Hi,
I just have some questions regarding 3D printing. Despite doing this for 2 years I still feel like a beginner.
Questions:
I’m looking at the Ender 5 Plus and Prusa MK3S, I’ve seen plenty of people say the Prusa is better because the Ender 5 Plus requires more “tinkering”. I just feel that the Prusa is overpriced and don’t know if I should just bite the bullet and get it or something else? I want to get back into the printing game.
I live in a trailer and my room is pretty small about 30ft x 30ft, would it be safe to use my printer in my room if all I print is PLA (I’m not talking about using it overnight either since I don’t trust it). Or should I leave it in my living room?
While this is true, and I learned a ton on my Creality. Some people don’t want to tinker, or repair anything. Some folks aren’t comfortable or confident in their ability to do that. That is why you can find so many super cheap used creality printers. People buy them, and don’t want to work on them. It fails and they get rid of it. If you get a more reliable machine, like the Prusa, and it seems like Bambulabs is starting to join that club then you may never really need to repair it.
I have had my prusa for coming up on 2 years and haven’t adjusted or touched anything. I did build it as a kit, and have built and tinkered with Enders, but with my prusa I don’t need to. If people don’t plan on printfarming or selling, or having it run 24/7 chances are it will run for ages without needing to adjust anything. Thats not the case with the cheap printers.
I did mods on mine simply because it’s so easy to add things to make it look better, or in some cases make it easier to work with. I think the only significant improvements for printing were adding an arm to change the angle of the filament entering the extruder, and a fang duct which helped a lot with bridging and stringing.
I didn’t really do anything major until I wanted to print with NinjaFlex TPU so I printed and assembled a direct drive head, compiled a new version of Marlin to move the motors the right way, and included some extra features that help print more consistent lines. Yeah that’s going to be way outside the comfort zone for most people, but my printer always worked reliably for the three years before this change (I got it at the end of January 2019). I’ve been working on other projects this year so it’s been awhile since I printed anything, but I know I could clean the dust off the bed, load up some filament, and kick out a print job. It just works.