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.
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. But if $1200 CAD is the minimum entry for reliable printing I might go back to saving for a spell.
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.
I have Prusa MK3S+ printers in my makerspace. They’re great. Very few issues. That said, I’m looking at a Sovol SV06 or maybe the plus for personal use just for the price difference. It was recommended to me by a guy with 15+ machines at a maker fair who prints as a business.
That’s a tough endorsement to beat .
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.