Recommend a 3D printer for c£400

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Prizen

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Hi all

looking into getting a 3D printer, but no little about them. What has brought me to this is bloody dust ports! But of course thereafter the possibilities are endless.

good news is that I already use Shapr3d so wouldn’t have a problem with designs and STL files.

have up to 400 to spend, any recommendations?
 
I bought a Creality Ender-3 V2 printer a while back. Assembly was easy - Too easy. The manual gives the impression that all you have to do is bolt it together, level the bed and all will be well. Not so, I had to spend a lot more time being meticulous with alignment of the various components after which I achieved great results. I found the bed levelling procedure a bit tedious. It took me a while to realise that I should be heating the bed to working temperature beforehand after which the levelling was more consistent. I fitted and set up a BLTouch a couple of weeks ago which makes things a lot easier.

Yes, extraction adaptors! What a nightmare eh? I'm a total novice with 3D CAD which is holding me back. I use Sketchup for woodworking design, but I decided to learn Fusion 360. It's quite a task for me to become competent with it but simple adaptors are no problem. The problem for me comes with threads and bayonet attachments but most of the time I can find someone else's work on thingiverse.

So, I can recommend the Ender-3 V2. Price is reasonable and would leave funds from your budget for a BLTouch kit and some filaments.

I bought mine, and some filaments from Technology Outlet | 3D Printer UK Retailer | Free UK Delivery rather than an import from China. No complaints.

I hope this helps a bit for you to make a decision.

Good luck.
 
I've just bought my first delta printer and it printed first time out of the box straight after assembly which took 15 minutes and was very simple.
It's a FLSUN QQ-S Pro. It has a 260mm diameter bed and a 360mm print height. It autolevels itself with the included probe and has a fibre glass print bed that provides good adhesion for the print. the bed is fixed so no bed levelling to do. Delta printers are usually quicker than the standard catesian printers such as the ender too.
£260 on ebay 3d printer Flsun QQ-S-PRO delta 255*255*365mm Auto-leveling Touch Screen CE 2021 681413412385 | eBay

Gerry
 
i bought a cheaper 3d prinder an anycubic model. It was fine when i started but i got really frustrated that 1/3 of prints had defects and i spent more time faffing with it than printing. I then spent £600 on a qidi xplus. Like night and day spent all my time printing stuff without any major problems. I think persoanlly that you have to decide do you want to play with 3d printers or printing stuff as in my experience they seem to be two seperate things. I found also an enclosed printer in my garage with the woodworking dust was a good thing. I mainly print in abs and pla though i have ventured into some exotic carbon fibre.
I have used it to sort a lot of tool storage and parts for some tools. Learnt a bit of freecad to.
In my view its worth spending some more for a. and enclsoure as it cuts noise and protects the print b. something with good technical support as if it goes wrong you can get help. Qidi were good on this, anycubic less so.
Prusa is well regarded and there are some decent units on the bay...
 
My son has both an Ender 3 (xyz type) and an Anycubic Kossel (delta type). Both have pros and cons and have been much upgraded. As others have said, don't expect them to work fine straight away and they will need a lot of fettling to get good quality prints. Dust ports is one thing but if you want to minimise ridges and strings etc chances are you'll need to spend time and money fiddling.
 
i bought a cheaper 3d prinder an anycubic model. It was fine when i started but i got really frustrated that 1/3 of prints had defects and i spent more time faffing with it than printing. I then spent £600 on a qidi xplus. Like night and day spent all my time printing stuff without any major problems. I think persoanlly that you have to decide do you want to play with 3d printers or printing stuff as in my experience they seem to be two seperate things. I found also an enclosed printer in my garage with the woodworking dust was a good thing. I mainly print in abs and pla though i have ventured into some exotic carbon fibre.
I have used it to sort a lot of tool storage and parts for some tools. Learnt a bit of freecad to.
In my view its worth spending some more for a. and enclsoure as it cuts noise and protects the print b. something with good technical support as if it goes wrong you can get help. Qidi were good on this, anycubic less so.
Prusa is well regarded and there are some decent units on the bay...
My dad also has a Qidi and it works great. I have his old Prusa clone which prints great as well but needs a bit of love and attention to keep it that way.
I would certainly recommend getting a printer with bed levelling sensor.
 
Another Creality Ender 3 user here.
Have printed quite a few dust port adapters with success as well as a few other items.
I use Tinkercad to create very simple designs and RS Designspark Mechanical for everything else. Designspark is especially helpful for dust port adapters as it will automatically fill in between two objects (like the inlet and outlet) with a smooth transition.
 
I have had an FLQSUN QQS PRO for a couple of years now. Just thought I'd pass on a tip. It is worth auto-levelling every time you change filament, but remember to clear the memory before you do it and make sure you manually adjust the printhead position relative to the bed so that a piece of normal printing paper just slides back and forth under the printhead with some friction felt. That way you tend to print successfully each time.
 
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I have had an FLQSUN QQS PRO for a couple of years now. Just thought I'd pass on a tip. It is worth auto-levelling every time you change filament, but remember to clear the memory before you do it and make sure you manually adjust the printhead position relative to the bed so that a piece of normal printing paper just slides back and forth under the printhead with some friction felt. That way you tend to print successfully each time.

Yours will proably have the older 8 bit board Jim. The newer ones ship with a 32bit controller. The only adjustments I have had to make so far is to Z height when switching from PLA to PETG but I justdo that in the slicers initial layer height.

