be able to print some of the readily available model prints as well as prototyping of casings for electronics project and household repair projects. What about the Wanhao i3 Duplicator V2.1 or the Creality CR-10 Mini - I am aware of the reviews for the Creality CR-10, but does anyone have the Wanhao unit?
For what i do, the monoprice does 95% of what i need directly, the final 4% can be done by splitting, printing and assembling models (which works surprisingly well). And as i said i have access to other prusa type printers for ninjaflex.
That’s a good point about splitting, thanks. With regards to ninjaflex, I think I have seen mods to allow it’s use - I think it was a nozzle replacement etc.
I don’t want to sound harsh, but if you really want out of the box experience and make some profit while you are at it, go for formlabs form2. It’s way way out of your budget, but it will reward you with some awesome experience.
@Robert_Hirsch the messy resin part is really easy once you get your work flow set up. Price is high, but parts out of it makes up every penny spend. I hardly use any FDM and I have 3 of them mostly on standby due to the Form2 doing all the heavy lifting.