Choosing Your First 3D Printer

About once a month, a friend requests my expertise in helping them select a 3d printer. First question is usually; "How much does a good one cost?"

So what is a good 3d printer? One that spits out a molten line of plastic while the stepper motors move the plate and extruder to create some shape that resembles your .STL file to the most accurate resolution without defects, in a timely manner. Wait, what?

The first thing you need to ask yourself is; "How much patience do I have and how much time do I want to spend failing learning?"

The real question you need to ask yourself is; "How much am I willing to spend on something that realistically will print one or two useful things but will mostly be used to print Yoda heads, baby Groot and fidget spinners."

If you have a few thousand dollars to spend and want minimal frustration, stop reading this article right now and buy yourself an Ultimaker 3. This printer is sleek and ready to go out of the box with a learning curve that will have you printing high quality parts within hours of plugging it in.

Let's say maybe you don't have $3,500 to spend, and you have more like $700 or even $300. Where do you begin?

For $300 you can buy a Prusa i3 clone or take a chance on a kickstarter campaign. The quality of the i3 clone will be proportionate to your levels of frustration  patience required. I have tried the following clone: Wanhao Duplicator i3 V2, Monoprice MK2, Anet A6. The Anet was a piece of crap. Don't get it. The Monoprice was much better, but the Wanhao Di3 takes the cheese for best cheap printer.

So there you go for cheap. I recommend packaging one of those printers with either yoga classes, anger management classes or a book on patience. It is a great printer and you will learn how to search the internet to find out why your prints aren't working. Then you will learn how to make awesome prints after nearly burning the house down and wasting half a roll or filament.

So let's move on to a higher price bracket, mid range but still cheap 3d printers. The Prusa i3 is the industry standard, and is so popular that it is back ordered for months. Most people would still recommend the Prusa i3 original on this one, but I'm looking at a high quality Made-In-USA clone. The Pulse is instead of stripped down like most clones, stripped up. I was given a demonstration at Matter Hackers in Orange County, CA. The printer is silent compared to the racket Wanhao that kept my roommates up at night. It has auto bed leveling and comes out of the box already calibrated and ready to print. The printer starts at $599 and can be customized with upgrades if needed. If you just want to print with PLA and call it a day, stick with stock and maybe just the LCD screen/ SD card slot. If you want to print with more advanced materials, go ahead and get the heat bed as well as E3D hotend upgrade.

 

So let's say you are buying a 3d printer for your business or you just happen to have extra money to spend on 3d printers, what would a good 3d printer be? Stay tuned for my next blog about industrial 3d printing.