3DPrinting

I got into 3D printing purely because I anticipate it being locked down or outlawed so I went into this with minimal research and no use cases.

Someone on here recommended the U1 based on being open source and some other things I didn’t understand at the time like being a tool changer. I wish I could remember who gave me that recommendation because I owe them a great debt of gratitude.

I’m quickly becoming obsessed with 3D Printing and I attribute a lot of that to how easy and capable the U1 is.

I have the opposite of buyer’s remorse with the U1.

I've been eyeing the ratrig kits for the open-sourceness, but they might be out of your target price range.

Check out Qidi Ticks a few of the boxes and cheaper than Bambu

The only prebuilts or kits I recommend currently are from Prusa. Fairly open and they have a strong track record for reliability.

If you're willing to build, you might take a look at the Voron project. I hear good things about them, though reliability is largely up to your mechanical and electronics skills. I believe one or two of their builds are roughly in your price range.

That said, my wife recently surprised me by preordering the Flashforge Creator 5 Pro (Not really in your price range) as a gift. They seem to have a fairly solid track record for reliability, though they are not much better than Bamboo in terms of openness. They have other printers and I've heard mostly good things about their AD5X and Adventure 5M Pro which are more in line with your budget.

None of the manufacturers have been great with open source, other than Prusa, to my knowledge.

You can get a heck of a lot more capable printer than an ender3 at that price point, even with multi material. If you want to keep waste down though you would need at least a dual head machine, or a toolhead switching machine which I think goes above your price range.

If you don’t need a big printer, and can pass on multilateral (unless you want to get a small INDX system for it later.. for a bunch more money), at that price I’d spring for a Voron v0. Doesn’t get more open source than that.

Had the prusa mini from when it came out and made the jump to the Core One when the reviews came out. Absolutely love it, fast and reliable. But the main reason is that it's quieter than other similar options, it lives at the edge of a living space, and that's a big factor for me. It's only gotten quieter with firmware improvements.

Snapmaker U1 is amazing, Elgoo Centuri is a great option as well

https://us.snapmaker.com/products/snapmaker-u1-3d-printer

https://us.elegoo.com/products/centauri-carbon-2-combo?variant=gid%3A%2F%2Fshopify%2FProductVariant%2F51993713901749

Loving my prusa core. The indx system was just released for it, so I suggest you wait until the reviews are in, and if they are as good as I hope, then that'll take care of your multi-filament needs.

Honestly what isnt a bad approach, buying one used from a hobbyist. You get the full run down of the machine, rarely with a sales pitch and they arent afraid to tell you what theyre selling is NOT what you should be looking for. You also arent, normally, going to be buying a machine with tons and tons of miles on them. Most find craigslist because the machine's owner upgraded or realized how long its been on a shelf for. Never bought 3d printer but have bought tons of tools like my cnc router, 2 desktop lathes, laser cutter and press brake, all small models I found not really needing them but always looking out for them.. I learn more just going to look at them than i do running them loljkjk. Ive ran into this buying used cars too. There is a weird niche of things that cost so much new that most buying them are die hard hobbyists or trying to start a job shop. Either way they know so much about the machine youre buying amd love telling you everything they did with it.

I've only owned one 3D printer, a prusa mk3s which has done everything I've needed for at least 5 years. Assembled the printer from a kit and built my own enclosure to save some money. The mk4s kit is around $710 right now, so that's the one I'd be researching first if I had to buy a new printer right now. Just my 2¢, good luck

I like many here can recommend Prusa but honestly if you wanted to shop around this is the specs you are looking for:

Core XY is the new hotness thanks to Bamboo. But unless you want to print fast and loud a bed slinger still works.

What makes the biggest difference is the horned style and a direct drive printer is a game changer to print consistency. MK4s planetary gear is scary how much torque is in it but if you find any printer with a motor in its print head it’ll be worth it.

The other major improvement is auto bed levelling. Again Prusa’s nozzle solution is amazing, while magnets sensors are outdated but still works great if you printing on steel and the venerable plastic stick works but harder to recommend.

Finally magnetic sheets is a nice to have but finding a durable print bed like Garolite is better, just know that no one makes a Garolite bed so you’ll need to craft your own.

Other gimmicks you’ll find is ways to accelerate printing but I’ve honestly haven’t seen much improvement by using them and prefer the print quality when printing slower.

I'm mostly happy with my qidi plus 4 but I'm not sure of they can be recommended. The prices are good but they have some problems with keeping up the quality as I heard. Also the qidi plus4 is quite loud and I heard they multi color unit is very loud. Speed and print quality are excellent though. I'm not sure if there is a better printer for the price but maybe paying a bit more might give you a better printer.

I'd recommend trying some budget-y CoreXY-type printer, but I'd be very careful with Creality lineup on that, as many of their options didn't really turn out well, basic K1 is straight up dogwater, but some later revisions like KE might be better.

Mentioned already Elegoo Centauri is cool. If you want multi-filament system as well - take a look at Centauri Carbon 2, although it gets a bit less efficient with keeping temperature inside the enclosure due to big silly hat, and using different materials (e.g. different ones for supports) is going to be quite tricky.

If I had that amount for a printer, I'd get an LDO Delta Flyer kit or an LDO BabyBelt Pro kit. Maybe even 2! They're pretty cheap last i checked

I like Prusa and the Bamboo P1S, but they are enshittifying rapidly also.

I share your views on company policies. After the Ender S1, I went with the Ender K1C and can honestly recommend it.

Abuse of the open source movement? What did they do?