tl;dr: What is the best quality consumer 3D printer available (NOT bambu labs)?
Hello,
I’m relatively new to 3D printing (<6 months exp) and am in need of advice.
Background: I purchased a used Prusa MK3S+ as my first printer (got a good deal from a neighbor, not a print farm). I had great experiences with it for a few months. However, recently several components keep breaking one after another. I’ve spent ~$100 over the last month replacing parts, and now it seems the power supply and/or mainboard needs replacing. (I promise I’ve followed every guide and been very careful. I think I’m just unlucky.) I’m sick of fixing my printer. I just want a printer that works. I’ve decided it’s time for me to just upgrade.
- What is currently the best consumer level printer available? I do NOT want a Bambu Labs printer. Otherwise, I would just get the X1C. Here are some things that are important to me:
- Open source software available (even if rooting is necessary)
- Very high quality prints
- Enclosure would be nice
- The bigger the better
- Reliable
- Ideally can be made quiet for overnight prints, even if I need to turn down the speed.
Currently I’m looking at the Qidi X-Max 3 and the Creality K1C. I’m hesitant though because both are new and both brands have had QA issues on other products. I’m also looking at the Rat Rig V-Core 3.1, but I’m scared it’ll be a mess of tinkering like my Prusa was.
Any input or recommendations from more experienced people would be greatly appreciated.
- What should I do with my Prusa MK3S+? I don’t want to throw it out, but I’m not sure its worth anybody’s time or money if the mainboard and power supply are dead. I definitely don’t wanna put any more time or money into fixing it myself.
Sorry for the long post, but I felt adding context would help specify what I’m looking for.
Thanks in advances for any replies!
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I’ll give you some thoughts for question 2 based on my experience with it.
Klippering your mk3s is an option. I dropped a skr mini in mine after the Einsy board (temporarily, somehow resurrected it with the Arduino IDE and reflashing it) died, it’s substantially quieter with the drivers on the mini and it’s been able to print faster than I comfortably would have before. It opens up a lot of options, have pins on the board to do things with. You could put together a lack enclosure for it as well. I’m personally thinking about maybe bear modding it next, but one thing at a time.
You could also use the mk3s as a base for a switchwire
All in, the mk3s is a really solid base printer, restoring it to stock would definitely be worth it, I put thousands of hours on mine in the last year with at most a bit of 3-in-1 on the rods as maintenance. The only real failure I had that wasn’t self inflicted was the original petg parts failing after printing most of the parts for my v2.4 in the summer heat with an enclosure, which was totally expected and I had already printed abs/ASA parts to use. Even heavily modded it’s super simple to tear down and rebuild when compared to my voron.
Edit for question 1, why not look at a prusa xl? Prusa support is top notch, it’s core xy and supports multiple print heads and had a large print area. It comes with a premium price though, think it’s over $2k. The mk4 is an option, but you’re getting the same print area as the mk3s, but its cheaper, pre assembled with an enclosure bundled is like 1.4k, less if you go for the kit.
I’ll definitely look into your modding ideas for my mk3s+ once I get a new printer. It’s good to know there are some good options to keep it out of the trash.
I kinda forgot to look at the new Prusas because of the bad experience I had, but I definitely should look into it.
Thanks for the ideas!
I dont own prusa, but know some people that do. Dont know how many hours your machine did, but Prusa is a freaking workhorse! Feels like you are talking about unlimited issues I had with my first printer (bad designed prusa i3 knockoff). I replaced it with Ultimaker 2+ and that thing is still printing and looking like new. Sadly ultimaker is not in the open source mood anymore lol, and they are super expensive
If your motherboard died you are deffo unlucky, same goes with PSU. I would probably replace what needs to be replaced and continue the jurney. If I was buying a new machine I would probably buy Bambu P1S or build a voron. I know you said you dont want bambu, I prefer open source as well, but bambu just look like great value for the $ and awesome community feedback (told that to a friend recently and he received broken bambu p1s hehe). Creality is not new, but if you want reliable machine and quality parts I would stay away from it.
I know I didnt provide answer to your questions, just throwing my thoughts
Thanks for the advice.
As you said, a Bambu is tempting, but there’s enough sketchiness to make me settle for something else.
Building a Voron seems intimidating, but I’ll look more into it.
And good to know about Creality.
I own a Qidi X-Max 3. It’s been bomber so far. I run the thing pretty much nonstop.
