46
What's a good entry level printer these days? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 2 weeks ago by punkfungus@sh.itjust.works to c/3dprinting@lemmy.world
26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] ikidd@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

It's wild to me after building my own printers for 15+ years that people complain about Enders. Compared to my DIY printers, getting an Ender was like taking a holiday.

[-] punkfungus@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 weeks ago

The Ender was good when it worked, which it did really well for a year or two after I spent a lot of time and energy getting it sorted. But then things started to go downhill. In the hot end I had the heater cartridge, thermistor and cooling fan all fail separately but fairly close together. I had Z screw runout issues and had to replace the brass nut. The extruder housing cracked and had to be replaced with an aluminum one. Limit switches failed. V rollers failed. It suddenly developed adhesion issues with the glass bed and glue stick I'd been doing for years. Scuffing up the bed didn't work, replacing it with a new glass bed didn't work, scuffing the new glass bed didn't work. I switched to a magnetic PEI bed, that worked but it conforms to the horrific banana shape of the Ender's factory bed and I can only print on a single quadrant of it at a time because of the massive dips in between the screws.

This is just the stuff I remember from years ago. I enjoyed tinkering and upgrading the Ender in the early days but I'm older now and have other stresses on my time. I just want something that works.

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

3DPrinting

21446 readers
37 users here now

3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.

The r/functionalprint community is now located at: or !functionalprint@fedia.io

There are CAD communities available at: !cad@lemmy.world or !freecad@lemmy.ml

Rules

If you need an easy way to host pictures, https://catbox.moe/ may be an option. Be ethical about what you post and donate if you are able or use this a lot. It is just an individual hosting content, not a company. The image embedding syntax for Lemmy is ![]()

Moderation policy: Light, mostly invisible

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
andypiper@lemmy.world
j4k3@lemmy.world
GrayBackgroundMusic@lemmy.zip