Gerry
 
I too bought a Creality Ender-3 V2. There is lots of support but I can't help thinking that 90% of the support you get on the forums amounts to little more than the blind leading the blind. Some of it is downright wrong.
Do not think that at this level it is plug and play, far from it. A constant learning curve and most seem to spend more on upgrades than the cost of the machine.
Make sure you have the time and the will to dedicate yourself totally.
In 5 years time you will still be learning.
My printer was for my 12 year old. Despite being quite mature for his age he gave up after a few weeks. If I wasn't there to level, clean and reserach, the prints rarely worked. Some were brilliant, but it isn't easy.
You need virtualy total dedication.
Chose a machine, find a forum and follow the problems online before opening your wallet.
 
I bought an Ender 3 Pro in July and am thrilled with it. I design using an old version of Sketchup and convert the STL file to G code with Cura, all free programs. 7 years a ago I bought one for school for £1,600 with a grant from a charity and was really impressed. A couple of years later when I retired I fancied one but the cost couldn't be justified. A conversation with rwillettt , on here, tempted me to get one. I spent £164 including postage and was delighted with the quality of the print and ease of use, so I wrote a very positive review. When I clicked submit the next screen had the same machine on special offer for £144!! It seems they were going to stock a newer version. However I still think what I got for the money was amazing value. I've been able to make really accurate very small components which I couldn't by any conventional craft method. I've found the issue of "spiders web" a bit frustrating but careful adjustment of the temperatures minimises it.
My grandsons loved making their Pokemon figures on it. I hope we'll see prints in Post a Photo soon, so I can borrow some ideas.
Cheers

Martin
 
This is my first project on the printer. The design is something I first made and thought up over 50 years ago, when I was an Art student. A collapsing 12 sided cube picture frame. Which I've been able to make for the first time in plastic. 12 identical frames which pop together and 4 corner hinges. The partially assembled one is the MkIII, the hinges incorporate 1/2" panel pins as they are stronger than earlier versions, shown, which were all plastic prints, that weren't quite strong enough. (You will spot a picture of me if you look closely, no guessing who!!) The prints are so accurate that the frames, which as I said are all identical pop together without any fettling and are such good fits that they don't require any glue, though the panel pins are held in with super glue, just in case. As I said earlier I'm really thrilled with the quality and the price I paid. I'd be happy to share print files, if anyone would like them, the idea is far to old and been seen by too many to worry about copyright etc.
Martin
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I wanted something to print well with ABS/ASA, since I'm mostly interested in functional parts and things repairs. Got TierTime UP Mini 2 for 480 EUR. It has rather small print space, only 12 cm cubed. I think of it as smallest of expensive ones.

Jumped from SketchUp to Fusion 360 and already designed 10 different projects in the last 2 month, including gears and threaded parts.

For bigger things, dust ports, bins, boxes and such I also got lately Artillery Sidewinder X1, as there was a sale on Banggood. It took considerably longer to get it ready to print. And still not fully dialed in. At least, I already had some experience with UP Mini 2 and know how it should be, kind of. Still, planning on some upgrades and tuneups, project on its own now.
 

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Another Enders - looks identical to Martin's above #14 &15.

We gave my son (engineering student) an Ender for xmass he chose to get it on Bangood for £200 rather than amazon for £280. He has loved it and prints loads of things, and his uni freinds used it a loads. He has made me an insert into the coffee grinder that allows it to fit my old 1950s Italian coffee machine's basket into the filter slot. Good suggestion about dust ports, I'll get him onto that, all mine tools have odd sizes :)

The Enders uses filament plastic, he uses PLA which is quite cheap, but a bit stiff for all his work. I presume you can buy speciality nylons for tougher jobs.

He strongly recommends filament machine for a beginner over resin systems as the later need a lot of careful controlling. The resin can set or go wrong (resin systems allow for finer detail). He has friends with both and the later need careful handling, for instance sunlight will set the resin.

The Ender has quite a large bed, so can do quite large objects.

In my view, he seems to have a fair number of fails, or did at the start. Early on it took a few goes to get the designs to print properly - they can get detached mid print if too fiddly etc, so it takes a bit of practice. Not unlike most cabinet making. The programmes allow for different fill densities so there is a whole new engineering polymer field to master.

He says he prefers to manually adjust the bed alignment as he can achieve better alignment than auto-align can at that price point.
If you go down that path, he can probably answer your questions as he will at home this autumn looking for a job.....
 
I bought an Ender 3 Pro in July and am thrilled with it. I design using an old version of Sketchup and convert the STL file to G code with Cura, all free programs. 7 years a ago I bought one for school for £1,600 with a grant from a charity and was really impressed. A couple of years later when I retired I fancied one but the cost couldn't be justified. A conversation with rwillettt , on here, tempted me to get one. I spent £164 including postage and was delighted with the quality of the print and ease of use, so I wrote a very positive review. When I clicked submit the next screen had the same machine on special offer for £144!! It seems they were going to stock a newer version. However I still think what I got for the money was amazing value. I've been able to make really accurate very small components which I couldn't by any conventional craft method. I've found the issue of "spiders web" a bit frustrating but careful adjustment of the temperatures minimises it.
My grandsons loved making their Pokemon figures on it. I hope we'll see prints in Post a Photo soon, so I can borrow some ideas.
Cheers

Martin
We paid £200 on Bangood last x mas, it would have been £280 on amazon, so I guess they are ramping up production, I'll ask if he got any upgrades at that price, but I suspect its going into mass production.
 
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