I’m planning on purchasing a 3D printer to work with Blender, does anyone who has experience with them have any suggestions for 3D printers, and is it worth it to get one? And is a resin printer or a filament printer better? Thanks!
I think all of your questions depend on what you want to do. I wanted to try out 3D Printing, wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to make, so cost/ease of use was the main deciding factor. I ended up with a Qidi X-Maker PLA printer. It’s easy to use, PLA is pretty cheap and easy to work with.
It’s not super fast, but for the price I am quite happy with it.
There’s a thread here that shows the Nautilus I modeled/printed with it.
As for filament/resin better - it’s a trade off. Filament is easier and cheaper, but (as I understand) you get less detail in the final prints - which means less work to clean up the model. I believe resin printers are faster as well… but I haven’t tried one.
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There is no such thing as a fast 3D printer. Relatively speaking, they all take an inordinate amount of time to print. And if you want high quality, you will wait a bit.
Your budget and needs are the deciding factor, budget being the most important.
Resin printers are awesome. They can smell up your space as they print. The earlier resins were/are brittle. Not good for a part, just prototyping. Nowadays, there are more durable materials available.
FDM (Fuse deposition method) printers are the most ubiquitous becasue of their ease of use and cheapness of materials. The filament makers have give us a very robust palette to choose from while the makers of 3d priinters have given us cheap kits, at first, to very robust, easy to assemble machines like the creality ender 5 plus. I really like this machine. The only thing I don’t like about it is that it doesn’t do rubber filaments well. My older iprusa does a great job with flexible filaments.
Make sure if is an fdm printer that you get an autoleveler with it. Those things are a godsend to keeping your sanity and not wasting material.
Robert
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Oh, for crying out loud. Get a Creality Ender 3 as your first. Get a Raspberry PI and connect them. Install Octoprint to the Pi, and install either Cura or Prusa as a slicer. Once done (less than £250) you have a capable starter 3D printer.
You can go a step further when you are comfortable by building new firmware, which will unlock things that can make a huge difference to quality, but not necessary to get started.
Once you decide that you want to continue with 3D printing, and you know both how to build your models and get used to slicing, you can decide if you want to go up the food chain to higher end hardware.
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Agreed. I own an Ender 3 PRO (no raspberry PI, just printing directly from Cura/USB), and it’s great for simple experiments and for learning about how 3D printers work. It’s a great and affordable machine.
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@Bart - You should really invest the extra $30 or so for a Pi. Dead easy to add to the Creality, and with WiFi, removes the need for the SD Card or separate connection, and Cura can send the print directly to Octoprint. Plug a webcam in and you also have remote monitoring. If it all goes pear shaped, you have the ability to abort a print, even if you are down at the pub. It’s without a doubt, the best addition I made to mine.
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It’s on our wishlist, but for the current projects we don’t really need it 
And edit: we print from CF, not USB.
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And edit: we print from CF, not USB.
Yeah, I figured 
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if you enjoy spending more time with your printer than with printing get a cheap prusa clone. otherwise get an original prusa. (for fdm. i don’t have much experience with resin printers as i find them too messy. if i need something i can’t do with fdm i use shapeways…)
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I have a Creality Ender 3 V2 I’m very happy with. I use it to print prototypes, so use OpenSCAD as it produces great manifold prints, is super accurate and if you write your code carefully, super quick to tweak.
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Well, I used a second hand ultimaker 2+ extended that i bought from local distributor for 4 years, then sold it last year for pricier than i bought. I upgraded to Prusa i3 mk3s kit for a cheaper price. Nowadays, prices and options are varied, so as for any electronic household items you want to buy, my suggestion is you should make a list for what do you want from a 3d printer. For my part, i chose UM2 for the brand, support and easiness and price at that time. Because i did not have any experience with 3D printers. Once i used for a long while, my priorities changed like this:
Must be fast(er)
Auto calibration for print bed is a must
Must be (more) silent
Must be cartesian (not delta) but not with an upward bed motion from one shaft
Better brand support, customer feedbacks, comunity, reviews.
Print bed other than glass, flexible and removable is a plus
(a full ready kit for me to build)
You may consider to buy a second hand, older models, or cheaper one for learning if you are low on budget.
I am really happy with my Prusa btw.
Sorry for my eng i wrote comment fast.
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Thank you everyone for the suggestions! I ordered a Creality Ender 3 V2 that should arrive soon.
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Great choice! This is a good time to start watching some videos on assembly and bed leveling
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Thank you! I’ve started assembly of the printer, and I’m planning to get an autoleveler for it.
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Would be interesting to know how you will do with auto-leveling. I am a bit scared to get bl-touch for my Ender 3. I dont have any experience about the steps to configure the correct firmware, and I am afraid it might be possible to brick the machine.
I didn’t bother, I replaced the supplied springs with something a little stiffer, the kits are cheap and I bought one with a Capricorn Bouden tube and all metal filament feeder included, for cheap. I now only level the bed manually when I do maintenance/cleaning and print a few bed levelling calibration prints to fine tune. The supplied glass printing platen is pretty good, I just wipe it with isopropyl after each print and give it a thorough wash with warm water, dish soap and a stiff brush after acetone if there is plastic buildup and the prints stick and pop off after cooling without additional glue stick or hair spray, and properly flat so the BLTouch is not really needed. With experience, this process becomes second nature. I also didn’t bother with Octoprint, as printing from SD card is faster and since I don’t bother switching on and off, the SD card is quick to swap, I use a USB adaptor to copy g-code from Cura, and I am still using the one supplied with the printer without problems.
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Lets bump this a bit
I’ve been using a Prusa i3 mk3 at this maker space that I hang out in, but I’m thinking about getting a Creality Ender 3 myself but I’m curious on what I can expect compared to the Prusa? And I also wonder what the difference between the V1 and V2 of the Ender?
V2 - new board, silent(ish) steppers, upgrade firmware from SD Card (I use Jyers), glass bed, belt tensioners, a tool tray, larger display. Ender 3 S1 - direct drive, dual z-axis, flexible magnetic build plate, slightly taller build height, CR Touch auto bed level. V1 - cheaper. Quality of Prusa usually a bit better, as build quality of Creality products can be a bit hit and miss. I was lucky I guess. It’s nice to have your own printer but I do not have access to a maker space. With the low volume of prototypes I produce, I would probably stick with the maker space machine and be a little less concerned with tolerances…
I just installed the CR Touch, flashed JyersUI, although it is easy to flash firmware as I have a V2. I discovered that my bed is pretty flat and didn’t really need ABL. That said, my PETG prints are dialled in now without excessive stringing on the first layer, but tweaking Cura settings probably made more of a difference than the ABL did. Who knows?