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Buying Advice
(lemmy.ca)
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this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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3D Printing
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I have a handful of printers including an Ender 3v2 and a Creality CR10S4, and my experience with Creality printers is that while they are cheap & usually offer nice features they are lacking in quality control & overall quality of the parts used (though the sprite extruder is a beast). If you are willing to put the time into tinkering with them then you can still make out with a decent printer for less than most comparable manufacturers.
Based on the features you listed I think the Qidi X-Smart 3 might be down your alley. The first few months after release were a shitshow with the firmware but now it's in a really solid place & mine has been quite reliable. It has a smaller build volume than the Ender 5 S1 but can print significantly faster.
If you are willing to expand your budget a bit I've noticed that Bambu Labs has dropped the price of the P1P to $600usd/~$800cad. I don't have any personal experience with Bambu Labs printers & honestly dislike some of the companies practices, but everything I've heard about the P1P & X1C has been fantastic.
As a new owner of a p1p. It's the single best decision I've made as far as the 3d printing hobby goes. I cannot tell you how much time and money I sunk into my old bed slinger printer and the results never even got close to this thing out of the box.
The only downside? You're gonna absolutely tear through filament because of how well and fast it prints.
Truth is I am not able to tinker as much as I would like, 2 kids and a busy job gets in the way. I'd rather tinker with software and design than hardware these days. I am willing to expand the budget a bit to ensure.that experience. This is twice now the P1P has come up. I'll check that and the X-smart out.