So I’ve decided to get “back” into 3d printing. I was getting into it in 2012 and I started assembling a kit, but then life happened and I never had enough time or room to complete it.
However, now I’m in a much better place (both literally and figuratively), so I’ve decided to dive back in. However, last time around it seemed that almost everything was some variant of Prusa, and I think I want to go in a less DYI direction this time.
- Once calibrated, doesn’t need much fidgeting or maintenance.
- More or less prefabricated. Some assembly is fine, but I don’t want to sit there an dremmel a hobbled bolt again, or build a power supply.
- I prefer one of those enclosed printers, as it will be in a location with minimal climate control.
- Must not rely on any software that does not run on linux
- I’m not too worried about printing speed. Print quality matters more to me.
- Preferably one that is fixable if it breaks.
- Single filament is fine.
- Don’t need wifi
Any suggestions?
Oh, and I still have a spool of ABS around here somewhere… Is this still a reasonable material choice? Any other materials worth considering if I prefer the prints to be durable and not brittle?
This is where I could list a budget or preferred price range, but purchasing power parity and exchange rates probably complicates this, so let’s just say “reasonably priced”
UPDATE: I ordered a Prusa Core One. I went for the kit, as I will hopefully better understand how I can fix it later after assembly. I threw in a spool of PETG as well, as I’m curious about the material.
If you don’t mind the price, the Prusa Core One checks all these boxes. It is what I have and use happily, with PLA, PETG and TPU. I bought the assembly kit, and it was built within a weekend following the very good assembly manual. But you can also get it pre-assembled.
Material wise you can consider PETG, it gives me nice durable prints on my Core One.
Second this. We have a Core One at work which was upgraded from an MK4. Has almost 1 k hours print time, broke down once (mostly due to my negligence), otherwise very accurate and reliable. Not very happy with their customer support though, they diagnosed the problem incorrectly and suggested I change the wrong part. Others generally have a better opinion of their support, so maybe mine was an outlier.
My core one did fail once in the first week. I was on support chats for multiple all nighters like 12-15 breaks each. Finally someone said its probably bad parts and sent me a bunch of likely parts, I got preassembled so they guided me how to disassemble and replace the parts. Its been working ever sense, but it was killing me them going “well have you tried recalibrating?” And other basic tasks that they should have had notes on that were already done.