I only had one part failure, and it wasn’t really a failure as such. One of the fans in one of the two power supplies got noisy after a while. I can’t really fault Qidi for that – they didn’t make the fan, it’s just a random OEM component. Qidi sent me a whole new power supply, but while I waited for that to show up I just replaced the noisy fan with a regular 80mm computer fan. I still have the replacement power supply sitting on my printer parts shelf… just in case.
I did some more rambling about it here.
Qidi also sent me, without prompting, a replacement hotend housing with fans that I have likewise not yet bothered to install. Once I have some downtime, or if I switch to a high temp material, I guess I will. Their support has been very responsive with the only minor inconvenience being nagging me incessantly to write them 5 star reviews everywhere.
Thanks for the reply! That kind if customer service is a big deal. Definitely leaning towards the Qidi at this point.
Voron! They’re 100% open source, to the point that there is no “official” printer (or kit) you can buy. There are a bunch of companies that will sell you a BOM in a box, there are a few companies that offer a comfortable BOM, and you can always self source all the components (or some of the components and buy things like the hardware as a kit). Dig through my post history for some actual prints. There are multiple designs in multiple footprints, up to 350mm^3. You can push Z higher fairly easy, but that’s the max for x/y. They’re designed to be enclosed (but it’s easy to have magnetic panels so you can pop them off as needed), the components are as high quality as you want, there are tons of user mods available, etc.
If you want bigger, Rat Rig will get you to 500mm^3. Can’t vouch for or against their printers.
Vorons are really cool! While the build process is intimidating, I’m willing to do it if the end product is worth it. Maybe you can address my concerns though.
As I said in my post, I’m sick of continually replacing parts in my Prusa. The nice thing about a high-end prebuilt is that it should mostly just work. I’m worried that even after assembly, I’m gonna be dealing with constantly tinkering, adjusting, and fixing things. Am I mistaken?
I would say the end product is worth it, but I also haven’t personally experienced anything else high end first hand. Print quality is solid, even with the fairly minimal tuning I’ve done. I’ve done the easy basics like e-steps, a temperature tower, and pressure advance - all of which are pretty set it and forget it if you don’t change the type of filament you print much. I have not have not tuned the input shaper or agonized over fine tuning things like retraction, the finding perfect temperature (5 degree increments are fine to me), the perfect speed/acceleration/whatever.
Most of my misadventures with my build are on lemmy if you dig through my post history, along with some a/b comparisons to my old Wanhao i3 Plus. I’m currently at 653 hours of total print time, with a number of > 12 hour prints, and 3,687.4 m of filament used (about 9 kg). In that time, I’ve tightened my a/b belts once, changed the carbon in my filter once, and fixed two wire breaks. The first wire break was a fluke that was probably caused by a wire getting pinched in the cable chain. The second was from me using the ABS insulated harness that came with my extruder stepper motor instead of buying or making a PTFE insulated one. In other words, my second wire break was avoidable. If you want to avoid cable breaks, you could go straight to a CAN bus toolhead and an umbilical. Or just use PTFE coated wires and double check that you haven’t pinched any wires inadvertently (the wires should move freely inside the chains).
I’ve spent some time tinkering with printer mods (magnetic panel holders, 270 degree door hinges, and the filter for example), but none of this was really needed. I also reprinted my stealth burner because my i3 clone printed parts were a bit poor fitting. Print quality improved a little as a result, but I’ve found my first layer squish to be a lot more consistent between prints.
It’s also worth saying that many photos and videos of 3D prints on the interwebs set up unrealistic expectations. That’s not to say that you can’t achieve near perfect prints in the real world, it’s just going to take a lot of effort.
You’re also going to inevitably need to tinker with print settings some as you change material types and fight against hart to manage part geometries. This is true for any printer.
I’ve assembled my mk4 last week and so far this machine is AMAZING.
I don’t have a lot if experience with other printers to compare but so far, since the moment I finished the assembly it’s been printing flawlessly around 16h per day. I just start the print, leave and come back few hours later to collect my print and start a new one.
I recently bought a Kingroon KLP1. It had some issues out of the box, but with a bit of tinkering it’s running really nicely. I haven’t had to put any money into fixing it, just make some adjustments. The discord community is active and helpful.
But, if you want something that works nicely out of the box you might consider the Sovol SV06+.
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