3DPrinting
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
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No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
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Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
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No porn (NSFW prints are acceptable but must be marked NSFW)
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No Ads / Spamming / Guerrilla Marketing
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Do not create links to reddit
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If you see an issue please flag it
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No guns
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No injury gore posts
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 
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The price of a capable printer has come down quite a bit over the last few years. I haven't got any experience with Elegoo printers myself, but I'd expect it to at least work well enough at first. Longevity could be questionable though.
Bamboo printers have proven to be very capable, easy to use, and reliable, but they are locked down quite a bit. If you want a printer you can tinker with, Bamboo is not the way to go.
Depending on your budget, a Prusa would be the best of both worlds, excellent print quality, reliability, and they're about as open as modern consumer printer get. If you go this route, I would recommend against the Prusa Mini. I'm sure it's a good printer, but it's quite outdated now. If you can afford it, I've heard the Core One is a great printer, plus you'll be able to add a Bondtech INDX system later for multimaterial.
The most open option (though the one with the most commitment) would be to build a kit printer like a Voron or a RatRig (Prusa also offers their printers as kits, which I would recommend if you go that route). Building a printer allows you to truly understand the machine, plus, I find it to be a lot of fun.
Prusa kits will come with everything you need to build a printer (except for some tools, I would assume).
Voron kits are all unofficial, but most who build Vorons use a kit. The LDO kits are the best, but I've also built from a Formbot kit and it was fine. Voron kits typically won't come with the printed parts, though some do. The parts need to be printed with either ABS or ASA, so not all printer will work.
I haven't got any experience with RatRig printers, but I think the kits are official, so I would expect them to be good quality. Not sure if they come with printed parts or not.
Sorry for the wall of text TLDR: Elegoo: Cheap, open-ish, questionable reliability BAMBOO: Affordable, very closed, reliable Prusa: Expensive, open, reliable Voron: Expensive, very open, large commitment RatRig: same as Voron, with a little less commitment