Printer & Filament Recommendations

[David_Steele]

What 3D printer and material do you have? Would you recommend them?
I’m wanting to buy a printer has at least 8"X8"X8" envelope. I have printed only ABS, but I wonder if I’m missing out by not considering PLA or another material. I want to do a combination of “stronger” parts that will need some strength and beautiful artistic prints (hard to tell it was 3D printed).

Budget? $500 to $1500
Am I asking for too much for this budget?

Also, I’ve heard people making their printers. Is that something to consider?

[lukeiamyourfather]

I would get a Prusa i3 MK3S. The filament from Prusa is also exceptional but I use mostly Hatchbox PLA (price and convenience) and have had zero issues. Amazon Basics PETG seems pretty decent too but I haven’t used as much of that as I have PLA.

Dallas Makerspace Show & Tell - August 2018

I assembled a Prusa i3 MK3 kit. It’s been a while since I made something just for fun so it was very refreshing to do. [IMG_20180721_222033] [IMG_20180725_002349] [IMG_20180725_012132] Random note, torque screw drivers are awesome and I had no idea they existed before this project. I was having trouble getting the frame to be perfectly square. Turns out I was over torquing the fasteners causing the frame to warp (thanks Prusa forums for the help). With a torque screw driver I was able to pre…

Dallas Makerspace Show & Tell - January 2019

I printed half of a Sierpinski octahedron with six levels. It turned out very nice! If you want to print one too the file is on Thingiverse (not my design). I made it 200mm which is bigger than the original design and I used Hilbert curve top and bottom layers. Why not go all in on fractals? It took around 152 hours to print, used around 700 grams of filament, and it took around 20 minutes to slice with a beefy computer. I was worried about printing a 297MB G-code file from an SD card but it …

I have thousands and thousands of hours on mine. It’s an exceptional machine for the money. There are better printers and there are cheaper printers but there’s not a better cheaper printer. Get the kit so you can learn how everything works. It makes it a lot easier to fix later if you know how it all works.

[lukeiamyourfather]

This is the specific product link. I should’ve included it before. Beware clones because they’re not up to the same standards of quality control and service even if they share the same design files.

Original Prusa i3 MK3 kit

[michaelb]

I’ll second that. The Prusa kit hits well above its price range.

[Kentamanos]

MK3 owner myself and currently on about night 3 of my MK3S/MMU2S upgrade. While this is a challenging upgrade, overall I love so many things about my printer and I started with the MK3 kit as well. I love their online manuals (with hints from other builders) and the way they package the kits (the bags with screws have scale images to confirm you have the correct size for instance). The gummy bears are just a nice bonus…

[David_Steele]

Thank you guys. If I wanted a larger printer, say 300mm, in one of the dimensions. Any recommendations for 300mm printer?

Or could a Pursa be modified to increase one dimension?

Would increasing the z be the easiest dimension to increase?

[jswilson64]

Prusa can be upgraded - just google for Prusa Size Upgrade.

If you enjoy the build process you might look into a RepRap printer you make yourself. There are some hassles, like sourcing all the various fastener sizes. But you can build exactly what you want. I build a Mendel90 in 300X x 200Y x 300Z (although the Z is more like 285 due to the thickness of the materials in my Y platform). The build process was fun and I learned a lot. Mendel90 has the benefit of the main frame components being made of wood/MDF so if you can make straight, square cuts on a table saw, you’re most of the way to the frame. But if you just want to get to printing, a preconfigured printer or kit is probably the way to go.

If you want to go really fancy on the homebuilt printer you can do something like a Voron, a very well documented Core XY printer - reddit.com/r/voroncorexy. The most recent revision will hit near the top of your budget for a 300 x 300 x 300 machine.