Several years ago I leapt enthusiastically into the realm of 3D printing by buying a massive, expensive delta-type printer. I had to put it together myself, which was fun, but after that I struggled to get it to print well. Even simply trying to get the prints to stick to the bed were difficult, leading me to add huge brims to all my parts which were a pain to cut off afterward. Eventually I gave up fiddling with it and it’s been gathering dust ever since.

I know that a lot of you treat the hobby as an opportunity for endless tinkering and optimization, which is great, but I think I’ve realized that what I’d prefer is something that just works out of the box with a minimum of adjustment.

  • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    23 hours ago

    Qidi X-Plus 3. If it’s anything like my Max 3, which is the bigger version, it ought to be plug in and use (after running the included calibration). It’s on “sale” right now for $500, but it’s always on sale. It’s also not made by Bambu, and if I were you or anyone else I would not give one rusty penny to Bambu for anything.

    The draw with this thing is it comes with a fully enclosed chamber with a heater and PID to control it, and it’s the easiest time I’ve ever had printing ABS and PETG if that’s what you want to do. You can slap a 0.2mm nozzle on it easily enough if you want to print tiny stuff.

    If you don’t care about high temperature materials you can get the X-Smart 3 which is based on the same system but is smaller and minus the heater, and is even cheaper.

    • UsefulInfoPlz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 hours ago

      Second the qidi. Of all my printers it does the best job. My trodon 2 does a great job but isn’t worth the price difference.

      • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
        42·
        22 hours ago

        They’re slimy. Their machines use proprietary software and parts, and their software has a highly questionable always-online requirement that phones home back to their servers, which is something that really ought not to be happening with anything that may be able to identify what objects people are 3D printing. Even if they’ve walked back the always-online thing and allowed local only operation on some of their printers, that still demonstrates that they are not to be trusted. There’s nothing to say that they can’t prevent your slicer from slicing some object the CCP has deemed should not be printed, or remotely brick your printer, or just simply refuse to allow their slicer software to connect to it anymore.

        Their company was founded by former DJI employees. That should really say it all.