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Back in 2018 I bought an Ender 3 and over the years after a lot of tinkering and upgrading I got really sick of having to work on it, so I shelved it permanently a few years ago. I didn't have very much I wanted to print by then anyway, and another print failure that resulted in a giant ball of plastic covering the hotend for the umpteenth time tipped me over the edge. I could only disassemble it for service so many times before I started wanting to give it the Office Space treatment.

But now I would like to start printing again, only this time I want to actually just print things and not feel like an unpaid 3D printer mechanic. I don't need anything fancy, I'm still only going to print ~95% PLA with the occasional PETG or ASA maybe. Really all I want is the equivalent of an Ender 3 only reliable, quiet, and with auto bed levelling (also having an actually flat bed to start with would be nice). Any kind of mandatory (or pseudo-mandatory via arbitrary feature-lock) cloud connectivity is a hard no from me. I will use Octoprint to manage it.

Are there any cheap printers that fill that role these days? I'm well and truly OOTL

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[-] synapse1278@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

Are you open to buying second hand ? Maybe try to find a Prusa i3 MK3 in good conditions on the market. Mine has been super reliable for many years (excluding the MMU 💩). Not the fastest nor most feature rich printer by today's standards, but a damn reliable one.

MK3S is noticeably better, I’d say.

Buying second hand usually means more tinkering and repairs, which can be a hassle.

Other than that Prusa makes good stuff.

this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2026
46 points (97.9% liked)

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