I am looking to get a new 3d printer. I’ve had an ender 3 V2 for a few years. While I’ve been able to get many excellent prints out of it, I’m looking for a printer for my new apartment that will require a little less tinkering and troubleshooting. I’m pretty experienced with the nuances of 3d printing, and don’t mind taking things apart and fixing things(but not every time I wanna use the thing). Realistically I’ll be printing mostly PLA and PETG, but it would be nice to have the option of trying out other higher strength filaments, and I’d like to have an enclosure to play with ABS eventually.

I prefer to spend around $500. I’ve been eying up the Bambu P1S with the AMS but I really don’t think I can afford almost $1000 right now. If it’s really worth it, I can pull it off. The Bambu a1 is also interesting, but id prefer to have a core-xy with an enclosure.

I’ve been looking at the flashforge 5m or 5m pro, as well as creality k1c. Those prices are way more attractive. Or perhaps qidi?

All the choices and different technologies on the market now are a little bit overwhelming, and I don’t want to be disappointed in my purchase. I’ll mostly be using it to print random things for around the house and for electronics projects.

Any thoughts or recommendations are welcome, thank you!

  • papalonian@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    3 months ago

    That said, just wait until you enclose your printer. The frame will grow in z fairly significantly as it heats up. I’ve not let my printer heat soak, printed a number of sequential parts in one print, and watched the first layer squish getting worse and worse with each sequential part. Eventually filament won’t even stick to the build plate, so you need to tweak z-offset.

    Jesus, is that what’s going on… I enclosed my Franken-printer (well it was already enclosed but now it’s less shitty) and my first layer kept growing, I figured it was an inconsistent BLTouch…

    • IMALlama@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      Aluminum’s expansion coefficient is 0.000023m/C. Using my Voron, let’s say the z extrusions are 530mm long and my extrusions go from 22 °C to 55 °C. This means they grow 0.35mm. That’s in total, so the effect at the print head isn’t 0.35mm, but let’s say my gantry rides 25% of the way up. That’s 0.0875mm, which is roughly 3x the z-offset of my last print.