So I’ve been exploring the fabulous word of additive manufacturing for a few months now with my company’s 3D printer - a Prusa Mk4 - that we employees are welcome to use for our own personal use when it’s not busy printing tooling for work of course.
I’ve gotten really good at squeezing the most performance out of that thing: some of the functional parts I made with it at scales that are pushing the boundaries of what regular PLA out of a 0.4-mm nozzle can be coaxed into becoming, I’m properly proud of.
And I’m having a lot of fun finding ways to overcome the limitations of FDM. I don’t really want a more precise printer: half the fun is witnessing a part that shouldn’t exist come out of a printer that doesn’t really have any right to be this good. Pushing the envelope… It’s the spirit of hacking in the world of 3D printing and I love it!
But now I’m wanting a printer of my own. The company’s printer is fine and all but when it’s doing work-related things, I can’t use it. And I have to wait to go back to work the next day to print something I modeled the evening before.
So I’m on the market for a good fast FDM printer that can print prints with different filaments at the same time, because I’d like to experiment with stretchy materials but keep using rigid and cheap materials for the supports, and also to play with colors. And I think I want a core XY printer because I’ve run into problems with big heavy prints with the company’s bed slinger.
And finally, something that’s really important for me: I want something as open source as possible that doesn’t phone home, and ideally not made in China.
Money is not tight. The kids are out of the house and I have a well-paid job. I set my budget to 5k - dollars or euros.
So with those requirements in mind, from what I read, the best option for me is to stick with Prusa: it’s more expensive for what it does but it’s not sketchy Chinese spyware. Also, I know the brand already and I’ve been nothing but happy with it so far.
And in the Prusa line, I’m tempted by the XL with an the bells and whistles - namely 5 heads and an enclosure.
But here’s the thing: I hear this machine has problems. Is it true? Would you have a better suggestion? Possibly another brand that I should consider?
Jumping in here, a lot of what you said checks Voron boxes. Fast, CoreXY, can print a range of material, completely open source. I really like my 2.4. You can self source the whole BOM from wherever you want. There are a few BOM in a box options, including some put together by US companies (West 3D) but with whatever you buy a decent quantity of the BOM is going to originate overseas.
There’s a very large community around the printer, along with tons of mods. The only thing it doesn’t do out of the box is multi-material, but there are mods for that.
I didn’t know about the Voron, but it looks great! But it also looks like it’s quite a project and not something I could get going quick.
But I wonder if perhaps it would be a good idea to buy a cheap second-hand Prusa and build a Voron with it. Then I’d have a printer to print stuff at least as good as the one at work, and also work slowly towards building me a better one.
I agree that building a Voron is a project. I had a Pursa I3 clone (knockoff) that I used to print most of my parts on. If you don’t already have a 3D printer you can use the Print it Forward program to get printed parts shipped to you. Parts aside, your first build will take an easy 20-40 hours. This isn’t because the build is hard, it’s just that the build is long - especially if you want to have your wiring just-so. On the upside, you’ll have a very good knowledge of how your printer operates at a physical and firmware+Klipper config level once your done.
Be wary of better. From a quality of life perspective I would absolutely put my 2.4 ahead of a Prusa. For example, I can mechanically level my bed via automation. That said, expectations often outstrip reality. Beware of what you’re getting into.
I think you got a lot of good replies, but at a glance no one said “Prusa good!” so here’s that reply. Prusa printers are workhorses. They run their own machines in a print farm printing parts for the printers they sell and iterate/bring tweaks into production.
If you look at posts from a year or more ago they’ll frequently appear as trustworthy/hassle free options. They’ve somewhat fallen out of favor from a price to performance ratio, but if you want a hassle free printer so you can just worry about printing they’re still a good option.