I've been wanting to get into 3D printing for years and I finally have the money set aside to buy one. Now I just have to decide which to buy. I was planning on buying the Prusa i3 MK2s or MK3, but I saw that Snapmaker has improved models coming out with larger printing surfaces. I would love the laser engraver and CNC on the Snapmaker, but I'm not sure I like the design as much. Snapmaker looks a little Apple-y in the sense that you're only going to be able to use official parts to upgrade it, whereas the Prusa is a lot more open source.
I did a bit more research into the Snapmaker and I think I'm going to go with the Prusa MK3 instead. I do love the idea of the laser engraver and the CNC machine in the Snapmaker and a lot of the reviews I read were great, but some of the actual user comments and reviews were a bit worrisome. A lot of parts breaking quickly, poor turnaround on customer service issues, waiting forever for things to ship, etc. I was already a little weary of backing a major crowdfunding project.
So yeah, going to go with the slightly more available option (I'm pretty sure there's still a wait list for the Prusa, but whatever). Then maybe I'll get a standalone laser engraver or CNC sometime in the future
so far i have only used them to make jigs/tools/dumb tests so this is not much of a review. i will post some pics. teh machines are sub 200 dollars some places.
the printers
some piece of a camera holder we printed
camera holder in use/for computer vision applications on a cnc.
I was considering the Creality as well. They look pretty great for the price, but I read they need a lot of upgrading. Which isn't really a bad thing considering you can do most of the upgrades yourself by printing the parts you need.
ya i dunno, unfortunately it is the only printer i have owned so I don't have anything to compare it to. I did not change anything on it though and it works just fine so far. it would be cool to have a few of the cheap models of 3d printer though to sort of really see what is relatively good/bad between them.
Don't know when I had money set aside for a 3D printer, or what I did with said money, but I never bought a 3D printer.
That being said, does someone with a 3D printer want to print me a couple 16N faderbank panels? I regret buying wood veneers for mine and just want simple black panels.
maybe just get a black pcb made? it looks like that is what the og is maybe?
also probably easier to just lasercut a piece of material if you are trying to make a panel, 3d printed one might look a bit... rasterized for lack of better description. you can really see "how it was made" with 3d printer.
Did you end up getting the Prusa Mini? I've been saying I'd get a 3D printer for years, but I'm actually pretty sure I might finally pull the trigger on a Mini+
