- I'm limiting myself to a printer of sub £200 because (a) I may not like it (or 3DP as a hobby) and (b) a bit like my first bike, I don't know enough aboutt them to make a truly informed view as to what features I needed vs what I'll use 3DP for .
Sorry to hear about your problems. I send my best wishes for a quick and full recovery.
Listen to what this guy says. Search his channel for Elegoo, Neptune and 3D to find other relevant stuff.
With this sort of technology, it's a bit like the microcomputer boom in the'80s. The best thing you can do is get the same one as everybody else, then there will always be plenty of help when you need it. Like ebikes, if you have a niche model, you're on your own when it comes to problems, so my advice is to get the most popular printer in your price range.
I'm pretty sure that there's not too much difference in the print quality between the different printers, but there are differences in the way you get them ready to print and the time to print. Expensive ones, like mine, are fully automatic. It has self levelling and optical systems that check everything as it's going, as well as automatic parameter setting for different filaments and things like that. You have to do more things manually with the cheaper ones and check the print quality yourself as they go.
As well as the printer, there's the slicer software. Make sure that you choose a printer that works with one of the popular slicers. The slicers have settings for the common printers, which saves a lot of messing about.
I have three projects on the go at the moment. Unfortunately two of them are a bit secret. If I show you the stuff, it might give away the secrets. Fot the third project, I've made a battery enclosure, and I'm now working on the controller box/battery mount and lock mechanism. I also made a bracket to hold my TSDZ LCD to the stem cap. Another success was a tap adapter for my sister. The tap just pulls off, and underneath is a plastic grip that has internal and external splines to turn the shaft with the tap, and grip the tap to stay on. |Her's broke. She's a trainer for Blender, so she knocked up a design and sent it to me. I printed it and took it down to her. It worked perfectly.