Which 3D printer would you recommend for home use?

[Anonymous]

I need a new 3D printer for my home office. What would you recommend?

I am thinking to work from home and make some profit?

Please only comment from experience people from this job?

[Syntosi]

Avoid resin printers.

While they are amazing, so is their safety requirements. The prints themselves are safe but every step before then requires you to wear protective equipment and be zealous about decontamination and isolation. If you can't have a room dedicated to the printers and another room dedicated to cleaning yourself then dont even think about it. Furthermore, you can't just throw the contaminated items into the trash either, you need to order special garbage collection to collect it.

Aside from that assuming you go for a plastic printer, the printer itself is not actually the important bit. You can get great results from a subpar printer if you do it right. It is far more about how in-depth you yourself are willing to go to ensure quality prints than whatever the printer does.

A few key points to think about. Printing is about controlling variables, which means you need to calibrate the 3d printer often and control things like the temperature. Having an enclosure around the 3d printer will help and having a heated base-plate is pretty much essential. If your printer does not come with an enclosure then you should consider building one yourself.

But the enclosure comes at a cost, usually the size of the print area which means printers without enclosures can usually print significantly bigger stuff. As such you got the option of going for a smaller enclosed printer which will be easier to achieve good quality or a bigger printer that will require more on your end for a good print.

Lastly, sadly this industry is full of corporations with their own propriety "solutions" and they are trying to lock you down into their software when you buy from them.

"Ender", "Prusa" and "Bamboo labs" are probably the 3 biggest names in the industry right now. It should be safe to pick among any of them without running into the issue where the printer is holding you back rather than your own lack of skill. They all have their pros and cons but that is sort of irrelevant as a beginner.

[Asker]

Are you doing this job?

[Syntosi]

No. My father owns a 3d printer for many years so I do have some practical knowledge though from having played around with it.

[jshm2]

None, as the problem isn't the 3D printer, but the software and process you need to learn for each printer to even use it.

Sure you can buy a 200 bucks Chinese 3D printer from Aliexpress. But unless you have experience in 3D design and printing, you're not going to get much use out of it and are better off using a shop instead.

[Asker]

Do you mean 3d printer software? Also do you need to pay extra money for using that software?

[kobeni]

Prusa is the big brand but it's more expensive.

It all depends on what you want to print too. Size, resolution, and materials all matter. Especially if you don't have a place to safely put a resin printer

[Asker]

Are you using one?